How unionism missed its moment

How unionism missed its moment after ‘betrayal’

ALEX KANE, Irish News, November 15th, 2025

Former UUP director of communications Alex Kane was among the tens of thousands of unionists who gathered at Belfast City Hall in 1985 in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, with many considering it an existential threat

THE Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) – 40 years old today, November 15 – was, I think, the greatest psychological blow to unionism in my lifetime.

Fair enough, there had been other blows: the closing of the NI Parliament in March 1972 and the White Paper the following March, which confirmed power-sharing, a new PR voting method and the ‘Irish Dimension’, come to mind.

But the fears then were offset by unionist acknowledgment that those decisions – even if they didn’t like them – were, at least, made by the sovereign parliament of the United Kingdom.

But the AIA, as its title made clear, was the work of the British and Irish governments.

Intergovernmental Conference

And what spooked unionism most was the creation of an Intergovernmental Conference, which “if it should prove impossible to achieve and sustain devolution on a basis which secures widespread acceptance in Northern Ireland, the Conference shall be a framework within which the Irish Government may, where the interests of the minority community are significantly or especially affected, put forward views on proposals for major legislation and on major policy issues, which are within the purview of the Northern Ireland departments and which remain the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland”.

Peter Robinson, then deputy leader of the DUP, was horrified: “We are convinced and agreed that the AIA represents a fundamental and unacceptable change in the constitutional relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We have no doubt that the Intergovernmental Conference is tantamount to joint authority and that its early de-mise is vital if we are to arrest a quickening process leading to our absorption into an Irish unitary state.”

Adding to the psychological blow was the fact that both the UUP and DUP had been left in what one journalist described as a period of isolation: “They could only stand on the sidelines and watch the two governments build up a controlled game of politics and diplomacy.”

The possibility – some ac- tually said certainty – of an Anglo-Irish deal had been detailed in a number of British and Irish newspapers in the late summer/early autumn of 1985, but both Ian Paisley and UUP leader Jim Molyneaux downplayed or dismissed the rumours altogether.

The most significant unionist response, because of the sheer emotion, hurt, heartbreak and sense of personal betrayal which underpinned it, was a speech by Upper Bann MP Harold McCusker in the House of Commons on Monday November 18:

“I never knew what desolation felt like until I read this agreement last Friday afternoon. Does the prime minister realise that, when she carries the agreement through the House, she will have ensured that I shall carry to my grave with ignominy the sense of the injustice that I have done to my constituents down the years – when, in their darkest hours, I exhorted them to put their trust in this British House of Commons which one day would honour its fundamental obligation to them to treat them as equal British citizens?

“Is not the reality of this agreement that they will now be Irish-British hybrids and that every aspect – not just some aspects – of their lives will be open to the influence of those who have harboured their murderers and coveted their land? Is the prime minister aware that that is too high a price for me and hundreds of thousands of others in Northern Ireland to pay?”

‘This wasn’t 1912’

The problem for unionism was how best to respond. This wasn’t 1912, when ‘Ulster’ unionism, with the support of the Conservative Party, could threaten a civil war response to the Third Home Rule Bill.

It wasn’t 1974, when a province-wide strike by a unionist/loyalist coalition could bring down Brian Faulkner and the Sunningdale Agreement.

But it was clear that unionism – collectively – had to be seen to do something. However deep the sense of betrayal that Paisley and Molyneaux felt, both men knew that they couldn’t allow the response to fall into the hands of loyalist paramilitarism.

So the immediate response was a Belfast city centre rally on November 23. It was, according to some sources, the largest such gathering of unionism ever; even larger than the crowds which gathered to sign the Covenant.

But what soon became apparent – and I was in the crowd – was that the platform party and speakers didn’t have a specific strategy to announce.

Molyneaux told them: “The situation is too serious. The occasion is too solemn to do other than invite you to prepare yourselves for the long hard road to success. Grant us to know that it is not the beginning but the continuing of the same which yieldeth the True Glory.”

Paisley, who realised that the Molyneaux contribution was far too quiet and far too timid for a crowd beginning to feel the cold, went into bombastic overdrive.

I don’t know if he had prepared a set speech for the occasion because, like everyone else, I just remembered the hollering of “Never, Never, Never, Never.”

“Whatever unionism was expecting to hear at that rally, or hear on the news later – and the rejection of the AIA was embraced by the entirety of the prounion community, including tens of thousands who hadn’t been involved or even voting for over a decade – they certainly didn’t hear even the smattering of a thought-through plan of action

Yes, all 15 of the UUP/DUP/UPUP MPs resigned their seats and forced by-elections in January 1986 after the government refused a referendum on the AIA, but all that did was see Jim Nicholson lose his seat to Seamus Mallon, while the overall share of the vote for unionism rose from 62.3% in the 1983 general election to 71.5%, which was just 44% of the total registered electorate.

