Sir, – In his letter of November 23rd, Gerry Adams compares the Good Friday Agreement with the Sunningdale Communiqué of December 1973. It is indeed a better and more comprehensive agreement.
Although its implementation has been patchy at times, it brought peace to Northern Ireland; and it established a procedure for a possible future decision on its constitutional status.
He might, however, like to note the following points.
The text signed at Sunningdale was an “Agreed Communiqué”. It provided, for the first time ever, for a power-sharing devolved government in Northern Ireland and a Council of Ireland. The council would have consultative and executive functions and would be “confined to representatives of the two parts of Ireland, with appropriate safeguards for the British government’s financial and other interests”. Studies were to be undertaken on a range of functions for the council. There would then be a further full-scale conference “early in the New Year” at which a more formal agreement would be signed and registered as a treaty at the United Nations. Sadly, this never happened. So Sunningdale never had a real chance: it collapsed, brought down by a combination of unionist/loyalist opposition and continuing paramilitary violence.
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In his letter, Mr Adams says that paragraph four of Sunningdale defines “what the participants viewed as the majority. It upholds the unionist veto”. This is incorrect.
Paragraph four is actually a unilateral statement by Unionist leader Brian Faulkner. In it, as might be expected, he affirms the desire of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. Mr Adams may be thinking of paragraph five where the Irish Government “solemnly declared that there could be no change in the status of Northern Ireland until a majority of the people of Northern Ireland desired a change in that status”; and the British government solemnly declared that “if in the future the majority of the people of Northern Ireland should indicate a wish to become part of a united Ireland, the British government would support that wish”. Contrary to what Mr Adams says, there is no reference here or elsewhere in the communiqué to defining “the majority” or “the unionist veto”.
The principle of these declarations at Sunningdale – consent of a majority – is fundamentally the same as that in the Good Friday Agreement where all participants “recognise the legitimacy of whatever choice is freely exercised by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland with regard to its status”. The difference is that the Good Friday Agreement elaborates further: it sets out a procedure, which the Northern Ireland Secretary may invoke at his or her discretion, for concurrent referendums North and South to determine whether such consent actually exists.
It is true, as he says, that the short Sunningdale Communiqué contains no explicit reference to the word “equality”. But paragraph 11 envisages that the Council of Ireland is to consider how best to incorporate additional human rights protections, including the principles of the European Convention, in domestic legislation and new institutions in both parts of Ireland.
I fully agree that the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement is broader and more comprehensive. But Sunningdale was never given more than half a chance. Had it been, several thousand might not have died between 1973 and 1998. – Yours, etc,
NOEL DORR,
Clonskeagh,
Dublin 14.