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WORK IN PROGRESS - IN THE FINAL STAGES OF EDITING A series of talks launched by Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for Northern in Ireland, which began in April 1991, and were carried on intermittently by Brooke and his successor, Patrick Mayhew, until November 1992.
Cite as: Ruth Murray, Annabel Harris, Sofia Panourgias, Ian McBride and Nicholas P. S. Cole, Northern Ireland Brooke/Mayhew Talks 1991-1992, Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, 2024).
Northern Ireland Brooke/Mayhew Talks 1991-1992
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226221410118558758124913Created on: 1991-04-30
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Dates of meetings created from source material, but records of discussions not currently available to us.
2292115752010316088254310Created on: 1991-04-30
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Meetings between the British Government, the UUP and the DUP. Dates of meetings created from source material, but records of discussions not currently available to us.
2393239157312112891919599643Created on: 1991-05-28
Dissolved on: 1991-05-29
Description: This Committee meets during the bilateral phase of the Talks. It appears to be a forerunner to the Business Committee, being comprised of the same membership and ceasing to function once the Business Committee is formally established at the first plenary on 17 June.
73114314144283
1231213381034144682334614Created on: 1990-03-02
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Dates of meetings created from source material, but records of discussions not currently available to us.
321191822125513769223114Created on: 1992-05-12
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Editor's Note: This sub-Committee was initially commissioned by the Plenary to discuss proposals for new political structures in Northern Ireland. By 26 May, the Talks have run into difficulty and the Business Committee sets a fresh agenda and terms of reference for the sub-Committee. It is asked to focus on the impasse in the Talks, and it is agreed that minutes will not be taken or papers circulated beyond the membership of the sub-Committee and the Party Leaders. As there appears to be continuity within the Committee rather than a complete reconstitution, we model the sessions from 27 May as being part of the same sub-Committee. Records for this later period are, however, more scarce since formal minutes were no longer produced.
261346201262497136287
1814519312Created on: 1990-02-26
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Dates of meetings created from source material, but records of discussions not currently available to us.
13332531393
194204481042841111813Created on: 1991-05-07
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Meetings between John Alderdice and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Brooke
Created on: 1991-05-07
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Meetings between John Hume and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Brooke
11
13827641
12234Created on: 1991-04-30
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: In order to adequately reflect the role of the Chairman and his staff in re-drafting documents and controlling the flow of information during bilateral negotiations, we are representing them as a separate committee. In contrast to other Quill negotiations, in these Talks much of the actual work of negotiation and making proposals took place in bilateral meetings between the Chairman and the party delegations. The minutes of these sessions have been preserved in the same format as the minutes of the plenary sessions, and the sessions are modelled from the minutes as separate Committees (British Government/Alliance Bilaterals, etc.). The Chairman would move between these meetings, reporting on the positions of the other delegations and trying to reach accommodation. It is beyond the scope of the current project to model all the internal government meetings which took place during the Talks (although documentation for at least some of them exists in the National Archives), but we can draw on evidence within the sources we are using to show that proposals and agendas for the bilaterals were agreed within the Government team. For example, in a particular round of meetings, the Chairman will open the meeting with a near-identical agenda and summary of the current position of the other parties. To adequately model the fact that the flow of ideas between the delegations was filtered by the Chairman in this way, we have set up a committee called the 'Office of the Chairman' to show the conclusions of each bilateral discussion passing through the Chairman's Office and being redrafted before being passed on to the next delegation.
2139631564518244117Created on: 1992-11-09
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Committee set up with representatives of the different delegations to work on a joint statement regarding the end of the Talks process.
111435415Created on: 1992-06-19
Dissolved on: N/A
Description: Sir Ninian Stephen was appointed as the independent Chairman of Strand 2 of the Brooke/Mayhew talks. Officially, he took over from the Secretary of State at this point in terms of chairing the talks, and consequently receiving and circulating documents. However, in practice, the Secretary of State and the British Government delegation continued to play a role in the chairing of the overall talks process, most notably insofar as they continued to conduct bilterals with all of the parties as the process ran into difficulties. We have therefore decided to create a separate committee for the Office of the Independent Chairman in order to show the two Chairs working in parallel. We have fewer internal documents for Sir Ninian's team since we do not have access to his archive.
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From the mid-1980s, John, now Lord, Alderdice, was intimately involved in the Irish peace process. His archive spans more than thirty years of negotiation and implementation, from his early days in the Alliance Party in the 1980s, through his...
From the mid-1980s, John, now Lord, Alderdice, was intimately involved in the Irish peace process. His archive spans more than thirty years of negotiation and implementation, from his early days in the Alliance Party in the 1980s, through his...
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