sunningdale agreement vs good friday agreement

The IRA ‘visualised declaration of intent first, all-Ireland convention then, 32-county government follows’. Unionists needed agreement to halt any slide towards greater Dublin input into the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement has been described as ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’, in that it uses many of the ideas originating in that 1973 agreement. The main and continuing problem had been the weakness of Faulkner’s position within the Unionist Party; his leadership was repeatedly being called into question at the key to Unionist acceptance of the latter Agreement in comparison to Unionist rejection of Sunningdale. The 1973 Sunningdale and 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreements are, on the face of it, remarkably similar: both involve power sharing (although this was negotiated prior to Sunningdale it remained central to the working of that concord) and an institutional link between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Source for information on Northern Ireland: Constitutional Settlement from Sunningdale to Good Friday: Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture dictionary. A concluding paragraph would be to summarise the reasons for failure you've already explained, and reference the Good Friday Agreement, saying that the reason GF worked was because Northern Ireland was a priority for Westminster at this time etc. Politics. the Record Straight: Sinn Féin’s ‘April’ Document – Sinn Fin’s Basis for Entering Dialogue. In contrast, the UK’s position, on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, at Sunningdale was outlined by two officials, Kelvin White and P.J. Following the meeting the British noted that the timing (though not the principle) relating to the role of the British Army in Northern Ireland was negotiable, and ‘no doubt’ amnesties were also. (p.180) Power sharing with Nationalists, per se, was no longer unacceptable. The phrase ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’, attributed to Seamus Mallon, masks a misunderstanding of the fundamental differences between the two Agreements. LHL, NIPC Frameworks for the Future Cmmd.2964; We Reject the Governments’ ‘Frameworks’ Proposals as the Basis for Negotiations (Ulster Unionist Party 1995); Response to ‘Frameworks for the Future (Ulster Unionist Party n.d.). Consent, constitutional recognition and sovereignty were all bound up. Such a court would deal effectively with terrorists wherever they were caught and would thus get round the present difficulty in the extradition law (TNA, CJ4/474). All paramilitary prisoners were to be released on licence within two years, provided their organisation remained on ceasefire (Ibid. In constitutional terms the GFA was a Unionist settlement that secured Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom, recognised British sovereignty in Northern Ireland and established that a united Ireland could only be achieved on the basis of the principle of consent. The phrase ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’, attributed to Seamus Mallon, masks a misunderstanding of the fundamental differences between the two Agreements. 5 British government policy post 1974: learning slowly between Sunningdales? Both Agreements saw power-sharing arrangements which represented a considerable gain for Nationalists; in one respect, though, even the prospect of a power-sharing executive represented some gain for Unionists in 1998 given that it involved the creation of an NIA and a degree of control over decision-making in Northern Ireland that had been, effectively, absent since 1972 and heightened by the signing of the AIA. This was This constitutional guarantee, in Dublin’s opinion, had a ‘stultifying effect’ on Northern Ireland politics and on British government policies in relation to the North. As for decommissioning, the Agreement stated merely that parties to the Agreement were to use their ‘influence’ with paramilitaries to achieve disarmament (Ibid. (p.177) Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab. The Good Friday Agreement succeeded, in the longer term, despite the psychological turmoil Unionism experienced in terms of prisoner releases, the absence of immediate decommissioning and the reform of policing, because the fundamental constitutional foundations of the accord were Unionist – as demonstrated by the fact that the St Andrews Agreement, championed by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) as a ‘renegotiation’ of the 1998 accord, did not remove any of the institutions established by it. A crucial difference in deciding the outcome of the 1973 and 1998 Agreements was the attitude of the respective British Prime Ministers: unlike Heath at Sunningdale, Tony Blair, in effect, backed the Unionist position on an institutional North–South body; and the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, unlike Cosgrave who stood firm on an executive Council of Ireland, decided to renegotiate on the NSMC, after contemplating the implications of a refusal to do so – the potential collapse of the negotiations. In Faulkner’s opinion in any new elections the opposition members of a new Assembly would consist of such ‘extremists’ as this (PRONI, CAB/9/J/90/10). Irish politician Séamus Mallon, who was part of the negotiations, famously described the agreement as 'Sunningdale for slow learners'. It was a powerful argument in the Unionist–Loyalist alliance that toppled Faulkner, power sharing and the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974. This meant that for a decision to be ratified by the Assembly there would have to be a majority of Unionists and Nationalists separately. As Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, put it to colleagues: The Provisionals will no doubt try to bring us quickly to discuss a declaration of British intent to withdraw. Bunreacht na hÉireann (the Irish Constitution of 1937) declared, in Article 2, that: ‘The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas’. