EYE-WITNESS SESSION: THE 1985 ANGLO-IRISH AGREEMENT IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Churchill College and the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge 13 and 14 November 2025

Allen Packwood, Director of Churchill Archive Centre

(00:00):

Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to take your seats again, please, and if we can have the members for the next panel, if they'd like to make their way up to the stage. … Okay, well, welcome back everyone. So the good news is that we are running very much to time. But we do have some breaking bad news. And the breaking bad news is that Simon Harris, the Tánaiste, is unable to leave Ireland. So his remarks will be delivered by His Excellency Martin Fraser, Irish Ambassador to the UK, and he will be joining us at 6:30. But with that, I will hand over to our next speaker.

Professor Lucy Delap

(02:03):

Thank you, Alan, and welcome back everybody. I'm Lucy Delap. I'm a historian based here in the history faculty in Cambridge, and I'm currently chair of the history faculty. And it's a huge pleasure and an honour to be able to welcome this panel of speakers who have assembled to tell us about their involvement in the Anglo-Irish agreement. And we have a real range of experience, both of people involved in the negotiation and involved to some extent in the implementation. So we'll get a chance to to hear their memories and to think about how that might interrelate with the paper we heard today and also the expertise of the audience. So we very much want it to be a witness seminar, but also a discussion, with with your contributions. So do keep your questions in mind and hopefully everyone will have the chance to ask.

(02:58):

So I'm going to introduce our four panellists in turn in the order in which they'll speak, and I'll invite them up to have their their say at the podium, and then we'll open up to a wider discussion. So first of all, we're going to hear from Dick Spring, Teachta Dála for Kerry North between 1981 and 2002, and Labour Party leader from 1982 to 1997, Tánaiste on three occasions between 1982 and 1997 and variously holding ministerial briefs in that period. And it's a great honour to have him here as somebody who had an absolutely key role to play in the Anglo-Irish agreement. We'll then next hear from Lord Powell, Charles Powell, who was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Affairs and Defence Advisor in 1983, and stayed on in the same post under John Major until 1991, has been involved in a number of different international companies and task forces since then, and serves as an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords, another key figure in the agreement. It's a great privilege to have him here.

(04:11):

Thirdly, we're going to hear from Seán Donlon, Irish diplomat and a key figurehead on the the Northern Irish desk of the Department of Foreign Affairs, involved in some of the big negotiations, including the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, and subsequently Irish ambassador to the United States and Mexico, and head of the Irish Diplomatic Service, also a key person in the construction of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and its implementation after 1985. And then finally, we'll hear from Michael Lillis, who was in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs for an extraordinary sweep, 1966 to 1990, and was diplomatic advisor to the Taoiseach, 1981 to 1982, was the Irish head of the joint secretariat of the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council between 1985 and 1988, and then subsequently the Irish Permanent Representative at the UN in Geneva between 1988 and 1990.

(05:27):

I could say more about their contributions, but you, you can get the message, I think, that they are absolutely central figures, and we're very fortunate to have them here. So I'm going to pass on, first of all, to Dick Spring. Dick, do you want to come up to the podium and talk to us? Thank you.

Dick Spring

(05:44):

I can get around you, Michael, you're okay. I'm getting …

Michael Lillis

(05:47):

Bigger by the day!

Dick Spring

(05:53):

Thank you very much, chairperson, and good afternoon everybody. I have to say I'm very glad to be here, and I want to thank everybody who's been involved in the organisation of this. My only major difficulty in life is that I'm probably travelling on my own for the first time in about 50 years, which makes me very nervous getting through airports and getting on trains and planes and all that sort of thing. But I'm so far so good. I check in about twice a day. [Audience laughter] What I would like to just share with you is, we're going to get a lot of expert views, but I'd like to share with you my experience in relation to the Anglo-Irish agreement and a little bit about the political situation that I was involved in between 1981 and 1987. And also, I, I think reflecting on the previous speakers, I think one has to try to remember the background to those days.

(06:48):

I mean, it was grim, and it got grimmer and was getting worse by the hour, and in some respects, if that hadn't happened, the Anglo-Irish agreement hadn't happened, something else had to happen. They really were, the early 80s in politics on these islands was extremely grim. And the 70s had been equally bad after Sunningdale. And basically it was beholden on anybody involved in political life at that time to see if we could provide a solution. And, you know, ironically, I've always felt that whatever had happened … whatever agreement was come to in 1921, 22, even if you had done the opposite, it wouldn't have worked. It was a virtually Mission Impossible at that time, and we have paid the price for it ever since. The relationship between Ireland and Britain indeed through the – before I was born – between the 1920s and the 1960s in particular was fairly grim.

(07:45):

The relationship was very poor. There were very little contact at political level. There was the declaration of the republic which didn't help matters. There were the different positions taken during World War II. So it was a particularly difficult situation. And when, in fairness, even though I had my little rows [laughing] with Mr Haughey, I would have to start by saying that he did, in fairness, start the process with Margaret Thatcher, and they made significant progress, possibly slightly overegged by Brian Lenihan talking about the totality of relationships after the first meeting, and then obviously, as has been said already, the Falklands war situation and otherwise. But the start was there, in terms of bringing about a better relationship between Ireland and England with a view to doing something about Northern Ireland. And something I think that isn't spoken about much is that the difficulties of Northern Ireland was a huge drain on the southern economy and our economic situation was not great at that time.

(08:48):

It was very difficult in the 70s and 80s, long before the Celtic Tiger came storming along. So there was another imperative, an economic imperative to actually get something done to take, to remove that burden of the cost of security on the border. But when we went to ... I was elected leader of the Labour Party in November 82, and I was elected leader of the party because I wasn't there long enough to have had annoyed anybody. [Audience laughter]

(09:18):

The Labour Party were pretty good at fighting with one another in those days. And ironically, I defeated a gentleman who has gone on to have a rather stellar career ever since. I got 14 votes and Michael D. Higgins got two. [Audience laughter] The ironies of life. At any rate, I got elected leader of the party on a Monday, and the election was called on Thursday, a general election, and the Labour Party at that time was in disarray. Our leader had gone off to join Fine Gael. We didn't have a bob, we were trying to get a campaign together, and in my early ... I was asked about Northern Ireland, obviously, in the campaign, and I thought it would be wise to say that the parties in the South should try to get a uniform view on Northern Ireland. You know, Fine Gael had a view, Fianna Fáil had a view, the Labour Party had two views. [Audience laughter]

(10:11):

We had Conor Cruise O'Brien's view and the other view. [Audience laughter] So quite split. And I did say that we should ... and in fairness, John Hume, timing-wise, came along a very short time later talking about the Forum, and I think the Forum played a very important part in nationalist thinking in relation to solving problems on the island. … There were difficult times. I mean, Mr. Haughey was adamant that he wanted his unitary state, and we knew that was so, so much an aspiration and a non-achievable aspiration that it was pointless, really. But it did put us, on, if you like, it put it on the agenda and it raised from our point of view things that we wanted to take up with the British government. And I just remind people in 1982, Margaret Thatcher was asked about something to do with Northern Ireland.

(11:04):

She said that no commitment exists for Her Majesty's Government to consult the Irish government on matters affecting Northern Ireland. So that was her starting point. And I don't want to rehash what was said this morning, but she did come an awful long way. She had her “out out out”, which caused us political problems, which I think Peter Barry and I were given a bit of leeway to go off and attack her, but Garret didn't want to damage the relationship, and it was brought back on the rails fairly quickly. And I never felt in terms of the conversations I was involved in, in Chequers and other places, I never really felt that Margaret Thatcher had what I would call any sort of passion for doing things about Ireland. She, obviously – security was a big issue, and this will be discussed, I'm sure, in detail.

(11:53):

On the other hand, in fairness – and David Goodall and others have been mentioned – it was very evident that there were people around her that wanted and felt a historical, I think, sense that something desperate … was necessary in relation to Northern Ireland because we couldn't stand by and allowed this to keep going on. And obviously there was huge alienation in Northern Ireland, the nationalist community and the drift to Sinn Féin, which was a disaster for everybody. And listening to the speakers this morning, perhaps the agreement was top down, without showing any great effect on the ground. And sometimes, I think this is one of the difficulties in politics. You do things at a certain governmental level, but you're not quite sure what's happening on the ground or how it affects people in the long term, and that might have been a mistake at that time.

(12:44):

But I've always felt – and I would give credit to Margaret Thatcher – it probably wasn't in her best interest. It probably wasn't something that she particularly wanted to do, but she did it. And I've always in public and private praise Garret FitzGerald for his persistence and for the effort and the energy he put into building the relationship with Margaret Thatcher, which became between the two of them, a very strong relationship. And I'm not sure if Charles Haughey could have achieved it. I'm not sure if any other prime minister at that time could have achieved the Anglo-Irish Agreement without the persistence of Garret FitzGerald. And I'm sure Michael and Seán can speak on that, because they had very good relationship with Garret as well. I had – even though there was quite an age difference between the two of us, it was almost father and son [laughs] – we had political parties behind to, to guide, and I have to say, I don't think Garret and I ever fell out about anything to do with policy in relation to Northern Ireland.

