Our greetings, Sir,
We are the remaining three of the compact group of Irish officials who, under the leadership of the late Dermot Nally, the secretary to the government, worked on the negotiation of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. Our British counterparts were led by Sir Robert Armstrong, the British cabinet secretary.
Apart from information we have gleaned from media reports, we don’t possess any insider knowledge of the Spycatcher case or the accounts given by Armstrong during his cross-examination. He had been dispatched to court to elucidate the stance of then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and her administration. However, our close working relationship with Armstrong over the two-year period of intense negotiations preceding the 1985 agreement gives us insight into the person he was.
It’s accurate to assert that the Anglo-Irish Agreement was a watershed event in the relationship between Britain and Ireland. It marked a significant stride in the journey that culminated in the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
The agreement initiated political frameworks, including a recurring conference between the governments at a ministerial level and bolstered by a combined British-Irish secretariat based in Belfast. This represented the first practical manifestation of the Northern Ireland “Irish Dimension” which had been acknowledged in a British government Green Paper in 1972.
Sean Donlon, one of us, along with Armstrong made a trip to Washington prior to the signing of the agreement. The purpose of the visit was to persuade influential political figures such as US President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill to support a financial source for the revolutionary agreement to be signed by the two governments.
Their efforts bore fruit in the creation of the International Fund for Ireland. With financial contributions from the US, EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it has since distributed almost €1 billion to support economic and social initiatives in Northern Ireland and the six counties on the southern side of the border.
For those of us who participated in the intense 36 sessions of negotiations from 1984-85 with Robert Armstrong, fond memories of his pivotal role through this era remain. He sustained a certain level of private disposition that seemed fitting for a high-ranking government officer, both back then and subsequent times. However, it was evident that his pivotal contributions were integral to the negotiations’ success. Without him and his associate, David Goodall (whose account of these events was documented by the National University of Ireland in 2021), an accord would have been an impossibility. Reflecting upon it in later years in a letter written to the late Goodall’s spouse, he regarded it as the most notable accomplishment in both their professional lives.
Armstrong consistently mirrored his government’s stance with honesty. However, as the British civil service’s head and a consultant of Thatcher’s confidante, he greatly influenced the formation of his government’s strategy constantly. Despite his individual restraint, he had a outlying strong commitment to mitigating the longstanding Northern Ireland conflict and reconciling the blunders of the preceding generations. Evident in the documents from that era, his interest can be traced back to the 1970s when he, as Ted Heath’s senior private secretary, played a crucial part in the preparation and unfolding of the Sunningdale conference. He was against internment in 1971, and, amidst the peak of turmoil in 1974, strongly advised Harold Wilson against hastily withdrawing from Northern Ireland without proper preparation.
Regardless of the occurrences in a New South Wales tribunal in 1986, those of us who remain from those who joined him in the two-year negotiations of 1984-85 continually acknowledge his role in commencing a hopeful era in Anglo-Irish interactions, contributing to the Northern Ireland peace efforts.
Yours Sincerely,
Sean Donlon, Noel Dorr, Michael Lillis,
Dublin, Ireland.