Certainly not enough to rattle Thatcher, especially after the agreement had been endorsed by the House of Commons on November 27 by 473 votes to 47.

The year 1986, which included an assortment of protests, rioting and ongoing attempts by the leadership of unionism and loyalism to steer Thatcher away from the AIA, ended with her visiting Northern Ireland on December 23, when she reaffirmed her commitment to the agreement, and added that even a change of government in the Republic would remain committed to it.

AIA embedded

At that point both the UUP and DUP accepted that the AIA was embedded; if not forever, then certainly for a longish time.

So on February 23 1987, Molyneaux and Paisley appointed a task force of Peter Robinson, Harold McCusker and Frank Millar (general secretary of the UUP, and later a very distinguished Ireland editor for The Irish Times), to “consult with the widest possible range of interest groups within the pro-union community to secure support for the continuing campaign against the AIA and ascertain what consensus, if any, exists about alternatives to the Agreement”.

Their report, An End To Drift (the title itself was an incredibly significant recognition of how poor the response to the AIA had been up to that point), was presented to both leaders on June 16.

It was, I believe, one of the most important pieces of internal unionist analysis to have been produced since the closure of the NI Parliament 15 years earlier.

If the AIA had been a wake-up call for the pro-union community, then this document was a wake-up call to the leadership of the two main unionist parties.

“Our various discussions pointed to the need for action to arrest a widely perceived drift in our affairs. This demand for action is tempered by a realistic appraisal of the limits of unionism’s negotiating strength and, on the other hand, by anxiety that a commitment to negotiate a reasonable alternative should not be construed, in London or elsewhere, as evidence of a willingness to come to terms with the Agreement itself. The temptation in such circumstances might be to do nothing. However we would consider this the ultimate abdication of responsibility.

“We offer no precise or definite suggestion as to what the alternatives might be. But we are convinced that, whatever the intentions of the governments in London and Dublin, membership of the United Kingdom or membership of an Irish Republic are not the only options available to the people of Northern Ireland.”

It was one of the few moments in the history of post-1972 unionism when both the DUP and UUP seemed prepared to go beyond the rejection and whinge responses which usually accompanied being wrong-footed by a British government.

The first time, too, that a coherent game plan had been prepared in advance of further negotiations.

But Paisley and Molyneaux – maybe miffed by inferred criticism of their leadership before and after the agreement – shuffled the report to the sidelines and refused to implement, let alone open to discussion, most of the recommendations.

Millar left the UUP a few months later. Robinson resigned as deputy leader of the DUP, although he returned three months afterwards. And McCusker, while remaining deputy leader, seemed increasingly indifferent to Molyneaux’s leadership.

The AIA was to remain in place until the Good Friday Agreement 13 years later.

Had the DUP and UUP followed through on the task force recommendations and persuaded both governments to acknowledge and address their concerns, then it strikes me that the later peace process might have come earlier and been more favourable to unionism generally.

Forty years ago today, NI's governance was revolutionised

SAM MCBRIDE, Belfast Telegraph, November 15th, 2025

MEMOIRS AND DECLASSIFIED FILES REVEAL WHAT UNIONIST LEADERS WERE SAYING IN PUBLIC WAS DIFFERENT IN PRIVATE — AND SHOW IRISH DIPLOMATS' RESPECT FOR RUC AND ORDINARY PROTESTANTS WHO HELPED THEM

Forty years ago today, Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald signed an agreement which revolutionised Northern Ireland's governance and precipitated one of the most dangerous periods of the Troubles.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement involved a stunning betrayal of unionism by a conviction unionist Prime Minister.

It wasn't just that the Republic was given a formal consultative role in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland, with a permanent base in Holywood, but that unionism had been consciously excluded from the negotiations.

SDLP leader John Hume and even the American government were briefed on the progress of the secret negotiations between London and Dublin.

By contrast, Jim Molyneaux, the unimaginative and ineffective leader of unionism, was so far out of the loop that, in his delusion, he publicly reassured unionists the deal wasn't coming, just days before it was signed.

In the words of Michael Lillis, a key Irish diplomat involved in the discussions, “it was a deliberate, massive betrayal of the unionists by Margaret Thatcher”.

The agreement arguably pushed unionism towards the Good Friday Agreement more than a decade later. But what is now known about this period demonstrates that even when unionist rhetoric was at its most blood-curdling, very different messages were being conveyed privately.

On one understanding of Anglo-Irish relations, what happened in 1985 was less significant than it appeared.

