<p>For generations in Northern Ireland, unionist and nationalist communities have been frozen in isolation from one another, preferring demonstrations of communal solidarity to negotiation and cooperation. This absorbing book examines the many attempts to resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland, beginning with the civil rights movement and Prime Minister Terence O'Neill's reform efforts in the mid-1960's, continuing up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. It finds that early attempts at peacemaking suggested only mechanical political solutions, which only deepened the antagonistic pattern of relationships. It was not until these existing relationships were challenged, most crucially through the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985 and subsequent initiatives jointly determined by the British and Irish governments, that the main parties began to participate in efforts to create a democratic peace. The authors contend that a political and cultural process is now in motion that gives peace its first real chance in Northern Ireland's history.</p>

Paths to a Settlement in Northern Ireland (ULSTER EDITIONS AND MONOGRAPHS)

History

Farren, Sean

Mulvihill, Robert F.

Europe

Colin Smythe

The leading nationalist party in Northern Ireland throughout the 'Troubles,' the SDLP, under the inspirational leadership of John Hume, sustained constitutional and democratic politics during that period and in no uncertain way shaped the Good Friday Agreement. Born out of the cauldron of the 1960s' civil rights movement, for much of the 'Troubles,' the SDLP had to contend with unionist intransigence, British obduracy, and, above all, Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitary violence which threatened all-out civil war. In response, the party maintained a firm commitment to non-violence and to an inclusive democratic dialogue at the center of which would be the principle of consent to constitutional change, as the only viable means of reaching an agreement. This book charts the story of this commitment and the party's role in achieving that dialogue in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 through to the early years of the Agreement's implementation.

The SDLP: The Struggle for Agreement in Northern Ireland, 1970-2000

Four Courts Press

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Books by Farren, Sean