(13:45):

We were both driven by the same motivation that we wanted to see if we could make a contribution, to ending the mess that was Northern Ireland then. And in that respect, and I, I still feel this, even though people can say that the Agreement didn't achieve what it was meant to achieve, that if that hadn't happened in 1985, something would have had to happen in 86 or 87. We couldn't, as politicians, just have been standing by and seeing what was happening, the situation was absolutely appalling. And it took a lot of effort and we were, we were coming from a situation where, you know, government to government relations hadn't been great, as I said, for the previous 50 years. One of the aspects that I believe was a big influence as well was when we both joined the European Community in 73, because that gave the opportunity for Irish and British ministers to have a lot more dialogue and a lot more conversation because invariably they were the only two English speaking guys at the meetings.

(14:45):

There wasn't much point talking to the Italians or the French for that matter and a lot of good relations were built between Irish and British ministers, and certainly later on through the 90s when Douglas Hurd was Foreign Secretary and I was Minister of Foreign Affairs, we would be meeting every month in Brussels, so that gave us an opportunity. And I never found, in fairness to the British ministers, I never found any reluctance on their part other than wanting to help to see if we could find a solution. And if I may say, occasionally, they used to say to us, "If you think you have some way of taking it from us, you can please take it away … if there's an easy..." But there wasn't any obvious, easy solution in that respect. Some older civil servants did say to me, and I'm speaking about much older civil servants than my colleagues on the table, when I was a young, ambitious politician, just be very careful in your negotiations with the British, they might offer it back to you, and if they do, please ask for a chequebook. [Audience laughter]

(15:42):

So I have to say that I'm very proud to have been associated with the Anglo-Irish agreement, and I will forever be indebted to Garret FitzGerald and his stewardship in relation to achieving the Anglo-Irish Agreement. I was very angry, I have to say, at the reaction of the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party at the time, in actually not supporting the Agreement and his attempt to undermine it with our American friends, which obviously completely backfired on him when he sent his deputy Brian Lenihan to Washington to consult people. I think he discovered very quickly that that was not what the American, our American supporters wanted, and they were very supportive of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and have been supportive right through, all the way through to 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement. So it may not have been perfect. It may have been far from perfect, but I believe it was at the time, it was probably the best agreement that we could achieve, and it was the foundation stone of what was to be achieved later.

(16:43):

And I said to somebody recently that two things have happened in my lifetime that I thought I would never see happening, and one is that the guns have gone silent in Northern Ireland, and secondly, that Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness walked down the steps of Stormont – and I would have put my house and my farm and my dog on the fact that that would never happen, and it did. So anything is possible. Thank you. [Applause]

Professor Lucy Delap

(17:16):

Thank you, Dick. Lord Powell, you're welcome to speak from there or come up.

Lord Powell

(17:21):

I think it'd be easier if I come and stand up, but I'm not going to try and circumvent Michael Lillis, which I've been failing to do for the last 25 years. [Audience laughter]

Michael Lillis

(17:36):

I'm shocked by that remark. [Audience laughter]

Lord Powell

(17:44):

Well, I have to say I'm pretty intimidated by the level of expertise about Ireland in this room, because I very much don't share that level at all. But I am very pleased to see some very distinguished Irishmen with whom I worked for those few years, and particularly Michael who became a good friend, so there are happy memories as it were from that time. Now in my case, my only significant experience of Irish affairs was the eight years I worked for Margaret Thatcher just happened to coincide with the period of negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. My role, I was a civil servant, let's be clear about that. I didn't belong to any political party, still don't, I sit as a cross-bencher like Paul Bew in the House of Lords, but my role was as really her Private Secretary and adviser on Foreign Affairs, Defence, Intelligence, trade, aid, Northern Ireland. [Audience laughter]

(18:51):

Since I was literally, literally the only person in No.10 covering those broad policy areas, you will understand that time devoted to Irish affairs was proportionately limited. You will also understand how small the centre of government was in those days in Britain compared with what it is now, and we all have our own views on the relative quality. [Audience laughter]

(19:19):

I was not personally involved directly in the Anglo Irish Agreement negotiations, unlike my brother Jonathan with the Good Friday Agreement, but I was a participant in all Margaret Thatcher's meetings with Irish leaders in the period, as well as, of course, her own ministers. So you could say I was a witness, not a player, at least not a visible one, though in terms of hours spent talking to her on the subject, I think I probably won the prize, often at two or three in the morning.

Now,the conduct of the negotiations on our side was pretty unusual. It was led as others have said at official level by Robert Armstrong and David Goodall from the Cabinet Office, which is usually concerned with the rather dull coordination of British government policy, and they led – rather than officials from the foreign office or the Northern Ireland office, and that reflected Margaret Thatcher's instinctive and unfortunate distrust of the Foreign Office, which she thought represented foreigners rather than British views.

(20:30):

Some would also say that it reflected her naivety, her naivety about the progressive views held by Robert Armstrong and David Goodall about Ireland, which were, of course, considerably more positive and well in advance of her own. Now, I won't spoil the occasion by saying much about Margaret Thatcher's views on Ireland, from failing to close Irish ports in the Second World War to German shipping, to trying to sabotage negotiations on the Falklands at the UN, Margaret Thatcher's views were what they were. And given those views, frankly, it was remarkable that negotiations on the Anglo-Irish Agreement ever got started, let alone concluded.

So how did they start? Well, not because of any outside influence. It is a myth, a frequently used myth that she was pressured into them by the United States. She was not pushed at any point by President Reagan in his eight years, which overlapped with this period.

(21:37):

She found him supportive throughout, nor was she in any way influenced by the views of the European Union on Ireland, as indeed on almost everything else.

The answer to the question really relies in the internal struggle within Margaret Thatcher herself. Between, on the one hand, her long-held views, including those derived from Enoch Powell, about the proper relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, her loyalty to the Conservative Party's traditional links to the Unionists, and she always called herself a Conservative and Unionist MP when she was, and her conviction that the Irish problem was fundamentally one of terrorism and the Republic's failure to deal with it. But on the other hand, was her recognition – her intellectual recognition, I could say perhaps – that something had to be done to secure Irish acceptance of the Union as well as more effective and active cooperation against terrorism.

(22:44):

But also, beyond that, she accepted the need to create something better in place of the seemingly endless bleak cycle of violence and deprivation in the north. What Garret FitzGerald used to call alienation, which drove her frantic. She regarded that as a communist word. And all this was encapsulated in her statement after the 1983 election, that she wanted to do something about Northern Ireland. Now, wanting to do something about Northern Ireland was about as useful a guide to action as the then Prince of Wales saying while visiting deprived mining communities in Wales in 1936, that something must be done, but failing to specify what. But it did give enough scope to bring Northern Ireland up the agenda and to convince Margaret Thatcher that she first must be open to measures, albeit limited ones, to reassure the nationalist community by giving the Republic some role in the affairs of the north, and second, that she would have to exclude her friends and allies among the unionists from any negotiations if there was to be any chance at all of success.

(24:07):

And in my mind, it's to her credit that she rose above her instincts, above her loyalties, above her friendships, to conclude an agreement which she knew in her mind to be right, even if her heart told her otherwise.

Now, this internal tussle made the negotiating process exceedingly complex, with the toughest battles fought within the British side rather than with the Irish, though I'm not suggesting that Garret FitzGerald did not have to make some painful sacrifices too. Margaret Thatcher's tactics in these, as in other negotiations, was to set out her maximalist conditions as a warning to our negotiators, not to stray too far or become too adventurous, but she also employed the same tactics with the Taoiseach, with her “out, out, out” press conference on the proposals of the New Ireland Forum, which of course became a practise run for her “no, no, no”, for Jack Delors's proposals on the future of Europe.

(25:14):

Her negotiating style was not one for the squeamish. The art was to distinguish reality from theatre, which was perhaps my in-house skill.

Taking the negotiations themselves as read and moving on to our exam question on the significance of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in the perspective of history, Margaret Thatcher herself came to see the Agreement as a disappointment, if not a failure. She thought the extremes on both sides were strengthened. IRA terrorism continued indeed escalated. The Unionists could not be induced to see any advantages for them in the agreement, and she lost some of her closest political friends in the process. Sinn Féin’s rise continued. The SDLP failed to engage with the agreement. Above all, the significantly improved cross-border security cooperation, which had been her biggest and best hope for the Agreement, failed to materialise. As she commented rather crossly to Garret FitzGerald at the time, "You got the glory, I got the problems." Now, was such a gloomy assessment justified?

(26:29):

Well, from her personal point of view, it was. She felt very much about the Anglo-Irish Agreement as she felt about the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong's future, which she signed with China, that she had let down people who were loyal to Britain and British sovereignty. And I once, rather rashly, compared her feelings to those of Queen Mary I in the 16th century, who was held responsible for the loss of Calais after 200 years of British possession. "When I am dead and opened up, you shall find Calais lying on my heart”. Perhaps she would have thought the same about Northern Ireland. And In my view, it's only if you take a longer term view and you look at the Anglo-Irish Agreement as part of a sequence, that a more positive view becomes possible.

