Abstract
Abstract On 30 November 1999, in moving the Order to devolve powers to Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson remarked: ‘After a quarter of a century the curtain is finally coming down on Direct Rule’. It was a suitably theatrical phrase for a moment of constitutional drama, both within and beyond Parliament, yet sub sequent events were to rob it of prophetic value. Three days earlier, the Ulster Unionist Council (UU C) had endorsed the decision of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader, David Trimble, to ‘jump first’ by participating in the creation of the power-sharing Executive—on the understanding that the process of decom missioning paramilitary weapons by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) would begin at the end of January 2000.
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