Irish Agreement

No one expected the Unionist community or its leaders to like the agreement, but attempts were made to allay the fears of trade unionists to the extent that words could do so. Both governments promised that Northern Ireland`s constitutional status could only be changed with the agreement of a majority of the population, and acknowledged that the current desire of a majority was not a change. On the other hand, no effort has been made to involve trade unionists in the negotiations. It was accepted that they strongly oppose any role in Northern Ireland for the Dublin government, regardless of how that role should be defined. The other articles express their support for the creation of an Anglo-Irish parliamentary committee that would withdraw from the lower house and lower house of the Irish parliament (D`il) and provide for a revision of the agreement after three years. To dramatize their assertion that the agreement is contrary to the democratic atmosphere of the province, the trade unionists, who held 15 of Northern Ireland`s 17 seats in the House of Commons, resigned as a group. There was some risk in this manoeuvre, since four of the Unionist seats are in nationalist zones. Trade unionists represent these districts only because the moderate SDLP and sinn Fein, more militant, have divided the nationalist voice. To avoid dividing their own vote, trade unionists have entered into an electoral pact that names only one of their votes in each constituency. The previous text contains only four articles; It is this short text that is the legal agreement, but it contains the latter agreement in its timetables. [7] Technically, this proposed agreement can be distinguished as a multi-party agreement, unlike the Belfast Agreement itself.

[7] The agreement was rejected by Republicans because it confirmed Northern Ireland`s status as part of the United Kingdom. The Provisional Republican Army of Ireland (IRA) continued its violent campaign and did not support the agreement. Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams condemned the agreement: «… formal recognition of the division of Ireland… [it`s] a disaster for the nationalist cause… [it] far outweighs Dublin`s impotent advisory role. [42] On the other hand, the IRA and Sinn Féin claimed that Britain`s concessions were the result of their armed campaign, which gave political recognition to the SDLP. [43] Brian Feeney of the SDLP proposed that the agreement expedite Sinn Féins` 1986 decision to abandon the abstention of the Republic`s Oireachtas. [44] The British House of Commons voted by a majority of 426 votes (473 in favour and 47 against, the largest majority of Thatcher`s mandate) in favour of a proposal to approve the agreement. The majority of the Conservative party voted in favour (although there were a few Unionist MPs in the party who opposed it), as did labour and the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Of Northern Ireland`s main parties, only the Social Democratic and Labour nationalist parties (SDLP) and the Inter-Community Alliance Party supported the agreement. The result of these referendums was a large majority in both parts of Ireland in favour of the agreement. In the Republic, 56% of the electorate voted, 94% of the vote voted in favour of the revision of the Constitution.

The turnout was 81% in Northern Ireland, with 71% of the vote for the agreement. The agreement represents a radical change in Prime Minister Thatcher`s position. During her first term, she placed the utmost importance on maintaining British sovereignty in Northern Ireland. In her first meeting with FitzGerald, after becoming Prime Minister in 1981, she noted that she considered the North «as British as Finchley» and was referring to her own constituency in the south of England. FitzGerald replied that Britain had not deployed thousands of troops to Finchley, nor had a secretary of state in the cabinet for Finchley`s affairs.