Strand 1: ‘An Air of Optimism’: June

Abstract

As agreed at the previous day’s plenary, the Sub-Committee duly met all day on Wednesday 27 May, to consider in the first instance the four papers from the parties regarding the ongoing deadlock. The paper tabled on Tuesday by the British, Models of Government, was instantly forgotten. Each of the papers tried to define the elements of the impasse. The Nature of the Blockage, another onepage note from the UUP, placed the blame squarely on the SDLP, for two reasons. First, they complained that: ‘John Hume believes that any govt in NI [sic] should not come from or be responsible to the elected assembly.’ Second, in terms of involving the Irish Nationalist identity in a new institution, the SDLP were claiming that ‘their presence in such an institution, even at the highest level, is insufficient to meet this requirement’. Instead, the presence of the Irish government in a local institution, ‘can achieve the objective of obtaining loyalty from Nationalists in NI in a way that the presence of the SDLP cannot’. In UUP eyes, the proposal for externally appointed commissioners ‘is contradictory to their support for para 2 of “common themes” [sic] document’. The reference was to the first theme among 14 identified and agreed during the negotiations of early May. Entitled ‘Constitutional Status and Guarantee’, it read in part: ‘It is accepted by all the talks participants that Northern Ireland is de facto a part of the United Kingdom; that there should be no change in that position without the consent of a majority of the people who live there.’ ‘The SDLP paper’, claimed the UUP, ‘is not consistent with the continued membership of NI within the UK.’