ABSTRACT
The task facing the two governments in the late 1980s and early 1990s was to entice Unionists back into the political arena and restore some momentum to attempts to improve the condition of the North. By the end of the 1980s the AIA had proved to be an enduring structure that no amount of Unionist pressure had managed to threaten. The subsequent re-evaluation by the Unionist leaders of their strategy of opposition to the Agreement in the face of such British obduracy meant that there was an opportunity to re-engage Unionism in seeking new structures for Northern Ireland. This was to prove a long and difficult task. The early 1990s started with the latest variation of the accepted theme of exclusivity that had underpinned British and Irish policy since the Sunningdale period. Exclusivity rested on the premise that if the constitutional centres of Unionism and nationalism could reach agreement then the extremes of loyalism and Republicanism would be isolated and marginalised. The Brooke-Mayhew talks of 1991–92 were the last great hurrah of exclusivity. By 1992 the first tentative steps towards the radical departure of inclusiveness were being taken. The two governments, at different speeds and with different levels of commitment, began to explore the possibility of enticing the extremes into the centre, rather than trying to protect the centre from the extremes.
