From Insulation to Appeasement: the Major and Blair Governments Reconsidered

Abstract

Abstract Until the archives in London, Dublin, and Washington are open and unless the IRA provides the minutes of its Army Council, it is impossible to do more than offer a provisional judgement on the roles played by the Major and Blair Governments in the peace process. Yet, it is at least possible to lay to rest one of the myths that has already gained credence in both journalistic and academic accounts, namely that the Belfast Agreement was possible only because the Blair Government broke with the approach of John Major. The Major administration’s alleged failure to exploit constructively the first IRA cease-fire in 1994 is claimed to have resulted in its collapse, endangering the historic opportunity created by the work of the real authors of the peace process, John Hume, Gerry Adams, and Albert Reynolds. It was Major’s insistence that the IRA begin the process of decommissioning its arsenal that, according to critics, destroyed the first cease fire.