London had accepted a unique role for Dublin in articulating northern nationalist views as far back as the early 1970s.

This had been accepted from before the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, the first experiment in Stormont power-sharing.

Yet from then on this had involved mostly quiet conversations. The Anglo-Irish Agreement institutionalised this in a way which was unmissable.

There had been debate about whether the Anglo-Irish Secretariat, the permanent group of British and Irish officials who would support regular ministerial meetings, should be in Northern Ireland. It could have been in London or Dublin, or both.

Deciding to put the body at Maryfield beside Palace Barracks was done in the full knowledge that it would provoke unionist fury. Whether intended or not, the scale and nature of the unionist reaction undermined unionism, even if in the short term it appeared more united than at any previous point during the Troubles.

When ‘never’ meant not yet

The unionist response fused the ludicrous with the deadly. Weeks before the agreement, Ian Paisley described the rumoured deal as a “sure recipe for war”, warning that any such attempt would be “resisted to the death”. When the agreement came, he wasn't resisting it to the death — and when those close to him who were importing weapons of death were caught, he quickly disowned them.

Paisley's most famous oratorical moment came in a vast Belfast City Hall rally in November 1985 when he bellowed “never, never, never, never” in response to the idea of Dublin having a role in Northern Ireland's affairs.

Days earlier, his rhetoric was even more overwrought, thundered in prayer from the pulpit: “We hand this woman, Margaret Thatcher, over to the devil that she might learn not to blaspheme. We pray that the world may learn a lesson through her fall and through the ignominy to which she shall be brought. Oh God, in wrath, take vengeance upon this wicked, treacherous, lying woman.”

But beneath the bombast lay an awkward truth: unionism's leaders had failed. They had put their trust in a Prime Minister who by ditching them had exposed unionist complacency. They wouldn't be the last unionist leaders to do so.

What we now know is that unionism's leaders very quickly came to realise the irreversible scale of their defeat.

While publicly telling their supporters that the agreement could be overturned if only they marched and protested and voted, privately they knew within months that the core of the agreement would be immovable. Much analysis of the agreement focusses on it being designed to be unboycottable — a response to the unconstitutional paramilitary-backed overthrow of Sunningdale in 1974.

There has been less appreciation of the speed with which unionism's key figures effectively gave up on their public demands.

What we can now see — some of it only in recently-declassified files — is how surprisingly pragmatic these people were in private.

Unionism's vehemence in opposing the agreement was about as far-reaching as any non-violent reaction could be: mass rallies, the resignation of MPs, a refusal to meet government ministers or senior civil servants, a refusal to pay TV licences, and even a refusal to pay dog licences. Alongside that went street violence and the intimidation of RUC officers.

But the scale of the protest only magnified the scale of its failure.

The rallies grew smaller. The resignation of MPs backfired when one of them lost their seat in the subsequent by-election. Politicians refusing to pay charges were taken to court and ultimately relented.

The violence turned many unionists against the campaign and strained UUP-DUP relations. By May 1990, the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) file recording unionist protests against the agreement was shut after Sir Ken Bloomfield, the head of the civil service, said that “with the passage of time, the unionist protest has withered to the point where it is of little practical consequence”.

In truth, for much of the preceding period, the opposition involved going through the motions.

Several years ago, I discovered an intriguing note in a declassified NIO file. Written on unheaded paper, it was initialled FC — seemingly a reference to the Tory MEP Fred Catherwood, a former head of the Evangelical Alliance who had good relations with Paisley.

He appeared to be a backchannel to the NIO at a time when unionists had broken off contact.

Paisley willing to enter talks ‘without preconditions’

The two-page document entitled 'Notes of talk with Ian Paisley' was dated February 19, 1986 — just 88 days after Paisley's 'never' speech.

The note said Paisley wanted talks inaugurated by the Prime Minister “without preconditions” and that if a devolved Assembly was established which could bring an end to British-Irish Government dealings under the agreement, Stormont would deal directly with Dublin.

It said “they had not come easily” to that decision, but “recognised that they would have to make concessions on matters they had always refused to concede”.

A single document can be misleading; backchannels can embellish messages by putting on them a positive gloss. But all that's surprising about this document is how quickly it comes; there is a plethora of other material which shows unionism's leaders saying very different things in private than in public in the post-1985 period.

In 1987, the 'task force report' saw a public glimpse of major debate within unionism. The joint UUP-DUP document — which to this day has never been published in full — was drawn up by Peter Robinson, Harold McCusker and Frank Miller.

At its core was the message that unionism's campaign to overturn the agreement was failing and it needed to be more imaginative. That was an implicit criticism of the unionist leadership, which rejected the report, prompting Robinson to briefly resign as DUP deputy leader.

