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  3. Writing Peace: John Alderdice 1985-1992

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Writing Peace: John Alderdice 1985-1992

From the mid-1980s, John, now Lord, Alderdice, was intimately involved in the Irish peace process. His archive spans more than thirty years of negotiation and implementation, from his early days in the Alliance Party in the 1980s, through his leadership of the party during several phases of multi-party talks in the 1990s, to the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement during his time as the first Speaker of the new Northern Ireland Assembly. It also includes a small section on the Sunningdale Conference, inherited from previous party leaders, as a testimony to the origins of the 1998 Agreement. The documents which can be viewed in this resource collection were used to model Brooke/Mayhew talks and span the period from 1985 to 1992. They are also contained in the John Alderdice Collection, which includes all the documents digitized by Quill. These documents were scanned and digitized by Ruth Murray, Harriet Carter, Sofia Panourgias and Annabel Harris.

Cite as: Papers of John Alderdice, The McClay Library, Queen's University Belfast, digitized by the Quill Project at https://quillproject.net/resource\_collections/297., Writing Peace: John Alderdice 1985-1992, Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, accessed 2025)

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Details

The section of Lord Alderdice's archive digitized as part of this project focuses primarily on his role in the Multi-Party Talks of the 1990s. A much wider collection of his papers, documenting his contribution to liberal politics and conflict resolution in other countries, is currently being transferred to the McClay Library at Queen’s University in Belfast. The Alderdice papers to which Quill originally had access were catalogued and arranged chronologically in three subsections, 1985-1992 (particularly focusing on 1991-1992), 1992-1995, and 1996-1998, representing the three main attempts to reach agreement in the 1990s. Papers handed over by Lord Alderdice after this initial cataloguing process had been completed are currently in a separate box and span the whole period. The documents that can be viewed in this resource collection are the first subsection, 1985-1992, which have been used to create our model of the Brooke/Mayhew talks. They are also contained in the John Alderdice Collection, which includes all the documents digitized by Quill.

Collection associations (1)

Northern Ireland Brooke–Mayhew Multi-Party Talks, 1991–1992

Resources (617)