Sunningdale : an agreement too soon?

This paper looks at the circumstances lying behind the Sunningdale agreement of 1973, and at the factors associated with its collapse. It argues that the agreement represented significant gains for the nationalist side, and that the unionist leadership was unable to persuade its supporters that it represented gains for them too. Since the most obvious immediate costs were borne by the unionist side, it was there that the brunt of the difficulties in implementing the agreement had to be borne. The agreement thus proved incapable of surviving in the long term: against a backdrop of continuing IRA violence, leaders of the pro-agreement unionist wing were vulnerable to pressure from the broader unionist community, resulting in the collapse of the power-sharing executive in May 1974 following the Ulster Workers’ Council strike.