The sequences, of course, is first of all, Sunningdale – arguably over ambitious ahead of its time, killed by the Ulster workers’ strike, but it did provide an agenda for the future.

(27:39):

Secondly, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and I think its best achievement really was to bring the British and Irish governments together, closer and develop the habit of working together, which had been so absent in the past. Third, the Downing Street Declaration, which Dick Spring was just talking about, which was a vital step towards defining Northern Ireland's constitutional future, but unfulfilled because John Major would quite rightly not sit down with Sinn Féin. And finally, the Good Friday Agreement, an extraordinary milestone which ended most violence, but has to be said, has left many legacies still to be resolved.

Looked at in that sequence, the Anglo-Irish Agreement can rightly be seen as an essential step to peace on the island of Ireland. Did Margaret Thatcher belatedly see it that way? Well, I will leave the question hanging because I don't believe in answering hypothetical questions. [Audience laughter] Thank you. [Applause]

Professor Lucy Delap

(28:54):

Thank you. Thank you, Lord Powell. We now have Seán Donlon.

Seán Donlon

(29:12):

Thank you, chair. We have the, what we call in Ireland, the real Tánaiste sitting here. I know he says he's out of politics, but particularly in the absence of the Tánaiste this afternoon, I think we should acknowledge your position. [Audience laughter] Before I begin, I'd like to compliment Professor Jackson on his remarks, but as I've already talked to him privately, I must correct one statement he made. He talked about Brian Faulkner being an expert in offering gooseberry juice. As the first Irish civil servant to visit Brian Faulkner, just before Sunningdale, four weeks before Sunningdale, Dermot Nally and I went to see him, he offered us a lunch fit for a king. And he had a wine cellar, a selection of wine that I had not seen any, on any other house in Ireland. Subsequently, yes, I saw something in the United States where people collected wine.

(30:19):

Brian Faulkner didn't drink, as I'm sure you know, but he could not have been more hospitable and more expert on wine. [Audience laughter] I still remember he had specifically selected for our main course Lynch-Bages, he said in honour of my friend Jack Lynch. [Audience laughter] Anyway, historians can occasionally get the details wrong. [Audience laughter]

(30:46):

I first, I suppose, began to think about what became the Anglo-Irish Agreement shortly after Garret FitzGerald became Taoiseach in 1973. And he asked me over ... We had worked together. In fact, Noël Dorr, myself, Garret FitzGerald – Michael [Lillis] wasn't yet on the scene – I mean, we had worked through Sunningdale, but in particular, we had worked through the aftermath of Sunningdale. And I think it's not fully appreciated how much damage was created by Harold Wilson when he came in in February of 74. And as far as we were concerned, made very little effort to stand behind and help the rest of us survive through the Sunningdale experience. It took a few weeks, I think it was about six weeks later, we discovered that instead of devoting himself to protecting the Sunningdale Agreement, he had commissioned a group of civil servants to do a very quick study about withdrawal, British withdrawal from Northern Ireland.

(32:05):

So his mind clearly was not on Sunningdale, his mind was on an alternative policy.

(32:15):

That influenced certainly when Garret began to ... When he was talking to me within probably 24 hours of his becoming Taoiseach, he said, "We've got to do something about Northern Ireland," exactly the same as Margaret Thatcher had said, but he wasn't sure what, and we tossed around … I had no new ideas, no novel ideas, but he was more concerned about “let's put staff in place so that we have the right people in the right place”. Michael was in Brussels at the time. Is that right, Michael? And he insisted that Michael should come back straight away to become his principal advisor, although to locate him in the Department of Foreign Affairs. He also felt we should do a bit more about informing or lobbying Westminster, particularly the Tory Party. And a colleague, Richard Ryan, was transferred to the Embassy in London specifically to converse, talk, lobby, whatever phrase you want to use, the Tory Party, and we had identified in particular a range of Tory backbenchers who seemed to be quite hostile generally to Ireland, although they were generally uninformed.

(33:41):

So that we felt was a starting position and Michael, I think, was back within 24 hours. Richard Ryan, I can't remember Noël, probably a few months later, but that was a priority. And then his second priority was, "And we've got to get the United States right because we mean … we may need their support." If we had had some support from the United States after Sunningdale, we might have had a better chance. I had been Ambassador in Washington and he instructed me that I should maintain contacts and visit Washington regularly and brief a small, a very small group of people there as to what we were up to. The people I briefed – there were three, Tip O'Neill, Ted Kennedy, and someone most of you may never have heard of, a man called Bill Clark. Bill Clark was appointed ... Well, tell me, I'll tell you how I met him.

(34:46):

During the campaign, I went out to California. I was Ambassador at the time. I went out to meet Reagan, you know, just to ask him what part of Ireland he came from and did he know where his grandmother was buried, that sort of stuff. And, you know, we had nice friendly chat, but he said to me, "Oh, you must go and visit my friend, Bill Clark”, who was then on the Supreme Court of California. He said, "He lives in a big ranch, which is called the Hibernian Ranch. He must be Irish”. In fact, I discovered Bill had no Irish roots. His love of Ireland had started when he was a military officer stationed in Germany. He had an interpreter translator who was German, fell in love, got married, had very limited time to have a honeymoon, and came to Ireland, and as I've said somewhere else, of all improbable places to have his honeymoon, it was Monaghan in Ireland. [Audience laughter]

(35:48):

And I suspect even my Irish colleagues around the table have never even been on a weekend holiday in … . [Audience laughter] But any, whatever happened, Bill fell in love with Ireland, and he became a very well informed … and he became Ronald Reagan's main source of advice on Ireland. I have no hesitation whatever, in saying that. His formal positions where he was appointed initially Deputy Secretary of State, then he was appointed National Security Adviser, and subsequently he became secretary of the environment, I think. [Secretary of the Interior] He didn't enjoy bureaucracy, particularly Washington bureaucracy in State Department, National Security Council, all that sort of stuff. And when it came to Reagan's second term, he asked Clark Castle, "Don't give me a job. All I want is an office in the White House," which Reagan gave him. Anyway, contrary to what my friend Charles Powell has said, we always felt that the American, particularly the Reagan factor, had some influence on Margaret Thatcher.

(37:09):

Reagan's interest politically was "I have to keep Tip O'Neill happy." Tip O'Neill was speaker of the House. The Democrats had a majority, I think, initially in both the House and the Senate, and to get anything through Congress, Reagan had to keep O'Neill happy. In fact, they became extraordinarily friendly – at times opponents – but they had extraordinary little habits. For example, they would meet at four or five o'clock, usually on a Monday, and they had a strict rule. They would finish at six o'clock, and at six o'clock they would start exchanging stories and having cups of tea – or maybe something stronger. And one of the functions the embassy had to perform was Monday morning you'd get a phone call from Mike Deaver, “Any new Irish stories for the president?” [Audience laughter] And then an hour later, you'd get Kirk O'Donnell from the Speaker's office would phone “Any new Irish stories for the president?”

(38:14):

And eventually, by the way, the two of them ended up with an interest in pubs in Tipperary. Reagan eventually moved the pub from Ballyporeen back to the – whatever it's called – the Reagan Library/Centre in California. And to compete with them, we had to arrange to find a pub for Tip O'Neill. So he opened a pub in a place called Birdhill in Tipperary. It's called Matt the Threshers, and I recommend it highly to, to both of you. [Audience laughter]

Anyway, we kept the American side in the loop right through the negotiation, and probably within … starting in the spring of 85, we told our British opposite numbers what we were doing. And we had a very specific function with the Americans, which was simply to ensure, first of all, that they would back the Agreement fully, and secondly, that they might consider backing it financially to honour a promise Jimmy Carter had made in 1977.

(39:26):

The cooperation between Britain and Ireland on dealing with Washington eventually was such that Robert Armstrong and I made a joint visit to do a final briefing with the people I mentioned, and we, in fact, sat down and negotiated the joint statement which President Reagan and Speaker O'Neill made on the day the agreement was signed. So the, the negotiation was very, very close. I mean, I, I accept, Charles, what you've said, I mean, if the American had no influence on her, it certainly kept Tip O'Neill busy. He ... I have correspondence which is available publicly. I mean, Tip wrote after the “out, out, out”, he wrote to President Reagan, and basically he said, "If you can't persuade her to resume talking with Dublin, she's not coming here to address the Joint Session in February." Now, all I can tell you is what Tip said.

(40:43):

I can also refer you to the letters back from Reagan to Tip O'Neill, and those letters were very clear. “I have raised the matter with Mrs. Thatcher, and she has agreed that she will resume her conversations early in the New Year”. What you make of that, obviously, it's a matter of interpretation, but certainly as far as we were concerned, the decision to brief the Americans and to gain their support. … And by the way, the reason we needed American support: people like Tip O'Neill said to us, "Look, you're asking us to speak out against the use of violence. We're very public in asking Americans not to support the IRA, not to give money. We've beefed up the relevant agencies to deal with the smuggling of guns from the United States Ireland”. So, I mean, they had exactly the same approach to violence that we in Ireland had and that you in Britain had, but they needed to give some credibility to their message, particularly to Irish Americans, they needed to be able to say, "But we're also trying to help in a positive way, you know, asking people not to give money, not to smuggle guns. That's all very good, but it's negative. So let's do something positive as well." And that was part of the background to it all.