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement has been described as ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’, in that it uses many of the ideas originating in that 1973 agreement. But Both the British and Irish governments recognised the legitimacy of whatever choice was freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland ‘with regard to its status, whether they prefer to continue to support the Union with Great Britain or a sovereign united Ireland’ (Ibid.). This remained the collective view of the PAC as passed on to the British dovernment which sanctioned initial contacts with the Provisionals – through the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) whose representative signalled to the Republican movement that HMG wished to discuss ‘structures of disengagement’ (Taylor, 1997: 177–8) and that ‘withdrawal’ was on the agenda for any discussions (Ibid. Keywords: (p.179) Only by doing this could the Catholic minority identify with the police force and give it their support against criminals and extremists. As in the 1990s, John Hume, of the SDLP, played a key part in pushing the PIRA towards a ceasefire in 1972 (TNA, CJ4/1456). LHL, NIPC Joint Declaration by An Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds TD and the British Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Major MP 15 December 1993 (Government of Ireland: Dublin 1993). The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), on which the current system of Northern Irish devolution is based, closely resembles the Sunningdale Agreement. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. From the beginning Faulkner had no objection to the formation of a Council of Ireland consisting of elected representatives from both sides of the border provided the Irish government ‘recognised Northern Ireland’s right to run its own affairs’ (PRONI, CAB/9/J/90/10). The Provisional IRA and Sunningdale, 11 Cultural responses to and the legacies of Sunningdale, 12 ‘Slow learners’? Registered in England & Wales No. The consent principle – the right of Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom or become part of a united Ireland – was the key constitutional determinant underlying the political conflict in the ‘Troubles’. Response to ‘Frameworks for the Future (Ulster Unionist Party n.d.). In contrast, despite a brief flirtation with a North–South body possessing executive powers in the guise of the British–Irish Frameworks Documents (1995) which once more sparked Unionist opposition,4 the B/GFA resulted in a completely different form of cross-border institution. In the B/GFA the Irish state formally recognised that Northern Ireland was not part of the Republic of Ireland but was part of the United Kingdom. The Irish, and in particular Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien, pointed out it was constitutionally impossible for the Irish government to commit itself to a public statement that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland was as part of the United Kingdom. But the British concluded it was difficult to see how the IRA leaders could accept any reformulation of the Declaration which preserved the British government’s commitment not to alter the status of Northern Differences Between Sunningdale And Good Friday Agreement The agreement contains a complex set of provisions in a number of areas, including: the result of these referendums was a large majority in both parts of Ireland in favour of the agreement. This video is aimed at helping students to understand the Sunningdale agreement of 1973/74. The origins of the Sunningdale Agreement can be traced back to October 1972, with the formulation of a green paper (discussion document) by Northern Ireland Secretary of State William Whitelaw. The British, in turn, reassured the Irish that ‘We recognised that a principal aim of the PIRA in present circumstances is to try to manoeuvre us into a position in which they could claim that they were negotiating with us: we were very alive to this danger, and equally determined to avoid it’ (TNA, PREM 16/515). The Sunnningdale Agreement looked to establish a Council of Ireland with executive powers that had the potential to evolve into an embryonic all-Ireland government; the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement established a consultative North–South Ministerial Council with no executive powers that could not evolve into a united Ireland by incremental moves. While both Agreements contained an assembly and a power-sharing executive at their heart, a significant difference between Sunningdale and the B/GA was where the latter saw the NIA governed by ‘sufficient consensus’ or a double veto. Although the first power-sharing Executive was a separate negotiation from the North-South aspects of the Sunningdale Agreement, the interdependency of the institutions agreed meant that both parts were as integral to one another as they were in the B/GFA. This article examines what historical lessons have been learned from Sunningdale and applied to the Good Friday Agreement. negotiations and content of the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) and the Good Friday Agreement. to legal action which would be invalidated by an appeal to these Articles unless we intend to repeal them’.

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