evensteadiereddie wrote:Ballcocks, don't be a **** - you're trying to rewrite history.
Taken from the Guardian site.
Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, the former British and Irish prime ministers, are rightly lauded for their historic roles in leading the Good Friday Agreement negotiations. But their warm and constructive relationship was only made possible after their predecessors had embarked on the hard graft of normalising Anglo-Irish relations.
The key relationship was between John Major, prime minister from 1990-97, and Albert Reynolds, Taoiseach between 1992-94. The two men, who had formed a strong bond as finance ministers at EU meetings in Brussels, had a straightforward and open relationship.
Major and Reynolds had a tough job. Their predecessors, Margaret Thatcher and Charles Haughey, had a tetchy relationship. Their relationship started well at the famous famous "teapot" summit in 1981 when Haughey presented Thatcher with a silver Georgian teapot and they agreed to examine the "totality of relationships" between the two islands. But Thatcher became alarmed by Haughey's determination to press ahead what she regarded as overly nationalist plans.
The breakthrough in Anglo-Irish relations took place under John Major and Albert Reynolds in 1993 at, of all places, the Baldonnel military airbase where the Queen was welcomed today. Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary, flew to the airbase for a secret meeting with Reynolds who had an early draft of a proposed new Anglo-Irish declaration. This eventually became the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 which was one of the first steps on the lengthy road that led to the Good Friday Agreement four and a half years later.