(42:22):

Anyway, I won't, go any further on that, but I'd just like to make very briefly one or two points. The chemistry in the negotiations, the chemistry between Dermot Nally and Robert Armstrong, the chemistry between Michael Lillis and David Goodall, chemistry between Noël Doer and Robert Armstrong. Incidentally, my abiding memory of discussions involving Noël Doer and Robert Armstrong, they could argue for a week about one word. [Audience laughter] No, you must be great Scrabble players. [Audience laughter] But they were most detailed, negotiations, conducted as indeed Robert Armstrong has said, by the end, we … both sides were negotiating with exactly the same purpose, and as a team, it was indistinguishable as to who was on what side. So I would like to make that point. I think that's, that's important.

(43:39):

The other thing is to express admiration that the bombing in Britain didn't disrupt Margaret Thatcher's commitment. I mean, that’s unbelievable when you think about it, given what had happened and given that was a very critical stage in the negotiations, so I think that has to be put on record.

The last thing, those of us who grew up in the Catholic tradition, we grew up with a catechism, you know, “Who made the world, God made the world”. John Hume's favourite from the Derry catechism, some of you may know it, what's forbidden by the Sixth and Ninth commandments, “Impure kisses, wanton looks and all forms of carnal knowledge”. That was taught to us at the age of seven in the catechism. We didn't understand anything except ‘and’. But anyway, it was decided that a catechism would be prepared for the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach. And there were sixty questions (00:24): identified and the negotiating team, we negotiated answers for all of those sixty questions. And the two heads of government spent some time, I won't say learning by rote what the masters were, but it's amazing that the thing went so smoothly. Obviously again, it was influenced by the “out out out” remarks by Prime Minister Thatcher, but I have to say, as students of catechism, they were great. Thank you very much.

(44:00).

Professor Lucy Delap

(44:01:12):

Thank you so much. Finally, Michael Lillis.

Michael Lillis

(44:01:37):

I couldn't help liking Margaret Thatcher, and that's a strange thing for someone who comes from where I come from to say, but there was one occasion I'd like to tell you about. It was the Irish presidency of the European Union, the second half of 1984. And this was about an issue which had nothing to do with Anglo Irish relations, thank God or Northern Ireland. But the European Commission, that hated institution of course had run out of cash and it needed for its normal cashflow purpose, it needed tiny loan of about a million, I think it was ecu at the time. And there were twelve member states of the community. (46:36): Eleven said, for heaven's sake, stop annoying us, just go ahead. But naturally, as you know, number twelve said, under no circumstances. So it was the presidency of the community and this made it impossible for the community institutions to work and he needed to find a solution. And Garret FitzGerald was the Taoiseach and normally the head of the complaining government should come to the capital of the presidency and try and resolve the matter. Of course, that wasn't going to happen either, so we had to go to No.10 and to save the European Union or European Community as it was called, I think it was that. Anyway, the Irish delegation comprised the Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, I think Seán Donlon was there, Dermot Nally who was our cabinet secretary was there and I was a bag carrier and there was expected that there might be some private discussion about Northern Ireland. (47:53): And I was interested in that as was shown. And yeah, there was a back bench TD who was the chair of the finance committee of the Dáil, meaning had to do with the commission's dilemma up. And we trooped into No.10. Most of us had not been there before. I think Seán had been, I had also on one occasion, but we were shown into the wonderful cabinet room and we sat on the last five seats at one edge of the cabinet and we waited there for a while while we were treated to the usual, wait until we're ready and get nervous and the rest of it. Anyway, a British delegation showed up, 20 ministers. It was the top, all the top names at the time and they trooped in and it was at the top of the British side of the table, I think Geoffrey Howe and Lawson and all the rest of them. (49:05): And the last number twenty was actually John Major I remember. And they sat there also for a while. And then during the next waiting period, a flunkey walked into the room carrying a whole set of beautifully leather-bound books, which were all the treaties of the European Community. And well – I sort of knew that we were going to have a little bit of theatre to explain this phenomenon. And finally the Prime Minister walked in, looking absolutely magnificent as she did in those days I must say. And she sat down in her seat at the end of the table and no small talk.

She said, ‘Gareth’ – she always called him Gareth, he wrote in his autobiography, she must think I'm Welsh [audience laughter] – and she said, “Gareth, have you read the Treaty of Rome?” If there's any, anyone in Europe who knew the Treaty of Rome backwards forwards in and out virtually had anticipated it, Ii was FitzGerald.

(50:23):

So he said something like, Robert, yes, I think I did or something. “Have you read Article 214, subsection B, line seven”, she said? “Oh, I must have” probably was what he replied. So she grabbed the top book in the selection, which was the Treaty of Rome turned over. The page had been well marked at this stage of course, and there it was. And basically what it said obviously was that the European Commission, under no circumstances, no matter how disastrous the pressure is, will ever borrow one single penny. And so she took the book and she flung it down the beautifully polished table saying, “Gareth, I will not flout the treaty”.

(51:16):

And I was hoping that the book would fall off the other edge of the table just beyond John Major. It just stopped in front of John Major. It happened. And I knew from something I'd heard already that a deal had been done with Lawson beforehand. Lawson explained she had to let off a bit of steam, which was part of the way things were done, but not to worry we could go ahead with the loan or the Commission could go ahead with the loan. So that was fine or we thought it was except Jim O'Keefe from Skibbereen, a very sophisticated man and who always spoke with a very strong local accent. And Jim O'Keefe looked up and his moment had arrived and he was going to put this lady in her place and he said, “now, Mrs. Thatcher, Prime Minister” - he's very strong West Cork accent - I'm from West Cork by the way. And he said, it is like this.

(52:22):

”The European community is built on very solid foundations. That's the tree here, Rome”. He said, “We're building an extension onto the back” [audience laughter]. He said, “That's Spain and Portugal just joined the Community”. And then he says, but Prime Minister, he says, and I kid you not, I think he did this for deliberately knowing precisely the impact it would have. He said: “But Prime Minister, there's a drop of rain coming in through the roof and that's why we need the loan”. And her face reddened. And she became more and more agitated and she was thumping Armstrong with her elbow. What's this fellow called? What's his name? And Armstrong wrote down. And so she picked up the piece of paper and she said, “Mr. O'Keeffe, we Thatchers never let the rain through the roof” [audience laughter].

(53:30):

And actually ever since, I mean I disagree with her as we all did I suppose, but ever since then I've always had a huge admiration for that woman. At any rate, she deserves regardless of what your individual and feelings are, and I respect all the comments that have been made here today, and I think Charles did say something along these lines, but I certainly want to say it. She deserves huge gratitude and credit for signing the Anglo Irish Agreement, particularly in the context of the events that happened in the previous months, notably serious attempts to kill her, which almost succeeded. And we were expecting that there would be at least a very lengthy interruption. Instead she said, no, go ahead and do it. So that is an important thing to acknowledge and it has not been sufficiently acknowledged by Irish people, but I was glad to hear the Tánaiste more or less say it.

The process of negotiation of the Agreement, (54:56) as those of you who studied it know, we got to know our British opposite numbers very well, and in my case, my opposite number was David Goodall. We fought like dogs, but we did come to I think to enjoy working together. I stayed in touch with him when I retired from the public service for many years and he used to come and visit me in Dublin and I went to stay with him quite frequently in Ampleforth. At the end of every day in Ampleforth, we would go to hear Compline in the monastery of the Benedictines there, wonderful music, but there was … and I was very much involved. I should say thanks very much to the huge help we had from Andrew Riley of this institution in having the embargo which had been placed on David's memoirs removed and also in having the book published by my own alma mater, National University of Ireland.

(56:21):

I don't want to go on about this, but there's just one small text I would like to read to you. On November the eighth, 2018, Robert Armstrong sent a word to Morwenna Goodall, Lady Goodall the widow of David Goodall, and it's quoted at length in the version of the memoir that was published around it … shortly after that time. There's a couple of sentences here which are important. “The other thing that the account brings back to my mind is the pleasure of working with David on the negotiations and the strength of the friendship, which our work together created. We shared a belief in what we were trying to achieve and we were able to work together harmoniously even when it was arduous and seemed to be at risk of collapse. It was fun to be doing it together and we were helped by our cross-border friendships, David with Michael Lillis and mine with Dermot Nally. (57:35): I think both of us thought that this was the best thing we had done or were likely to do in our careers”. That's the end of the quote from Armstrong's letter to Goodall. “In this last regard, my husband would unquestionably have agreed and I would just say I met”.

I enjoyed Goodall's company enormously and we used to like have a drop of whiskey late of an evening and talk about the negotiation and our hopes for the future. And the one thing that I would have to acknowledge here, given what's been said, is that David was really very unhappy, not about the Anglo Irish Agreement, but actually about the Good Friday Agreement. He was extremely distressed by it and I understood his distress, even though I hoped myself that things would not turn out too badly. His distress was largely because of the way that the negotiators had dealt with what he would say, the crimes and the threats of the provisional IRA in particular. I understood his feeling. You would have to be inhuman not to. But on the other hand, we talked about things late to so many nights until he died. I saw him shortly before he did, and he never expressed the slightest doubt about the Anglo Irish Agreement or his hopes for its efficacy.

