The Downing Street Declaration and the origins of the Northern Ireland peace process

The negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998  were possible thanks to the secret conversations and ideological  debates held in the run-up to the Downing Street Declaration.

Any ambitious attempt to explain the Northern Ireland peace process must therefore be, in part, a history of ideas. Using confidential letters and papers, often made available for the very  first time, this book reconstructs the making of the Declaration and  of the IRA ceasefire of 1994. It traces the origins of the key concepts  of ‘self-determination’ and ‘consent’ and explains how they were  reconciled, setting out a peaceful path to Irish unification.