SECTION 8

THE SUNNINGDALE AGREEMENT 1973

The combined efforts of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams brought down the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement brokered by the then British government.

Gerry Adams’ Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley’s newly formed Democratic Unionist Party were against the Sunningdale Agreement, and the violence of the IRA together with the threat of violence from DUP sources conspired to bring the Agreement down.

The Sunningdale Agreement was the best hope for peace that the people of the North had, and it could have avoided the pain and suffering of the next twenty years.

Asked in recent interviews why republicans had sought to oppose Sunningdale, when it was very similar to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which they supported, a senior republican stated it was because they had no ownership of the Agreement. No one had involved them. He said this even though republicans had no mandate at that time.

In other words, Sunningdale was negotiated by the SDLP, and thus they had to oppose it.

Likewise, we can have no difficulty in dismissing any political situation which would give rise to Sinn Fein, or indeed the DUP, as majority parties.

Our loyalty must be to our own ideals. We can have no loyalty or indeed sympathy for these people who have continuously destroyed everything that we have built.