(59:20):

Now, the people who deserve the credit for the Anglo Irish Agreement, there were two basically, and this has been mentioned here and there, of course, Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald and their meetings and their correspondence were the crucial exchanges in the whole process.

Most encounters with her had to commence from scratch, if not further back. Mrs. Thatcher kept reverting to the Sudeten Germans in the 1930s in arguing that minorities had basically no rights. As such, we learned that in her internal consultations, she had even urged a consideration of repeating Cromwell's dispersal of the Irish to Connaught or to hell. By removing on that very precedent, the Catholics across the border from Northern Ireland altogether. FitzGerald persisted, however, exhibiting remarkable patience, courtesy and self-possession and heroic tenacity.

(1.00: 33):

We learned that she regularly booked at the whole business, particularly after private consultations with her friends and mentors, notably Enoch Powell I think, and even sometimes with Charles who's sitting over here – wise man – a review of the negotiations at a whole as a whole, however, including David Goodall's reflections, he kept a fascinating and detailed journal disclose a complex and somewhat bizarre political personality, especially when it came to Ireland. Her instincts were viscerally unionist. She instinctively disliked Irish nationalism and her reflections even in private frequently were delivered in jingoistic terms as though to the front page of the Sun newspaper. Nevertheless, while often pretending to misunderstand him, she gradually took FitzGerald's arguments to heart and, however reluctantly, signed an agreement which gave to the much disliked foreign state of which he was the political leader for the first time since 1922, a treaty-based right to have a crucial role and a physical presence at the heart of the processes of government of Northern Ireland.

(1.01:52):

His achievement in an almost Sisyphean marathon of diplomatic persuasion would be hard to match. I can think of no equal for it. I think that his wise wife Joan gave a much insightful counsel and I know that his deputy prime minister, the Tánaiste Dick Spring was the crucial and unfailing influential realist on the Irish team, never hesitating to question or encourage.

All I can say as someone who was sometimes close to despondency and despair – as I think most negotiators of anything worthwhile have been during important negotiations – but as often happened in our cases anyway, we were blessed to have to deal with wonderful officials and civil servants. And I think also in Mrs. Thatcher, you might not have expected an Irishman to say this, but I've said it [audience laughter]. Thank you. [Applause]

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.03:20):

Thank you, Michael, and thank you to all the panel for that really terrific honest evaluation of the wider context and the specifics of how the agreement came together. I'm going to offer the panellists the chance to just come back, comment on what they've heard before we open it up to wider questions. Would anybody like to dive in?

Okay, everyone is comfortable with their stance in that case, let me turn it over to the audience and take questions, reflections in your own right. Yes,

Audience question

(1.04:06):

Tony Craig, Staffordshire University. I looked at the early troubles and the Irish diplomatic response to the beginning of the Troubles and comparing that with 1985. And I remember interviewing Eamon Gallagher, Department of Foreign Affairs, and he talked about Irish policy – not policy, but strategy of shifting the alliances and basically bringing Britain into chime with Irish policy-makers and isolating the Unionists. Now they did that in the early 1970s, by [word indistinct] going Washington, going to the UN, Ottawa and so on, and trying basically to blackguard the British behind their backs and it failed, failed miserably. Was there an attitude in Ireland of “let's make friends with the British in order to isolate the Unionists” or was that just the unintended consequence of the Anglo-Irish Agreement?

Seán Donlon

(1.05:21:14):

No, there was certainly no attempt to isolate Unionists, but you must remember – in the Republic we had no knowledge in detail of what was happening in the Unionist community. We had no contacts. I mean the first contact with between officials and members of the Unionist Party, leaders of the Unionist party was in 1972, 1973. Now, there had been the O'Neill-Lemass meetings in the sixties. That was in a sense narrowly focused on economic cooperation and as far as it went, it worked. But it didn't lead to any great political dialogue. It took us in the Department of Foreign Affairs, we literally didn't have a phone number for a Unionist. I remember having to phone people in RTE to get phone numbers of people in Northern Ireland and then we would cold call them. And in all cases, with one exception – it was Ian Paisley – in all cases a cold call to a Unionist would lead to a meeting and a cup of coffee and sometimes much more.

(1.06:36):

I tried for about three years to reach Ian Paisley. And I would phone his office either in Belfast or in London regularly, and the answer was always no until he heard I was leaving. And then I made a call to him and said, “well, yes, I'm leaving going abroad”. And he said, “if you want to book yourself on a flight from Belfast to London, Heathrow, I'll be in seat 1A”. And he gave me the flight number and he said, just ask them to put you in seat 1B. Now, we had a very pleasant conversation, but nothing emerged from it, and it wasn't particularly a political conversation. He was in fact extremely funny and adamant at whatever hour of the morning it was, I should have some of the devil's buttermilk. And I had to explain to him, no, I did drink in the morning, but we had no contact really with Unionists.

And that leads me to make a point, if anyone here has any influence with the Unionist community, it's an awful pity that some structure can't be found, that we would have Unionist representation in the Republic in Dublin to parallel the representation that we now have in Belfast and in Armagh. It only struck me the other night, a number of us were at a conference in Queens University in Belfast and it ended with a dinner in the residents of the Irish representative, a purpose-built embassy.

(1.08:13):

And it's working in the sense that people come for dinner, come for meetings, come for coffee, come for whatever. It's an awful pity that the British embassy in Dublin wouldn't have almost a separate section for the Unionists so that they would have the opportunity that we had fifty years ago to get to know, not just to get to know the individuals, but to get to know what makes things happen. Anyway, leave it at that. Thank you.

Audience question

(1.08: 51):

Hello. Thank you all so much for speaking. My name is Katie Karin [phonetic spelling] and I'm a Cambridge student and for many of us here we are students and we're very interested in these topics potentially as future careers or areas of study going into academia. And your perspectives have been so wonderful today and I'd love to just hear your advice for the young people in the room who are interested in working on these issues further in the future of any suggestions, looking ahead through the years.

Dick Spring

(1.09:25):

Don't stand for election [loud audience laughter].

No, I think it's very important that young people get involved and it's probably one of the real challenges now because of the effect that social media is having on public life. And I think there's a huge challenge. I was speaking to a journalist who most of you know, Mark Hennessy in Belfast on Tuesday, and he was actually mentioning that we might be entering into the post-journalist era because of social media and the fact that the newspapers are all more or less online now, and you don't have that same old reliability. But I think it's very important for young people and to understand, as I said earlier on in my remarks, Ireland and Northern Ireland and indeed here in the UK during the seventies and eighties were extremely grim and threatening. And there was a prospect of the IRA actually succeeding, and this is one of the real dilemmas about the IRA and their campaigns. And in fairness, 90 per cent of the people in the Republic had wanted nothing to do with the IRA ever. But the actual pressure, the hunger strikes, the black flags and all that put enormous pressure on all society in the south. But I think it is important, despite the question marks that are there around politics today, I think it's extremely important for young people one to be well-informed if that's possible, and secondly, to get involved in the running of their administrations.

Audience question

(1.10: 56):

Thank yes, David [surname indistinct] from the law faculty here in Cambridge. I mean, I have a question rather similar to the gentleman there about the pathway from the Sunningdale Agreement, and I'm surprised that you are saying that Ireland had no involvement in those negotiations at all, even on the sidelines, even on the fringes, and I'd be interested in whether that's true. But things moved, although that you could go back decades into various permutations of this, but from a Northern Ireland focus and that sort of failing in Sunningdale, to an intergovernmental focus from 1980, which became the Anglo Irish Agreement and then back to the Northern Ireland focus in the 1990s. I mean, could you explore how that happened? I mean, was it just that Sunningdale had closed any potential for a Northern Ireland focus and so things moved or did it just simply operate on twin tracks and so they just said?

Seán Donlon

(1.11:27:59):

No. There had been quite a number of both formal and informal attempts within Northern Ireland itself involving various Secretaries of State. I mean very, very honest attempts were being made.

One of the reasons for the structures used in the 1985 agreement was, we had certainly concluded, and I believe the British side had concluded, there is no prospect currently of reaching an agreement between the parties in Northern Ireland. And in fact, one of the motivations we then had was to devise some sort of an agreement which would be non-boycottable because we knew from the beginning that the agreement, whatever it was, was bound to be opposed – probably by both sides. And that turned out to be the case, but I don't think the British side ever stopped, nor did we from Dublin. … we never stopped looking out for possibilities and opportunities because by now, in the post Sunningdale period, both sides, Britain and Ireland were well briefed on what was happening as at least one former Northern Ireland Office person here knows.

I mean the extent to which we were informed in my view was impressive. And I mean some of you would see it on papers when papers are open, and indeed as most of the papers of that period are, you will see extraordinary detailed reports on both sides by people from the British system and people from the Irish system. But we had just come to a view there is no possibility of agreement situation is desperate as the Tánaiste has said, we've got to do something.

