ABSTRACT
The year 1980 saw the newly installed Irish Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, attempting to shift the direction of Northern Ireland policymaking from initiatives in the North to an intergovernmental focus on the North. Yet the hope that was evident in late 1980 of a closer and more productive intergovernmental relationship soon waned, the relationship deteriorated sharply in 1981–82. This chapter examines the early 1980s and examines why Haughey sought to pursue the intergovernmental avenue with such apparent zeal, and why in December 1980, Mrs Thatcher, seen as the most Unionist of British prime ministers of modern times, led the highest profile British delegation to the Republic since the formation of the Irish state. It demonstrates that these events were not the result of a shift in the analysis of the two governments to a shared evaluation of the problem. The actions of both the Haughey and the Thatcher governments can be explained in terms of domestic considerations and the perceived self-interest of the two states. The problem that was to become evident in the years following 1980 was that the perceived self-interest of the two states did not coincide to a large enough extent. The two governments did not manage to agree to what ends they were co-operating in 1980. This disagreement over ends led the two states to question the means of co-operation in the aftermath of the ‘high’ of 1980.
