Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference

The Anglo-Irish Agreement was a 1985 treaty between the United Kingdom and Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The treaty gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government while confirming that there would be no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland unless a majority of its people agreed to join the Republic. It also set out conditions for the establishment of a devolved consensus government in the region.

The Agreement was signed on 15 November 1985 at Hillsborough Castle, by the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Irish Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald.

During her first term as Prime Minister, Thatcher had unsuccessful talks with both Jack Lynch and Charles Haughey on solving the conflict in Northern Ireland. In December 1980 Thatcher and Haughey met in Dublin, with the subsequent communiqué calling for joint studies of "possible new institutional links" between Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although this resulted in the founding of the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council in 1981, Anglo-Irish relations had by this time deteriorated due to the Irish hunger strike and so this body was neglected. Haughey resumed power shortly afterwards and took Argentina's side during the Falklands War, leading to the meeting scheduled for July 1982 to be cancelled. However, the British Northern Irish Secretary, Jim Prior, proposed "rolling devolution": a step by step approach whereby local government was devolved to an assembly elected by proportional representation. This was boycotted by the nationalist community and the plan was dead by June 1983.

The IRA's campaign on the mainland was ongoing, with the bombing of Chelsea Barracks in October 1981, the Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings in July 1982 and the Harrods bombings in December 1983. Thatcher herself was the target in the Brighton hotel bombing of October 1984. British military intelligence informed Thatcher that she could not take the IRA head on and the likelihood of never ending violence persuaded her to seek a political solution to the Troubles. The Anglo-Irish Agreement's origins lay in the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the British and Irish foreign offices, co-ordinated by the Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, and the secretary to the Irish government, Dermot Nally.

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