Items21The creator’s order
  1. 1Garret FitzGeraldGarret FitzGeraldBorn 9 Feb 1926As Taoiseach, FitzGerald negotiated the Anglo-Irish Agreement with Margaret Thatcher in 1985, giving the Irish government a formal consultative role in Northern Ireland through a standing intergovernmental conference and secretariat at Maryfield. Unionists protested furiously, but the agreement…0i
  2. 2John HumeJohn HumeBorn 18 Jan 1937The SDLP leader's 'three-stranded' analysis, relationships within Northern Ireland, between north and south, and between Britain and Ireland, became the architecture of the 1998 agreement. Hume's secret talks with Gerry Adams from 1988, which drew heavy criticism at the time, helped bring Sinn Féin…0i
  3. 3Alec ReidAlec ReidA Redemptorist priest at Clonard Monastery in west Belfast, Father Reid carried messages between Gerry Adams, John Hume and the Irish government from the late 1980s, the secret channel that made the Hume-Adams dialogue possible. He was photographed in 1988 giving the last rites to two soldiers…0i
  4. 4Peter Brooke, Baron Brooke of Sutton MandevillePeter Brooke, Baron Brooke of Sutton MandevilleBorn 3 Mar 1934As Northern Ireland Secretary, Brooke said in a November 1990 speech that Britain had 'no selfish strategic or economic interest' in Northern Ireland, a sentence aimed at republicans that undercut the IRA's claim to be fighting a colonial power. He also reopened a secret back channel to the…0i
  5. 5Albert ReynoldsAlbert ReynoldsBorn 3 Nov 1932Reynolds, Taoiseach from 1992 to 1994, took risks with republicans that his predecessors had avoided and built a working relationship with John Major. Together they issued the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993, in which Britain accepted that the people of Ireland, north and south, could…0i
  6. 6John MajorJohn MajorBorn 29 Mar 1943Major's government kept a secret line of communication open with the IRA leadership even after the 1991 mortar attack on Downing Street, and he co-signed the 1993 Downing Street Declaration with Albert Reynolds. His later insistence on decommissioning before Sinn Féin entered talks, while relying…0i
  7. 7Gerry AdamsGerry AdamsBorn 6 Oct 1948As Sinn Féin president, Adams led the republican movement from armed struggle into politics, through the Hume-Adams talks, the 1994 and 1997 IRA ceasefires, the 1998 agreement and the IRA's decommissioning in 2005. His leadership kept most of the movement together through those compromises, which…0i
  8. 8Martin McGuinnessMartin McGuinnessBorn 23 May 1950A former IRA commander in Derry, McGuinness became Sinn Féin's chief negotiator in the 1990s and then Northern Ireland's deputy First Minister from 2007 to 2017. His unlikely working relationship with Ian Paisley earned them the nickname 'the Chuckle Brothers' and showed the institutions could…0i
  9. 9David TrimbleDavid TrimbleBorn 15 Oct 1944Trimble, elected Ulster Unionist leader in 1995 as a hardliner, became the unionist who signed. He took his party into the 1998 agreement despite half his MPs opposing it, won its referendum campaign and became First Minister, sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume. Repeated crises over IRA…0i
  10. 10Seamus MallonSeamus MallonBorn 17 Aug 1936The SDLP's deputy leader and chief negotiator on the strand one talks over the internal institutions, Mallon became the first deputy First Minister alongside Trimble in 1998. His description of the agreement as 'Sunningdale for slow learners', a reference to the failed 1973 power-sharing deal, is…0i