NI official bemoaned ‘emotional’ stance in Republic on unity

British papers: NIO keen to foster unionist-SDLP contacts after leak on secret talks

Eamon Phoenix
November 1985: Then taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement with then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The agreement gave the Irish government an official consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland and was strongly opposed by unionists. File photograph: Matt Kavanagh/The Irish Times

November 1985: Then taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement with then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The agreement gave the Irish government an official consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland and was strongly opposed by unionists. File photograph: Matt Kavanagh/The Irish Times

The Dublin government’s “emotional and historical attachment to unity is so strong that they find it nearly impossible to accept the principle of consent” in the North, a senior British civil servant concluded in a memo written in 1988.

The document is among British files relating to Northern Ireland released in Belfast today.

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