- Event type: CREATE_FROM
Northern Ireland Brooke/Mayhew Talks 1991-1992
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.
Office of the Strand 1 Chairman (British Government Delegation)
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.
To see the full record of a committee, click on the corresponding committee on the map below.
Session 13142: 1992-04-24 07:00:00
Invitations and letters are issued to the party delegations ahead of the new talks.
Document View:
Working Document: Political Talks Realities and Common Themes - Paragraph 16
POLITICAL TALKS: REALITIES AND COMMON THEMES
(a) Constitutional Status and Guarantee
16. There seems general support for the proposition that Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom; that there should be no change in that position without the consent of a majority of the people who live here; and that at present a majority of the people who live here do not wish for any change.
[Alliance Principle 1; SDLP para 20; DUP para 34; UUP paras 10-16.]
Decisions yet to be taken
- Working Document: Political Talks Realities and Common Themes - Paragraph 16 (introduced on 1992-04-24 07:00:00 - CREATE_FROM - e842555) [This document]
Document Timeline
- Working Document: Political Talks Realities and Common Themes - Paragraph 16 (introduced on 1992-04-24 07:00:00 - CREATE_FROM - e842555) [This document] [view current proposal at this moment]