By David McCullagh, Conor McMorrow and Justin McCarthy
"Of all the people that I talk to in this whole damn thing, I feel that we are on the same wavelength now…".
Quite the tribute, from Tony Blair to Bertie Ahern, as the two men were in the final stretch of negotiating the Good Friday Agreement.
The comment, made during a phone call on 7 April, 1998, three days before the agreement was signed, is a testament to the strong relationship the two men had built up over the previous nine months.
The development of that relationship is now revealed in great detail in State Papers released to the public this week by the National Archives.
Because so much attention is paid to the relationship between Britain and Ireland, there has been criticism in recent years that the annual release of Irish files has fallen badly behind that of the UK.
Both governments are reducing the embargo before documents are released from 30 years to 20, but the British have been going rather faster.
In order to catch up, and to make sure Dublin's side of the story is told at the same time, this December sees a bumper release of Irish documents: eight years’ worth of material is being made public.
To make it all a bit more digestible, we are looking at it in sections. Here we look at the beginning of the Bertie Ahern years – the period from mid-1997 to the end of 1998 that saw ground-breaking developments in the peace process (as well as a few fascinating nuggets from other years).
Irish officials had recognised the 'distinct gain' offered by the 'political leadership and salesmanship' of the new Labour government
Bertie Ahern was elected taoiseach on 26 June, 1997, at the head of a Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats minority coalition, with the support of a number of Independents.
He would go on to form a productive partnership with Tony Blair, who had himself become prime minister just two months earlier.
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A lethal sting in the tail
Irish officials had recognised the "distinct gain" offered by the "political leadership and salesmanship" of the new Labour government, which had a massive majority in the House of Commons – in contrast to Blair's predecessor, John Major, whose reliance on Unionist votes to keep him in power had negative consequences for the peace process.
On the other hand, being new to Government meant that Blair and his team would be bombarded by "the official and security machines… with cautionary advice to offset their presumed impetuousness or naivete".
And in fact it was noted in Dublin that some parts of the official machine were conducting a "whispering campaign" against the new northern secretary, Mo Mowlam.
7 things we learned from the State Papers: Day 3
Keeping a 'frightened' Trimble onside
Drumcree 1997: 'An offence against reason'
The first aim of the two governments was the restoration of the IRA ceasefire, which had broken down in February of the previous year. The IRA obliged on 20 July, evidently recognising that the changes of government in Dublin and London altered the political context.
The cessation allowed all-party talks to get underway, and the scramble to nail down the Good Friday Agreement is well documented in the newly released papers.
But if Ahern and Blair felt the hand of history on their shoulders when they signed the Good Friday Agreement, their work was far from done. While getting all-party agreement was a hard slog, implementing it proved challenging too – starting with winning the ensuing referendum, and managing the annual marching season crisis at Drumcree.
And dissidents proved that there was a lethal sting in the tail from militant republicanism with the Omagh bombing in August 1998, which caused the highest death toll of any single incident throughout the Troubles.
Fortunately, despite the tragedy, the taoiseach and the prime minister managed to remain "on the same wavelength" throughout.
Based on documents now available to view in the National Archives of Ireland.
