Writing Peace
Writing Peace is a new initiative of the Quill Project in Pembroke College and the Faculty of History at Oxford University which will bring together archives from across the political spectrum to create a rounded view of the context and detail of the peace talks in Northern Ireland from the late 1980s to early 2000s. Our unique visualization of the primary source material will allow users to better understand the context within which key decisions and compromises were made, the origins of particular phrases, and the developing roles of individuals and political parties. Online resource collections and cutting-edge analytical tools will celebrate the full constellation of peace makers involved and will help scholars and practitioners alike to learn lessons for the future.
The model at the heart of this project is constructed by taking official accounts and papers produced during the Peace Process and using them to create a ‘spine’ in the software platform around which the digital edition is constructed. Unofficial sources, private papers and correspondence, and later recollections are presented as a secondary layer of material around this core. It is hoped that links to relevant public briefings, oral history and media archives will also be added over time. This layering enables us to build multiple perspectives into the model even at an early stage when we are working primarily from a single archive, but it is also sufficiently flexible to allow us to expand the model as we gain access to new sources and additional archives through collaborations with other institutions and individuals.
At the outset, it was anticipated that more papers relating to the Peace Process would have been deposited with archives and even digitized, and so would be simply signposted from the Quill model. Instead, much of the first eighteen months of the project have been dedicated to document recovery and digitization. (All documents acquired and scanned during this process have been returned to Ireland to the care of local archives as acquisition of documents has never been the intention of this project.) As part of this preview of the project, we are making available the first two Writing Peace Resource Collections. Several other Collections are currently in production and we are actively seeking partners to broaden the range of material either hosted by or linked to from the site.
Publication of the first set of the digital models in the Writing Peace is anticipated in April 2023. These will focus on the history of Anglo-Irish agreements; the Brooke-Mayhew Talks; the Forum for Political Dialogue; and the work of the International Body on Arms Decommissioning. Additional work is underway on the Downing Street Declaration and the Multi-Party Talks under the chairmanship of Senator George J. Mitchell.
Negotiations
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Description: 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.
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Description: A selection of mini-models designed to provide an insight into the ongoing work of 'Writing Peace' and to demonstrate Quill's approach to visualising the archive material and tracking the process of negotiation. This collection is still under construction.
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Description: Talks under the Chairmanship of Senator George B. Mitchell. We have only just started this project.
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Description: Announced as part of the twin-tracks process. Produces the Mitchell Report.
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Description: The Forum for Political Dialogue met between 1996 and 1998 in Belfast as part of the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement.
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Description: Dublin Forum convened by the Government of the Republic of Ireland
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This collection of treaties, agreements, legislation, and joint statements relating to the status of Northern Ireland was commissioned by ARINS. It forms part of the Writing Peace project, a new initiative which will bring together archives from across the political spectrum to create a rounded view of the context and detail of the peace talks in Northern Ireland from the late 1980s to early 2000s. Online resource collections and cutting-edge analytical tools will celebrate the constellation of peace makers involved and help scholars and practitioners alike to learn lessons for the future.
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 leadership of the party during several phases of multi-party talks in the 1990s, to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement during his time as the first Speaker of the new Northern Ireland Assembly. It also includes a small section on the Sunningdale Conference, inherited from previous party leaders, as a testimony to the origins of the 1998 Agreement. The documents that can be viewed in this resource collection were used to model Brooke/Mayhew talks and span the period from 1985 to 1992. They are also contained in the John Alderdice Collection, which includes all the documents digitized by Quill.
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 leadership of the party during several phases of multi-party talks in the 1990s, to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement during his time as the first Speaker of the new Northern Ireland Assembly. It also includes a small section on the Sunningdale Conference, inherited from previous party leaders, as a testimony to the origins of the 1998 Agreement.
Monica McWilliams is Emeritus Professor in the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University, and has campaigned tirelessly for peace and human rights in both Northern Ireland and the wider world for more than four decades. As co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC), she was elected to the Multi-Party Talks in 1996 at a key juncture in the peace negotiations. The section of her archive digitized as part of this project focuses on the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement (1998-2003) and the process of implementation during Professor McWilliams's time as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (1998-2003).
At present this collection contains the drafts of the IICD Report. These transcriptions are being used to construct a model of how the text of the final text of the Mitchell Principles was agreed.