Lord Powell

(1.15:29:53):

Perhaps I could just add to that I entirely agree with what was said, wise answer, but you also have to think about the issue in a wider context. If you think about what else was going on both in Britain and the world at that time, every government has a limit to its attention span and it would not really have been realistic after the collapse of Sunningdale to expect things to move for quite a few years, because we were going through a very difficult transition in Britain itself. Then with the new government, which was reforming everything in sight, move further forward, there was a change in our position in Europe, the decision, the focus on getting our money back, on which I have to say as a slave for Margaret Thatcher, I spent about ten times more than I ever spent on Northern Ireland. And then there was the changes going on in the Soviet Union, the rise of Gorbachev and so on. And within that there's broader, bigger issues, Ireland was a very specialist subject, if I may put it like that within the British system. And the chances of really addressing it seriously more than once a decade were quite small. And in a way it was probably almost valuable that was the case, because it gave people time to draw breath, time to think things through, time to see it through other ways, or sometimes it was just events that made it absolutely essential to address the Irish question. But you've got to remember that context,

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.15:33):

Margaret.

Professor Margaret O’Callaghan

(1.15:34): So it's just a small response to what Lord Powell has just said. I'm just thinking about the fact that if you look at Western Europe in that period, and if you look at the scale of the deaths, the dislocation in Northern Ireland, on one level it seems legitimate to say, “oh, it was a very small part of the business of government”. But if you actually consider the United Kingdom as a whole, what was going on in Northern Ireland was a very significant, serious and long drawn-out conflict. Did you me think it was a particular kind of partitioning from a British point of view, of screening themselves in that period, from the scale of what was actually happening in Northern Ireland?

Lord Powell

(1.16:27):

Well, so far as I understand that, no, I don't think I do agree. I think sadly one would had become used to the constant terrorism of the IRA, which was doing the other things. We knew what needed to be done to deal with it, and it required the active participation and cooperation of the Republic and we weren't going to get it.

Professor Margaret O’Callaghan

(1.16:49):

But that's, that's assuming that's all that was going on in Northern Ireland was terrorism.

Lord Powell

(1.1654):

Of course it wasn't. We were subsidising shipyards and all sorts of other things, but basically that was as far as the British public was concerned, Northern Ireland was terrorism.

Professor Margaret O’Callaghan

I accept that, yes.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.17:07):

I have lots of hands that I've seen and I'm going to take three questions perhaps together, so I have in the front row and behind and then behind again. So all on this side. Thank you.

Professor Stephen Kelly

(1.17:16):

Thanks. Hello again, Steve Kelly, just an observation on the question. I was struck, Michael, about David Goodall’s response to the Good Friday Agreement making a reference to the provisional IRA’s role. Margaret Thatcher supported the Good Friday agreement, but she was absolutely outraged when Patrick McGee, the IRA bomber from Brighton was let out and determined it's good for our agreement. So that's another example of Thatcher, how she had to struggle personally with what happened, but she understood it was part of the process. I'm also interested in the dynamics and the background of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement [words indistinct] … there was initially a conversation around potentially amending Articles Two and Three, if – if I'm correct – the British were able to agree to joint authority. Did that go?

Michael Lillis

(1.18:02):

I didn't understand the last phrase, if you don't mind repeating it.

Professor Stephen Kelly

(1.18:05):

So yes, the Irish governments had initially proposed yourself, potentially amending articles two and three constitution, [Michael Lillis: Yes, that’s right] and I think that the belief was the offer on the table was if the British would give joint authority. Is that true or when was that nicked in the bullet? When did that conversation end about the Articles Two and Three being amended?

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.18:25):

We're going to take two more questions first, so we've got the constitutional change question. Thank you

Professor Jennifer Todd

Speaker 2 (1.18:31):

Jennifer Todd from UCD, and I just want to ask all of you, how far or when were you conscious of the wider British-Irish, Anglo-Irish history, some of the issues that Alvin [Professor Alvin Jackson] was talking about earlier? How far did you kind of put this in that context? And we've heard that David Goodall perhaps sometimes did, when, or did you ever, think of it in those terms?

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.19:02):

Thank you, Jennifer. And then behind, thank you.

Noël Dorr

(1.19:07):

I hesitate to speak again. I realise I've spoken already, but I'm tempted by questions here about the sequence of events, the relationship between the Agreement at Sunningdale and Anglo-Irish Agreement. So if you bear with me for minute, I will try to keep to a minute (1.19:28):

A quick survey from the late sixties when both the British and Irish governments were completely taken aback by what was happening, the Irish government blamed the British government for partition. That was the only reason for it all. And the British government told the Irish government in terms, when Hillary visited Lord Chalfont in the Foreign Office, that was none of your business. You were a friendly country, but you no business in this Lynch as Prime Minister, as Taoiseach, had to rid himself of an extreme element in his government. I won't go into all that. Eamon Gallagher's name was mentioned. I worked with him Gallagher, as Seán did also. He was a hardliner on Irish unity, but he persuaded Lynch to follow a policy, or he offered Lynch a policy – he was a middle level official who inserted himself, so to speak, in the process – a policy [words indistinct] ?set to stress power-sharing in Northern Ireland and the Irish dimension built into Northern Ireland, not extraneous but built in. He went too far perhaps in ?public [words indistinct] identification. So Lynch moved away, but those two ideas carried through after the atrocity in Belfast on the 13th of January, 1972 and Lynch reassessed policy. And by …

Seán Donlon

(1.21:09):

Derry, no, you mean in Derry, not Belfast.

Noël Dorr

(1.21:10):

In Derry, excuse me.

And he reassesses policy in March 1972 that led to a Green Paper and a White Paper, which eventually were the basis for Sunningdale. And Sunningdale, the structure which Heath facilitated, was to be north-south. And Heath at Sunningdale was a benevolent chair trying to bring Norths and South together. (00:37:45):

Sunningdale failed. Heath, afterwards, I had him to lunch in the Embassy, I was at lunch in his house in Salisbury. He was very disappointed because he thought he had made a great achievement.

In I think May 1984, Chris Patten, as far as I know a junior minister at the Northern Ireland Office, did a round to try to promote power sharing with Unionists in the UK. So I think that was the sort of backdrop then to the decision of the two governments to call for a government level, which could not be brought down by Unionist opposition. And that is the structure of Good Friday … of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The Unionists subjected very strongly to that, as we know, Sinn Féin also, and the IRA, although both were moved in general ways towards something further, which became the Good Friday Agreement, which brought all the strands together for the first time, ended violence but still left an agenda.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.22:55):

Thank you for that reflection. Okay, so we have some observations and some questions panellists, Lord Powell.

Lord Powell

(1.23:01):

Well, just on the question of when did the British wake up to possibilities of constitutional change? I think you were asking, I think it's very definitely after the 1983 election, and you shouldn't underestimate the psychological effect of that. I mean Margaret Thatcher had had three very, very difficult years. She was not expected to win the 1983 election at the time it was first envisaged and she might've been one of the shortest serving prime ministers ever in our history. But then along comes the Falklands conflict, victory in the Falklands – enormous psychological impact. Her other policies were taking off privatisation, sale of council houses and all this.

So by 1983 she was feeling very confident, looking around more what should she do next, what other issues could be brought up? And it was then that Northern Ireland was brought back onto the agenda, as I have said in my remarks. And Robert Armstrong, deserves a lot of credit for that as in charge of defining government policy. He persuaded her to start to discuss it. And it was only then that really, I think, the enthusiasm for seeking some sort of agreement about Northern Ireland was reignited. And it rather goes back to what I was saying, you can't really expect that sort of thing to happen more than once a decade or so (1.24:30) because there are so many other issues that crowd things out, not just Northern Ireland. I mean there's so many other things too – policies and legislation which has dropped because it doesn't seem to have a future. So that would be my answer – there was really nothing in her mind anyway between the 79 and 83. It was only after 83 that she began to get interested.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.24:53):

Thank you. The questions on historical thinking and on constitutional change. Michael -

Michael Lillis

(1.24:58):

To Stephen Kelly's question, which I think you addressed to me unfortunately. Here's what I remember and I hope it's not inaccurate.

The opening discussion, which was with David Goodall, involved a sort of equation. And the equation - one side of the equation, certainly so far as the British were concerned was to do with security cooperation and also with removing, or restating … adjusting Articles Two and Three of our Constitution insofar as they were seen as making a claim on the territory of Northern Ireland.

And our set of ambitions which were never in carved in stone, and they did occasionally move forwards and backwards – depending partly on the negotiation and partly on the learning process I would say as you went along – but our ambition could be defined as something like joint authority, which had originally could have been seen as joint sovereignty. And we had hoped that a version of that could actually be negotiated.

