The Irish Embassy was full of talk about how far the two countries have come in 25 years, writes MARK HENNESSYin London
STANDING BESIDE the Tricolour in the Irish Embassy in London yesterday, former UK foreign secretary Lord Geoffrey Howe remembered a night in 10 Downing Street in early 1985, while Anglo-Irish Agreement negotiations were under way.
Sitting alone at a table that night, he drew “a little map”, with six lines linking Great Britain and Northern Ireland to indicate their closeness, but with just one each between the Republic and Northern Ireland and the Republic and Britain.
“Under that, I wrote ‘1985’. I then drew the same map with three struts in each place. Under that, I put ‘2085’. That was the pessimism that one was dealing with then every day. I could never have imagined that it would have worked out so well,” he said.
More than 40 of those involved in the negotiation of the agreement gathered in the embassy to celebrate the diplomatic achievement.
Signed in Hillsborough on November 15th, 1985, it gave the Republic a consultative role in Northern Ireland’s affairs, while the Irish government accepted that there would be no change in the North’s status without the agreement of a majority of its people.
Given the passage of time, the ranks of those who were then involved have thinned. Three civil servants involved in the Nally/Armstrong group – the core group who did so much of the work – have passed away, most recently Dermot Nally, former government secretary.
In the years after 1985, Mr Nally and Lord Robert Armstrong, then cabinet secretary in London, remained friends and kept in close touch. “I very much regret that he is not here with us today,” Lord Armstrong said.
Margaret Thatcher, prime minister at the time of the agreement, had been invited to attend the lunch but was unable to do so because of recent illness; while former Labour leader Dick Spring had to withdraw at the last minute because of urgent business in Dublin.
Former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, the agreement’s architect in the eyes of many, said: “It was a breakthrough, because it meant on the British side a recognition that we had a constructive role to play and that far from excluding us they were right to bring us in to get people to move along.
“Subsequent Irish governments followed up in a constructive way. The consistency of Irish policy throughout was remarkable. On the British side it has been increasingly the same. Watching David Cameron’s speech on Derry you can see how far they have come.”
The distance travelled in the years after 1985 was illustrated by former secretary general to the Department of the Taoiseach Paddy Teahon, who said it had once taken seven days to arrange a telephone call between a taoiseach and a British prime minister.
“There was a need once for Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair to meet quickly during one crisis [at about the time of the Belfast Agreement]. Three hours later Bertie was in Downing Street. That shows how much things changed,” he said.
Others who attended yesterday included former Department of Foreign Affairs secretary general and Irish ambassador to the UK Noel Dorr, and others who came after him to help produce the Belfast Agreement.
Former Department of Foreign Affairs official Michael Lillis manned the “bunker” in the Maryfield secretariat outside Belfast that was so hated by unionists, enduring armed guards and constant pressure as opposition led by Dr Ian Paisley intensified.
“I’m proud of it. I fundamentally give the credit to Garret FitzGerald who showed terrific courage and I give some credit to Thatcher who had to work against every nerve in her inherited set of strong opinions,” he said.
Later, photographers gathered the group for a photograph on the stairs. One was chided by former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Tom King as he tidied the jacket of Garret FitzGerald, calling him, as he did so, “this gentleman”.
“This gentleman,” said Mr King, “is Dr Garret FitzGerald.”