As Lord Bew observed this week at a Queen's University conference on the agreement, the period after the accord saw a serious increase in loyalist violence, which by the early 1990s was outpacing IRA attacks.

Some of that was due to modern weaponry imported by Ulster Resistance, established by DUP figures.

While the agreement reassured nationalists constitutionally that they had more support, its more immediate reality was that the risk to their lives had increased.

Northern Ireland entered an exceptionally dark phase. A secret NIO assessment in 1987 based on intelligence warned that it couldn't rule out the DUP using Ulster Resistance “shock troops”.

Officials believed senior unionist figures like Robinson were flirting with the idea of an independent Northern Ireland as they thrashed around for ideas.

Unquestionably, the agreement exposed unionist drift, and persuaded introspection which ultimately led hardliners like David Trimble, Paisley and Robinson to power-sharing with Sinn Fein.

But in considering high politics, the human impact is rarely at the time given the consideration it merits.

A privately-published book by former Irish diplomats Dáithí O'Ceallaigh and Michael Lillis records a 2019 discussion between many of the Irish officials based in Maryfield.

Lillis said he was instructed to go to a Dublin solicitors' office to make a new will, “the only will I've ever made at taxpayers' expense”, and then a Garda Special Branch officer took him and O'Ceallaigh to the toilets in Iveagh House where they were told to “squelch around” on blotting paper in their bare feet.

Admiration for the RUC

Before DNA analysis, this was to seek to identify their bodies if dental records failed. The most striking element of the book is the deep admiration the Irish officials came to have for the RUC.

Daire Ó Criodáin said that “unlike terrorists today”, he believed anyone attacking them would want to escape and he always had confidence that “the [RUC] guys who were walking around with machine guns, their duty would prevail…would they give away their lives? Well they wouldn't just say 'after you'.”

O'Ceallaigh said: “The RUC were exceedingly good at looking after us…they took great care of us”. He added: “I've never seen police as good as them anywhere except the Met in London in all my time; they were extraordinary”.

Just the month before the agreement, Tánaiste Dick Spring publicly said RUC Chief Constable Jack Hermon's position was “untenable” over criticism of the Republic's anti-terror measures.

Yet after the accord, Hermon would become a regular visitor to Maryfield, sometimes staying late into the night to drink and discuss the situation with Irish officials who came to admire him.

Lillis described Hermon as “a more imaginative man than his opposite number in Dublin”.

O'Ceallaigh added: “I can't speak too highly of the support that we got from the RUC. More than 800 RUC officers had to leave their homes.”

Even in Dublin, O'Ceallaigh and Lillis's families were under 24-hour armed police protection. O'Ceallaigh recalled kitchen staff and drivers “all of them Protestants” who helped them despite being at “greater risk than even any of us”.

Mary Quealy said that these staff “went out of their way to make life comfortable”.

Frances Killilea recalled them eventually getting dispensation to leave Maryfield on Sundays for Mass, where they'd be discretely guarded by armed RUC officers, saying “they were really so protective of us”.

Some of the unionist reaction to the agreement was reprehensible. Political anger is a core element of democracy; attacks or the threat of attacks are not.

But beneath what was happening on the streets and what came from the mouths of politicians was the quiet human decency which throughout the Troubles prevented Northern Ireland from toppling into full-blown civil war.

It also involved the disciplined support of the NI civil service, where officials took their lead from Sir Ken Bloomfield. Despite being cut out of the negotiations — a major error, given his ability and intimate involvement in Sunningdale — and believing the agreement was “fundamentally flawed”, he made clear to colleagues that it was a democratic decision of parliament which it was their duty to implement.

Unionists forced to think strategically

While the agreement unquestionably pushed unionism towards power-sharing, it simultaneously destroyed Gerry Adams' one big idea for getting unionists to buy into a united Ireland — getting the British to be “persuaders for unity”.

Even though Sinn Fein would push for that right up to 1998, it was dead after 1985. Even prior to then it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of unionism, which had never really trusted British governments. But after the 1985 betrayal, the idea that unionism would be “persuaded” into a united Ireland by London was demonstrably ludicrous.

The agreement didn't secure many of its key aims, failing to halt the rise of Sinn Fein, failing to stabilise security and not bringing any political resolution.

But it gradually roused unionism to think strategically, convincing key figures that what they thought was standing still actually involved going backwards.

By 1990, unionist leaders were privately prepared to make such sweeping concessions that the NIO feared if what had been said was leaked it could be perilous for Molyneaux and Paisley.

Senior NIO official Quentin Thomas said unionists were making “major, and possibly dangerous, concessions”.

By then, “never” and “resistance to the death” were but a distant memory.