1965 opened dramatically in Northern Ireland politics with the historic meeting between the new prime minister, Capt Terence O'Neill, and the Taoiseach, Mr Sean Lemass, at Stormont Castle on January 14th.
This was the first such summit since the Boundary Agreement of 1925. As this year's Stormont Cabinet releases confirm, the meeting wash initiated by O'Neill with out consultation with his Cabinet colleagues, but followed sustained pressure from the British government for a thaw in the "cold war" between North and South.
Initial public and press reaction to the meeting in the North was favourable, especially from the business community and the minority, but it was denounced by a bright wing faction in the unionist parliamentary party and outside by a rising politico religious demagogue, the Rev Ian Paisley.
At a heated meeting with the unionist Westminster MPs in February, the prime minister's demarche was strongly criticised by Mr James Kilfedder and Sir Knox Cunningham as providing the South with "a cunning stratagem to weaken Northern Ireland's position".
O'Neill's policy at first earned the good will of the Nationalist Party under Mr Eddie McAteer. In February, the party accepted the role of official Opposition at Stormont for the first time. However, a request by the Nationalist leader for the provision of salaries appropriate to their new status was brusquely rejected by the O'Neill cabinet which questioned their "loyalty".
Immediately after the prime ministerial summit, the unionist cabinet seemed genuinely keen to develop closer co operation with the Republic in trade, tourism and electricity supply. Interestingly, in view of his later opposition to Capt O'Neill, Brian Faulkner was especially eager to promote North South tourism co operation and the idea of "selling Ireland as one island" to foreign tourists.
In other areas, the old suspicions surfaced and in August the Cabinet rejected a request from the Minister of Education, W.K. Fitzsimmons, for government funding for a new history of Ireland. The government also decided the transmission of Telefis Eireann to the North should be "totally resisted".
At the same time, ministers were inclined to show flexibility on the vexed question of the (Catholic) Mater Hospital, Belfast, then excluded from the National, Health Service, but progress was hampered by political opposition.
Nationalist good will towards O'Neill soon turned to anger, however, over the decision to locate the North's new university, not in predominantly Catholic Derry with its long tradition of learning, but in the market town of Coleraine. Disaffection in Derry among both traditions resulted in a deputation to the prime minister in June, alleging a plot to divert the university and industrial development away from the north west.
Heartened by the advent of a Labour government at Westminster, civil rights activists bombarded the Wilson administration with facts and figures of discrimination and gerrymandering in the North.
While the Labour government was sympathetic, Wilson and his Home Secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, sought shelter behind the "Westminster Convention" that such matters were solely within the rem it of the Northern Ireland parliament.
In April the unionist government expressed alarm at the formation of a new pressure group, the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, led by the Labour MP. Mr Paul Rose, and supported by a growing body of MPs.
They demanded an inquiry into discrimination and gerrymandering in Northern Ireland. Despite O'Neill's comfortable victory in the November general election, in which the Northern Ireland Labour Party lost two seats, the future civil rights struggle was already being mapped out.