A highly significant moment came in October 1991 when Hume wrote a draft declaration which he hoped could form the basis of an agreed position between the British and Irish governments. The idea was to demonstrate, with a joint declaration, that Britain was not standing in the way of Irish unity, in the eventual hope of persuading republicans to halt their attempt to unite Ireland by violence. The intention was to find common ground in everyone’s ideological positions, and to reconcile what had always appeared irreconcilable. It was to prove the first of many such drafts which would, in
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