Senator Maurice Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310652
- eISBN:
- 9781846314155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Discontinued
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314155.010
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
This chapter presents a lecture delivered by Senator Maurice Hayes, just after he started his work on the Patten Commission, which examines the legendary stubbornness of the Ulsterman. He traces the ...
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This chapter presents a lecture delivered by Senator Maurice Hayes, just after he started his work on the Patten Commission, which examines the legendary stubbornness of the Ulsterman. He traces the entire history of attempts at settlements in Northern Ireland over the past thirty years. He concludes that Sunningdale may have been an idea whose time had not yet come and that it failed not simply because of loyalist and republican violence, but because unionists were not prepared to share power with Catholics. Even so, he shares the view that the 3000 deaths since Sunningdale were unnecessary tragedies, for the ‘power–sharing’ of Sunningdale has remained the ideal. He sees the Good Friday Agreement as only a beginning; that the ‘public mood is for peace, and the process, although it might falter and stutter, shows signs of being irreversible’.Less
This chapter presents a lecture delivered by Senator Maurice Hayes, just after he started his work on the Patten Commission, which examines the legendary stubbornness of the Ulsterman. He traces the entire history of attempts at settlements in Northern Ireland over the past thirty years. He concludes that Sunningdale may have been an idea whose time had not yet come and that it failed not simply because of loyalist and republican violence, but because unionists were not prepared to share power with Catholics. Even so, he shares the view that the 3000 deaths since Sunningdale were unnecessary tragedies, for the ‘power–sharing’ of Sunningdale has remained the ideal. He sees the Good Friday Agreement as only a beginning; that the ‘public mood is for peace, and the process, although it might falter and stutter, shows signs of being irreversible’.