Now, a particular circumstance arose. When Douglas Hurd was appointed Secretary of State and he got into the negotiation, he felt - feeling it was his remit and his field – and he didn't like the way things were going. And in the internal discussions on the British side, he fairly consistently, and this is actually described very vividly in David Goodall's book, he sort of said “you know, they won't be able to do it”, meaning the south. And it was an argument which you can't immediately dismiss, because it was a very challenging business to take on. (1.25:18):

And then his next argument was right, “the south is not going to be able to do this, so we are not going to give them anything like the concessions that they think they are entitled to”. And then as the negotiation went on, the pressure from that argument on the British side, which was a bit irritating to us because here's Douglas Hurd and his colleagues, our English friends, telling us that they know more about our politics than we do. So leaving aside the irritation, which you have to do when you're dealing with the British [audience laughter], there was considerable uncertainty, and I hope I'm right in saying this Tánaiste as I still call him, about whether it's reliable or safe for us to go forward. And it became a bit of a mess and we ended up – this is my own honest opinion – we ended up with something which wasn't very far from joint authority. In other words, there was an obligation on the British to consult us about everything in Northern Ireland except foreign policy and external defence. That was the deal. (1.28:49): And that was our team, which tiny as it was – you know, four or five of us – but we were working around the clock on all of these issues, hundreds and hundreds of issues, a place which became known as the Bunker by the way, in Belfast and trying to negotiate as much as we could on all these issues.

I don't know of a single instance of a conflict on earth where that sort of a structure had actually been attempted with the kind of mechanisms which were envisaged. And so where we ended up, and in a way I'm slightly disappointed, maybe more than slightly, that our own ministers felt, “well, the British are not asking us now any longer to change the Constitution, so let's not do it”. And I can tell you that there were some people in particular, I think the Taoiseach really wanted (1.29:54) to test the will of the Irish people to acknowledge the reality, which was all it was of our constitutional position.

But I think that I'm doing my best to be very candid here. I think that was the way it actually developed. And that's where we ended up. We ended up with an agreement which from the point of view of addressing the issues every day within the remit of the government of Northern Ireland on the basis of consultation, but which in practise meant they accepted an obligation to consult with us.

And they did. It took about three months to get going, but it did happen and we got something, you can call it consultation or as the catechism, which Seán referred to, said consultation, but more than consultation. That was the reality.

Dick Spring

(1.29:49):

I think that an aspect here is, when you think through the sixties in particular, fifties, sixties, it was always said that the Unionists had a problem with the Republic because we were a Catholic-dominated state, special position of the Catholic church, Articles Two and Three. If you had tried to change Articles Two and Three in 1985, you probably would've brought down the government. Ireland’s body politic wasn't ready for that change, which was seen as a fundamental change. But as I said earlier in my remarks, timing is amazing and God only knows in 20 years time what the structures will be and what people would be able to deal with, which they couldn't have dealt with 20 years ago. And at that time, I think certainly we would've been very challenged. I don't think that the Irish population were ready for it. I don't think the body politic would've been ready for it. (1.31:36).

And we were always also in the debate trying to bring on, “yes, we can look at Articles Two and Three, but there has to be a very big prize at the other side of the divide”. And that wasn't forthcoming either. But again, time and timing and the next generation of politicians may find some way. I would just really love if some Unionists would pick up the phone and say, can we have a chat? Can we talk about where this island is going? Can we improve economically? Can we make it better for the next generation? And unfortunately that's not happening, which is very sad.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.32:11):

Just to follow up on the kind of historical consciousness, your own sense of history and how it was infusing your participation, any reflections from any panellists?

Dick Spring

(1.32:21):

My sense of history is rather complicated. Patrick Mayhew was on the British side and I was on the Irish side, and Patrick Mayhew said to me one day, he said, “Just think Dick” – I couldn't do his accent – but he said “if the Roaches had stayed in Cork and if the Springs had stayed in Lavenham, we'd be on the opposite side of the table”. [Audience laughter] Our history is so caught up and with the number of Irish people in Britain, the number of … I think we now have a hundred thousand English, British citizens living in Ireland, in the Republic. And with, you know, relationships have been - at one level, they're great, whether it's in sporting or whatever. Culturally, there's great cultural cooperation and I just wish it's come a long way in my lifetime and I just hope that we can finish the journey. And that's not talking about a United Ireland, it's about the relationship between the communities on the island of Ireland working together in a normal human way. Basically.

Professor Lucy Delap

We have two questions here and then there are three questions – one, two, three.

David Hill, former Northern Ireland Office official

(1.33:25):

Just to add a little bit more context to some of this discussion. You have got to remember that at the time of the signing of the Anglo-Irish agreement, there was in existence in Northern Ireland a Northern Ireland assembly, it had 78 seats. The SDLP had 14 of them, Sinn Féin won five of them. And this been set up by Jim Prior on the basis it was consultative, but had the potential to take on powers, if sufficient cross party cross community [?agreement – word indistinct due to background noise] be reached. Now Sinn Féin was never going to participate in a partitionist assembly anyway. The SDLP refused to participate because there was no Irish dimension. (1.34:13):

And at least part of the thinking, I'm sure, on the British side during the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish agreement, was that if we can find an Irish dimension, maybe that will be enough to get the SDLP to participate in the assembly and then we can have some discussions about the way forward. And another, I think quite important part of the Agreement is that includes a commitment, if you like, that if powers were devolved within Northern Ireland, they would cease to be within the purview of the conference. So it was giving the Unionists an incentive to reach an agreement with people like the SDLP or whatever within the Assembly. [Professor Lucy Delap “That’s true”]

Now, none of that came to pass because of the nature and scale of the Unionist reaction to the agreement. But it is just important to bear in mind there are all these other things going on. And if I have the temerity just to reference Irish politics, I mean I'm pretty confident that Garret FitzGerald and Dick Spring, others in that coalition government, would've supported that kind of engagement amongst the political parties in Northern Ireland, even within the context of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. But just unfortunately, by the time it bedded in, we had Charles Haughey’s third administration came in and they used the Anglo-Irish Agreement as Michael will remember in quite an aggressive way, raising all kinds of security issues and so on that were bound to carry on irritating the whole Unionist community. So that rather actually changed the nature I think, of the way we operated or the way the Anglo-Irish Agreement came to be operated. So these wider contexts are all relevant to how it worked out in practise.

Professor Lucy Delap

Thank you. Really appreciate the observations here from everyone in the audience. Eugenio, thank

Professor Eugenio Biagini

(1.36:13)

Thank you. But this is actually a question for Lord Powell, which I am sure Seán Donlon may wish to intervene. We have heard from both of your divergent accounts on the influence of United States on Margaret Thatcher and particularly the existence of these letters. And I was wondering whether there is a way to reconcile to different perceptions. For example, did she say at any stage that she was not going to take any notice or what she had written to Reagan irrespective of any other consequence? Are there other explanations inside these two different accounts?

Professor Lucy Delap

Thank you. And then the question behind, thank you.

Unidentified audience member

(1.36:58):

[Too indistinct to understand – more a brief comment than a question]

Professor Lucy Delap

Thank you.

Lord Powell

(1.37:32):

Well, on the President Reagan issue over the eight years during which he was President, he had many meetings with Margaret Thatcher. He spoke to her many times on the telephone, they exchanged letters many times. I was present for all of the meetings. I was on the telephone for all the telephone calls and I was the recipient of copies of the letters to which I was usually asked to draft the replies. And there was no instance over that period in which he put any pressure whatsoever on her to do anything particular about Northern Ireland. There was really nothing of that sort. She went to see Tip O'Neill when she was visiting Washington. I guess it must have been in 1985, I would think. I do remember the meeting, because I went with her. And the two of us were shown into this very large congressional office. There was no one in it. (1.38:33):

So we sort of looked at each other wondering what to do next? This was followed by the sound of a toilet flushing very loudly, and Tip O'Neill emerged from it, hitching up his braces. A very amiable conversation ensued. Now, of course, he said things which President Reagan never said to her, and of course in Congress were views of that sort. But as far as she was concerned, the American government was headed by the President and it was his views which counted and she never felt under any pressure from him to do anything about Northern Ireland. People who felt perhaps pressure from America most were the British Embassy in Washington who were constantly bugging us with views about what should be done, which led her to say, “that just confirms my view of the British Foreign Service: they always represent the views of foreigners” [audience laughter].

Professor Lucy Delap

Yes.

Unidentified audience member

(1.37:31):

I'm a civilian in this, but I'm a friend of Ireland and many Irish people, and I was much affected by visiting militarised Belfast during the Troubles. Thanks to this Agreement, and the other agreements, the guns have been quite mostly this century. The South is socially liberal, booming, they say. They say the North is now socially conservative and more depressed. It's all changed and the north is still very segregated, especially in schooling. I would like to know whether this distinguished panel believes that the current situation can hold or is it just a bookmark in the Troubles or has it been dealt with completely? Where are we going in the future?

Dick Spring

(1.38:14):

That's the key question really. I mean, it is on hold at the present time. And for my money's worth, as long as the guns are silent, you have some prospect of making progress. And it may be hopefully this generation of politicians, I mean they are elected politicians in Northern Ireland. They have to start working together. They have to make Northern Ireland work. Now, you mentioned that Northern Ireland is depressed. Belfast is actually booming at the moment. They can't keep up with the construction. We can't get enough cement in Ireland for all the buildings we want to build, but I think let us hope that this does not go backwards. And my own instinct is it's not going to go backwards. And the more that the younger generation get the feeling for it, they want to preserve it. And I think they'll be convincing their politicians that we want peace on the island of Ireland. And the other things can follow, in my view.

