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"Dublin is Just a Sunningdale Away?" : The SDLP, the Irish Government and the Sunningdale Agreement
Author(s)
Date Issued
2007
Date Available
2010-08-11T14:08:51Z
Abstract
This paper examines the roles played by the Irish government and more particularly
Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in both the making
and the breakdown of the 1973 Sunningdale agreement. It asks whether the combined
efforts of the SDLP and the Irish government pushed unionist negotiators too far at Sunningdale, producing a settlement which was predetermined towards Irish reunification, and so justified loyalist claims that 'Dublin is just a Sunningdale
Away'. The paper draws on recently released archival material to show how the SDLP was, to a significant degree, able to dictate Dublin's policy on Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, suggesting that this led to a uniform and highly ambitious agenda on the part of nationalist participants at the Sunningdale conference. However, it also demonstrates that this agenda was not realised, and that the deal made at Sunningdale was not, as many scholars have suggested, an unqualified success for the SDLP. Nonetheless, the paper maintains that the dynamic rhetoric and perceived momentum of Irish nationalism-orchestrated largely by the SDLP-served to distort that which was actually agreed, and in this undermined the prospects of broad unionist support for Sunningdale.
Sponsorship
Other funder
Other Sponsorship
Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Type of Material
Working Paper
Publisher
University College Dublin. Institute for British-Irish Studies
Series
IBIS Working Papers
82
Copyright (Published Version)
The author, 2007
Keywords
Subject – LCSH
Social Democratic and Labour Party (Northern Ireland)--Influence
Northern Ireland--Politics and government--1969-1994
Ireland--Relations--Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland--Relations--Ireland
Web versions
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
Conference Details
Paper presented at the conference “Assessing the Sunningdale Agreement”, Institute
for British-Irish Studies, University College, Dublin, 15 June 2006
ISSN
1649-0304
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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