Unionists should learn the lessons from history and the AIA
Posted by Jim on November 17, 2025
THE IRISH NEWS:
Unionists should learn the lessons from history and the AIA – The Irish News view
The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed in 1985 at Hillsborough Castle by then prime minister Margaret Thatcher and taoiseach Garret FitzGerald
By The Irish News
November 17, 2025 at 6:00am GMT
The Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA), which was signed 40 years ago at the weekend by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, was a major development in its own right, with two direct consequences which were arguably of greater significance.
They were that it paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement 13 years later, and also that it demonstrated starkly how placing faith in the British government brings even more risks for unionists than it does for nationalists.
The AIA established an intergovernmental conference which was headed by the north’s secretary of state, Tom King, and the Irish foreign minister, Peter Barry, with the British government officially accepting for the first time that it was prepared to facilitate a united Ireland if it was backed by a majority of voters.
Closer cooperation between Dublin and London, and a full acceptance of democratic principles on both sides, during a period of appalling violence across the board, should have been regarded as a positive development but unionist leaders were beside themselves with anger.
They portrayed the AIA as a shocking betrayal, but they consistently failed to acknowledge that they had entirely failed to anticipate the scale of the accord which was ratified in a ceremony at Hillsborough Castle, with James Molyneaux, the then Ulster Unionist leader, among those who were convinced that a new political initiative involving all-Ireland links was simply not going to happen.
When the AIA was nonetheless unveiled, there was also a completely misplaced belief among many unionists that they could force its abandonment by staging a repeat of the Ulster Workers Council strike which had brought down the first power-sharing executive in 1974.
The Ulster Says No campaign did bring large numbers on to the streets, starting with a massive rally at Belfast City Hall eight days after the Hillsborough ceremony, but it failed to shake the resolve of Downing Street, and it ultimately faded away as the violence surrounding the subsequent protests alienated many mainstream unionists.
Unionists failed to learn the lessons of history when in the post-Brexit period they enthusiastically supported another Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson, in 2019, only to find that he deceived them over the Northern Ireland Protocol and the subsequent Windsor Framework.
It is verging on the astonishing that some senior unionists are now openly expressing admiration for Nigel Farage, and hoping that his Reform party heads the next British administration, even though he is at least as unreliable a figure as Mr Johnson.
The message for unionists should be that their best interests lie in working closely with nationalists at Stormont rather than engaging again in the kind of fundamental misjudgements which surrounded both Brexit and the AIA.
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