Niall Ó Dochartaigh, "Making Peace in the Shadows"

Secret back-channels that linked the British and Irish governments to both the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries were crucial to the eventual success of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Secrecy provided a way for longstanding enemies to establish the authority of opposing leaders, to discuss proposals without making any public commitments and to develop the limited trust on which a settlement could be built, all the while shielding these tentative efforts from those who did not want the process to succeed.

Drawing on a rich store of new evidence that has emerged in recent years, this lecture examines how and why these channels were first established and how they operated. It explores the effects of back-channel contact on intra-party struggles on all sides and discusses the importance of back-channels in drawing the positions of opposing parties closer at crucial moments. It considers too the prominence of former colonial officials in Britain’s ‘covert diplomacy’ in Northern Ireland.

The maneuvering that took place during these secret contacts indicates that antagonists were more open to compromise than the often-intransigent public rhetoric suggested and calls into question the view that the conflict persisted for so long because of irreconcilable political ideologies.

This lecture draws on this new evidence to challenge some conventional notions about the conflict and offer a fresh analysis of the factors that sustained conflict for so long and that eventually made a peace settlement possible.

Niall Ó Dochartaigh is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the MA in Public Policy at the University of Galway. He has published extensively on the Northern Ireland conflict and on peace negotiations. His publications include Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the birth of the Irish Troubles and the co-edited books Political Violence in Context and Dynamics of Political Change in Ireland.

His most recent book, Deniable Contact: Back-Channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland, was awarded the Brian Farrell book prize of the Political Studies Association of Ireland and was shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize.

Ó Dochartaigh is currently a Fulbright-Ireland Fellow based at Glucksman Ireland House where he is carrying out research on US civil society peacemaking efforts during the Northern Ireland Troubles.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Glucksman Ireland House NYU, 1 Washington Mews, New York, United States