Quill
  1. Overview: Northern Ireland Downing Street Joint Declaration (1993)
  2. Full Record: Northern Ireland Downing Street Joint Declaration (1993)
  3. Committee:Informal British-Irish Bilaterals
  4. Sunday, 12 September 1993, at 12:00

Northern Ireland Downing Street Joint Declaration (1993)

This project models the 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.

Informal British-Irish Bilaterals

This committee has been created to model bilateral contact between British and Irish government delegates which happened outside of the more formal structures set up for intergovernmental negotiation. These informal meetings were sometimes crucial to the development of the Joint Declaration.

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Session 17892: 1993-09-12 12:00:00

[Exact time and date unknown] Mansergh had two substantial discussions – one with Chilcot and another with Mayhew – in the margins of the British-Irish Association Conference in Cambridge. The conference took place between 10 and 12 September 1993. We do not know exactly when the meetings took place, so we have modelled them at the end of this period.

Membership (at session start):

David Blatherwick, John Chilcot, Dermot Nally, Quentin Thomas, Seán Ó hUiginn (5 total)

Representing 2 delegations:

British Government , Irish Government

No imported or exported documents

Resources (2):

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None

Resource Items (2):

British-Irish Association Conference Cambridge – Private Meetings - (file)

Photocopied note by Martin Mansergh, Irish Government Special Advisor on Northern Ireland, of his private meetings with Patrick Mayhew, Attorney General for Northern Ireland, and Chilcot, at the British-Irish Association Conference in Cambridge. They discussed the Joint Declaration, the danger of a loyalist backlash, and the ongoing Talks process.

Letter from John Chilcot to Roderic Lyne Enclosing a Requested Draft of a Letter from John Major to Albert Reynolds and Recording a Butler/Nally Meeting on 10 September 1993 - (file)

John Chilcot writes to introduce a draft of a letter from John Major to Albert Reynolds, in response to a request from Roderic Lyne. Chilcot explains the context to the letter, principally a meeting between representatives of the British government on the one hand (himself and Robin Butler) and representatives of the Irish government on the other (Dermot Nally and Seán Ó hUiginn). This occurred on 10th September. They key positions elucidated were as follows: a British assertion that the current draft would not run but that the government would be constructive in reviewing what the Irish presented, the British view that the current treatment of the consent principle and the issue of self-determination was inadequate, the Irish view that the JDI was the surest route to peace - in contrast to the British privileging of the talks process. Chilcot relays John Hume's lukewarm enthusaism for the JDI and expresses his own scepticism that the Hume/Adams talks will be more constructive. David Gillmore and Robin Butler were copied into the letter and enclosure.

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