Lord Powell

(1.40:10):

I think one has to recognise that the state of Northern Ireland reflects the state of the British economy as a whole. I mean, we are in a deep hole at the moment and Northern Ireland can't escape that. Now, if we were growing at two or 3 per cent in the UK, then Northern Ireland would be a very different place too. But sadly, that's not the case. And obviously we respect the way in which the Republic has succeeded in growing and so on, particularly with the help it's received from the United States. I only hope for Ireland's sake that will continue despite the views of the new president.

Unidentified speaker

(1.41:49):

He might not be around too long more.

Professor Lucy Delap

I'll jump in with the question if I may, which is we've talked a little bit about the Constitution and the pressures and obstacles to constitutional change in the South. I wondered if Britain's lack of a written constitution, did that represent a kind of a helpful form of flexibility that many solutions could be envisaged or was it a hindrance in sort of having less bargaining chips on the table, if you like. Lord Powell?

Lord Powell

(1.42:21)

Well, I don't think anyone in Britain is proposing seriously that we should have a written constitution. I don't think they'd get much support if they did. Was it a factor in dealing with these negotiations? No, I don't think it was. No, it wouldn't have made much difference if we had had a written constitution. But it was just so far from one's imagination that it doesn't seem a realistic question.

Seán Donlon

(1.42:47)

And speaking as a negotiator, I always wish we'd had no constitution [audience laughter]. Anytime we got into difficulties with the other side. I mean Robert Armstrong frequently said, “oh, I'm afraid our Constitution wouldn't allow that”. We could never say anything about that.

Dick Spring

(1.43:07)

And in fairness, there were aspects of our constitution, which we were being beaten up with by the Unionist population. And in the fifties and sixties, the electorate in the South would not have considered changing the Constitution, but a much more mature electorate, if I may say, in the eighties and nineties, were able to face up to those.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.43:29)

Any other thoughts? Yes.

Unidentified audience member

(1.43:33)

Ben [surname indistinct] … historian at Cambridge. Regarding the Irish Constitution. Did you feel then that the fact that you had a written constitution significantly delayed the timing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement or was was that an issue that was overcome without significant loss of time?

Michael Lillis

(1.43:52)

Well, the problem is we have a written constitution and we're going to have a written constitution. I mean, I don't think there's the slightest prospect of our not having, I mean … I kind of appreciate what Seán Donlon has said there. Certainly if we didn't have a written constitution, some things would be an awful lot easier, but there's literally no prospect of that, even imaginable.

Professor Margaret O’Callaghan

(1.44:17)

The key point being that it can only be changed by referendum.

Michael Lillis

(1.44:22):

Yeah, exactly. And that's not going to happen

Professor Margaret O’Callaghan

The Constitution is not the problem, it is the difficulty of changing it.

Michael Lillis

(1.44:29)

I suppose we should say as well, the Constitution does in many ways offer protections in difficult circumstances to individuals. And that's happened frequently, and it's something I would say we're proud of. But God knows you still have the disadvantages of having a constitution. In our case, considerable.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.44:55)

And of course, the Unionist community may feel that they lacked that same kind of protection with the absence of a written constitution.

David Hill, former Northern Ireland Office official

(1.45:03)

There is the Northern Ireland Constitution Act.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.45:05)

Okay, I stand corrected. Yes. Professor Jackson.

Professor Alvin Jackson

(1.45:12)

Can I ask those who worked with Dr. FitzGerald about his family connections? So he's unusual amongst Irish Taoiseachs in that he has actually Northern Presbyterian family. His mother converts to Catholicism, but she's a Presbyterian Republican. I'm just wondering in terms of your close working relationship with him and friendship with him over many years, whether that mattered?

Michael Lillis

(1.45:41) I think it mattered enormously to him. Would you agree?

Dick Spring

(1.45:45) Absolutely.

Michael Lillis

Unfortunately, sometimes it didn't help. The dramatic example comes from an area of which this former Tánaiste was an important star, and that's the game of rugby. We were pushing for the idea of having mixed courts between the two juridical systems on the island. And Margaret Thatcher was open to consideration and even saw some benefit in it from her own point of view, particularly, let's be frank about this, as a means of confronting terrorism because she went on and on about the border being used by gunmen, et cetera, et cetera. To her, which, well … I don't want to go into that. I have a lot to say about it by the way, but I'm not going to bore you with it. She was … at a certain stage, there was a match in what was then Lansdowne Road now called the Aviva or International Rugby Stadium. I think it was probably Ireland versus England. I'm not certain. I think it was. And anyway, the chief justice from Northern Ireland, Lord Lowry, who is, a not distant, but not an immediate relative of Garret FitzGerald, attended this game with Garret and his son Mark. And there was a conversation at which Garret had, I think possibly over-assumed that Lowry was open to this thing. Lowry reacted very strongly and wrote immediately to Mrs. Thatcher that he and his fellow judges on the Northern Ireland court would immediately resign if this idea were promulgated through some kind of agreement. Shortly afterwards, I should add the other judges on the appeals court, I think it was in Northern Ireland, wrote to clarify the position and said that that was not necessarily their position. But it's an example of where Garret’s own Presbyterian cousin set-up didn't actually help.

Dick Spring

(1.48:29)

Well, two aspects of it. One, Garret felt very strongly that his family connection with Northern Ireland was very important. And I think it actually gave him more of a sense of an all island … as opposed to something no connections in North. And I think he certainly underestimated … Lord Lowry not only came to Lansdowne Road, but he was a regular visitor to the horse show and to Millstreet almost every year. And I think Garret thought he would actually be quite supportive of anything we were trying to do. He was very, very disappointed and surprised by Lowry's reaction, which was quite vicious.

Lord Powell

(1.49:03)

Could I just toss in a word about Garret FitzGerald? I think it was you, Professor Jackson who said that she probably preferred Charlie Haughey. That's simply not the case.

Professor Alvin Jackson

No, no.

Lord Powell

(1.49:14)

Well, I don't want to misrepresent you, but it sounded like that. But she liked Garret FitzGerald very much. He drove her mad frequently – I think he probably drove all each other gentlemen here mad occasionally talking at great length, and so on. And there was a famous occasion when the two of them met after a European Council in Brussels, and I think, I can't remember which of you was there, maybe none of you, maybe it was the Cabinet Secretary and I was there and after they'd been talking for five minutes, Mrs. Thatcher went fast asleep. (1.49:47)

And Garret FitzGerald looked at me and said, “well, what do we do now?” And I said, “well, you go on talking, I will remember it. And when she comes around, we can brief her on where we've got to”. That’s exactly how it happened. After about ten minutes good snooze, she rejoined the conversation. And I was able to more or less summarise certainly much more briefly than Garrett Fitzgerald had done what he was saying [audience laughter]. But she just genuinely liked him. She was always rather suspicious of Mr. Haughey. He was very clever about sending her flowers and that sort of thing, but really she never trusted him. She always looked back to the gun running conviction he had going back way into the past and so on. I don't think they would ever have reached any Agreement.

Professor Alvin Jackson

(1.50:36)

No. What certainly I was suggesting earlier on this afternoon was that the warmth of the relationship between Garret or Gareth and Mrs. Thatcher [sic]. My point about Haughey was his personal political opportunism not withstanding, that he did some work in order to define at least the terms of the beginnings for a negotiation in 1980.

Michael Lillis

(1.51:05)

He did, yeah.

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.51:07)

Thank you. And a comment, yes

Noël Dorr

(1.51:11) On the courts issue, it was not just Lowry, but there was opposition from someone quite influential in the British ?system [word indistinct; Michael Lillis: “Hailsham, yeah”]. I called on Lord Hailsham in his office and discussed the issue with him. I found him a very interesting person. His father had been a prominent figure in the 1920s, I believe, and he had quite a deep feeling for Northern Ireland, really deep. It wasn't just an outsider, but he was strongly opposed. I tried to persuade him on the issue of the courts, and he was strongly opposed to it, and I would think that as well as Lowry, his influence was quite prominent.

Professor Alvin Jackson

(1.52:01)

Just actually as a postscript, since I am defending my honour here, I want to talk fruit juice, and I want to talk gooseberry juice in particular [audience laughter]. There is a reference in Jennifer Todd's witness testimony to a senior pair of … an Irish civil servant being offered gooseberry juice by Brian Faulkner. It may have been Dermot Nally, but it's in the record of the UCD Witness Seminar.

Seán Donlon

(1.53:35)

No, I'm aware of that. Yeah, I'm aware of that. But I would hate most Irish men in particular like to know that after their death, they will be remembered for how they had to drink … [audience laughter].

Professor Lucy Delap

(1.53:51) I think on that note, we might take away from this discussion how many versions of history there are, and it's been an absolute treat to be in the presence of a discussion that gives us so many different moments of reflection over this Agreement. So I'd like to just thank our speakers. Thank you [audience applause].