In recent years, historians have been able to pull up a chair at various negotiation tables used during the peace process, courtesy of the State papers released on both the British and Irish sides. Access to such papers has allowed us to observe the various players and their strategies as they inched the process towards the signing of the Belfast Agreement in April 1998.
Martin Mansergh, who died last week, features prominently in these records. It was challenging work; Graham Spencer, an academic specialising in political violence and conflict resolution, has written of the degree to which “the creativity, imagination, application needed to end conflict ... hinges on the unexpected, the spontaneous, the peripheral and the psychological”.
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