- Event type: CREATE
Northern Ireland Downing Street Joint Declaration (1993)
WORK IN PROGRESS - This project is still under development. It models a series of formal and informal negotiations which led to the publication, in December 1993, of a declaration issued jointly by the British and Irish Governments. The Joint Declaration was a critical policy document which paved the way for a ceasefire and the entry of Sinn Féin into formal talks. It also laid out a shared set of principles – including, crucially, self-determination for the people of Ireland subject to the consent of the people of Northern Ireland – which would come to underpin the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and provide a framework for its ratification.
Irish Government
This committee has been created to model internal Irish Government documents and meetings.
To see the full record of a committee, click on the corresponding committee on the map below.
Session 17815: 1993-09-07 12:00:00
[Exact time unknown] Reynolds sent a letter to Major.
Document View:
Letter from Albert Reynolds to John Major (7 September 1993)
Oifig an Taoisigh
Office of the Taoiseach
7 September, 1993.
The Right Honourable John Major, M. P.,
Prime Minister,
10 Downing Street.
PERSONAL AND SECRET
I have been giving serious thought during the holidays to the report I had on the Nally/Butler meeting on 4th August. There are one or two points I think I should emphasise to you personally before their next meeting takes place later this week.
First, I would like you to know beyond equivocation or doubt that the paper which the two sides have been discussing is a paper which we have worked on here long and hard. As I think has been mentioned at earlier meetings, the proposals have my own personal backing and inputs: and it has the backing so far as we can ascertain, through our intermediaries, of those who can produce peace – on their side at least.
Peace would be an achievement worth striving for: after 24 years of violence, it would be on a par with the achievement of any of our predecessors in this century – in fact, a truly historic breakthrough. There are risks, but peace is within our reach if we play our cards right. The principle of consent, on which you laid so much emphasis earlier is not an issue. The nationalist proponents now fully accept the idea, subject to the sort of framework we have now set out in the paper.
What we are all hoping to achieve is not necessarily Irish unity or anything in that area, within any limited timescale, but a period of stability, without violence or the threat of violence in which both sides can put past bitterness behind them and work out an agreement on their future rationally and equitably. Peace which could result from the present process could transform the current climate and make that outcome not only possible but probable, certainly over the medium-term.
I would therefore, ask you in all sincerity to continue to give the process your full and enthusiastic backing so that your people and mine can, together, to work on the paper so as in the end to produce this result, which I am sure the people of our two countries so devoutly wish for. I would hope that it would be possible for us to agree the terms of an understanding at our next meeting. Time is not on our side.
If the Arabs and Israelis can do it, why can't we?
{Signed A. R.}
Decisions yet to be taken
Document Timeline
- Letter from Albert Reynolds to John Major (7 September 1993) (introduced on 1993-09-07 12:00:00 - CREATE - e986503) [This document]
[view current proposal at this moment]
- None (introduced on 1993-09-07 12:00:00 - REPORT_PROPOSAL - e986504) [view current proposal at this moment]