If the armed struggle was an attempt to bring about a United Ireland by force, it had failed completely. The constitutional situation, from a British point of view, was unchanged by a quarter of a century of suffering and death. In fact, from the IRA’s point of view, it was now appreciably worse because the Irish state, as part of the deal, had given up its territorial claim to Northern Ireland and replaced it with an aspiration to unite ‘in friendship and harmony’, the people who share the island. The veteran nationalist politician Seamus Mallon called the 1998 peace talks ‘Sunningdale for
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