Northern Ireland Assembly, 1982

The Northern Ireland Assembly established in 1982 represented an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to restore the devolution to Northern Ireland which had been suspended 10 years previously. The Assembly was abolished in 1986.

The Assembly emerged as a result of initiatives by the then Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins and James Prior. The first step in this process was a white paper called The Government of Northern Ireland: A Working Paper for a Conference, published on 20 November 1979. This established a conference, attended the following year by the Democratic Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). (The UUP refused to become involved in protest at a decision to allow discussions on an Irish dimension, discussions which the DUP also boycotted.) Talks between the DUP, Alliance and SDLP took place between 7 January and 24 March 1980, but failed to reach agreement.

In July 1980, the British Government published a discussion document, "The Government of Northern Ireland: Proposals for Further Discussion" which suggested creating a devolved Assembly either with compulsory power sharing or Majority Rule. The power sharing option proved unacceptable to Unionists while Nationalists and the Alliance Party were reluctant to return to the Majority Rule model. Consequently, on 27 November 1980 Humphrey Atkins, reported to the House of Commons that there was little prospect for a devolved government in Northern Ireland due to a lack of consensus amongst the parties.

With 1981 dominated by the Hunger Strikes and the Prisons issue, constitutional initiatives took a back seat to the security situation. However, on 5 April 1982, Atkins' successor James Prior published a white paper "Northern Ireland: A Framework for Devolution" which proposed what was referred to as partial or rolling devolution. Under the proposals a 78-member assembly would be elected by proportional representation using the Single Transferable vote as in 1973. The Assembly's role at first would only be to scrutinise Government Departments as the white paper stated its role would be "consultative and deliberative, including scrutiny of draft legislation and making reports and recommendations to the Secretary of State which he will lay before Parliament." An executive would be formed consisting of not more than 13 members.

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