Sunningdale Agreement

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The agreement of Sunningdale ( English Sunningdale Agreement , Irish Comhaontú Sunningdale ) was an attempt to Northern Ireland conflict ( the Troubles to end). The Agreement was signed on 9. December 1973 in Sunningdale , County Berkshire , United Kingdom closed. It stipulated that the Northern Irish Unionists should form the Northern Irish government together with the nationalist Irish . Strong opposition from the unionists, acts of violence by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and finally a general strike by unionist workers ( Ulster Workers' Council Strike ) led to the collapse of the agreement in May 1974.

prehistory

In August 1969, the British Army was deployed to end serious civil unrest in the Northern Irish cities of Belfast and Derry . In the following years there was further unrest as well as a steadily increasing number of shootings and bombings, for the majority of which the PIRA was responsible. In January 1972, British paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed demonstrators on Bloody Sunday . In March 1972 the British government overturned the Northern Irish government, which had hitherto been the only Unionist government, and assumed direct government responsibility for the province.

Content of the agreement

The agreement provided for the election of a Northern Ireland Assembly , a non-denominational and non-partisan government ( Northern Ireland Executive ) and the formation of the Council of Ireland .

Northern Ireland Assembly

On March 20, 1973, the British Government published a White Paper containing the following proposals:

  • Creation of a Northern Ireland Assembly with 78 seats, elected according to the system of transferable individual voting.
  • The UK government retains control of the regulatory and security authorities.
  • A Council of Ireland gives the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland a mutual say.

The Assembly was supposed to replace the dissolved Parliament of Northern Ireland. It was hoped, however, that the assembly would not be dominated by the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and accepted by the nationalists.

The law creating the Northern Ireland Assembly was passed on May 3, 1973; on June 28th there was the corresponding election. The Sunningdale Agreement was supported by the nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP), the UUP and the moderate unionist Alliance Party of Northern Ireland . Supporters won a clear majority of the seats, but a large minority in the UUP was against the agreement.

The supporters of the republic boycotted the elections and the PIRA continued its series of attacks.

Northern Ireland Executive

After the elections, negotiations began on an interdenominational multi-party government. The most controversial issues were the detention of anti-government officials , police work and questions about the Council of Ireland .

On November 21, an agreement was reached on a coalition of those in favor of the treaty. The members of the executive branch included former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Brian Faulkner as chief executive , SDLP chairman Gerry Fitt as deputy chief executive, John Hume (later Nobel Prize winner and chairman of the SDLP) as trade minister, and Alliance party chairman Oliver Napier as Minister of Justice and Chairman of the Office of Law Reform . At this point, however, the UUP was already deeply divided: its party executive committee only voted in favor of the agreement with a narrow majority of 132 to 105. Since the partition of Ireland, unionist politicians have been strictly against a separation of powers with the Catholic minority and the decision to relinquish precisely this power caused great upheaval in the UUP.

The Council of Ireland

The creation of a Council of Ireland was already provided for in the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, but was not implemented. The Unionists opposed "interference" by the Irish Free State in their area; the nationalists refused to recognize the de facto partition of Ireland. After an executive was agreed, British Prime Minister Edward Heath , Irish Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave and the three coalition parties negotiated the formation of the Council of Ireland . The talks ended with the agreement of a two-part council:

  • The Council of Ministers should consist of seven members of the coalition and seven ministers from the Irish government. He should perform executive and harmonizing tasks and take on an advisory role.
  • The Consultative Assembly should consist of up to 30 members from the Dáil Éireann and 30 members from the Northern Ireland Assembly. He should only have a monitoring and advisory role.

The tasks of the council should be limited to "tourism, nature conservation and animal health". On December 9, 1973, a communiqué containing the terms of the settlement was published, which later became known as the Sunningdale Agreement .

Reactions to the agreement

Unionist election campaign against the Sunningdale Agreement. Picture from an exhibition in Belfast 2010.

The Unionists saw the Council of Ireland as the influence of the Republic on Northern Ireland and a further step towards a unified Ireland. This was confirmed when SDLP councilor Hugh Logue publicly described the council in a speech at Trinity College in Dublin:

"The vehicle that would trundle unionists into a united Ireland"

- Hugh Logue

On December 10, the day after the agreement was announced, loyalist paramilitaries founded the Ulster Army Council , an amalgamation of various paramilitary groups, including the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

In January 1974 the UUP voted with a narrow majority against further participation in the Northern Ireland Assembly . Faulkner then resigned as party chairman. He was succeeded by the Sunningdale opponent Harry West .

In the elections for the British House of Commons in February 1974 , the unionists formed the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC), a coalition of anti-Sunningdale parties (including the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party and Democratic Unionist Party ). They put up a single, common candidate for each constituency. The Sunningdale supporters were divided among themselves and each put up their own candidates. The UUUC won eleven of the twelve Northern Ireland constituencies; Gerry Fitt was only able to defend his seat in the constituency of West Belfast . The UUUC then declared that this result was a democratic rejection of the Sunningdale Agreement and that every means would be used to ensure that it failed.

Unionists in favor of the agreement withdrew their approval of the agreement and asked the Republic of Ireland to amend Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution , according to which the entire island of Ireland is "national territory". These articles were not changed until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement .

Failure of the agreement

After an application that rejected a bipartisan government failed in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Ulster Workers' Council (UWC) called a general strike on May 15, 1974. Brian Faulkner stepped down as chief executive after two weeks of food shortages, riots, roadblocks and intimidation. The Sunningdale Agreement thus failed on May 28th.

The strike was successful because British law enforcement officials initially shied away from using force against the general strike. The unionists later vetoed the executive.

The general strike had the greatest effect on the electricity supply. The Ballylumford Power Station near Larne supplied electricity to Belfast and most of Northern Ireland. The workers were mostly Protestants and organized in the UWC. John Hume's plan to divide Northern Ireland's power grid and rely on the power supply of the Limavady power station , where mostly Catholics worked to keep the city of Derry and its surroundings on the grid and thus undermine the Unionist strike, was made by the British Northern Ireland Minister Merlyn Rees refused.

See also

Other contracts between Great Britain and Ireland:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ BBC report
  2. ↑ CAIN Web Service (English)