In the wake of the hunger strikes, Republicans adopted a dual strategy, often referred to as the ‘Armalite and the Ballot Box’.  While the IRA engaged in intermittent, high profile operations including the August 1979 assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Sinn Fein sought to broaden significantly its electoral appeal.  In 1983 the party dramatically increased its vote in the UK general election, and Gerry Adams was elected MP for West Belfast.  The historian J. J. Lee suggests much of Sinn Fein’s increased support came from ‘previous non-voters and first-time younger voters who saw no prospect of any sought of fulfilling life within the Northern Ireland they knew’.

As Sinn Fein’s popularity grew, its main rival for support, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) joined with the Republic’s major political parties to establish the New Ireland Forum.  The forum explored avenues to break the impasse in Northern Ireland, and recognised the need for the goodwill and participation of both the British and Irish governments in building a ‘New Ireland’.  The forum’s full report provided the foundation for subsequent discussions between the British and Irish governments.  On 15 November 1985 British Prime Minister Margaret Margaret Thatcher and the Taoiseach, Dr Garret Fitzgerald, signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement.  The governments agreed that, “change in the status of Northern Ireland would only come about with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland”.  However, if in the future a clear wish for the establishment of a united Ireland emerged, both parties would legislate to give effect to that wish.  In addition, an intergovernmental conference was established that provided the Dublin government with a voice in Northern Ireland’s affairs. 

Dr Fitzgerald emphasised that the agreement gave much needed recognition and respect to the nationalist tradition in Northern Ireland, a development welcomed by the SDLP.  But the reaction of Unionists and Republicans was generally hostile.  The Reverend Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, was outraged, claiming that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was now “answerable to Dublin”.  Mass rallies of Unionist supporters in Belfast reacted angrily to an agreement they saw as treasonous.  Yet, showing how widely perspectives differed, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams believed the agreement was “a reassurance to Unionists that the status quo will not change”. [These BBC sound/video files of the leaders’ reactions to the agreement require Realplayer].

By the early 1990s the ‘Armalite and the Ballot Box’ strategy appeared to have run its course.  Sinn Fein’s political momentum had peaked, and the ongoing IRA campaign showed no signs of bringing about a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland.  A dialogue between the SDLP’s John Hume and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams took place in an environment that seemed to promise greater hope of progress. 

In December 1993 a joint declaration by the Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, and Prime Minister John Major (the Downing Street Declaration) emphasised both governments’ commitment to engage in a peace process, the declaration representing but a first step.  As the leaders declared, ‘peace is a very simple, but also a very powerful idea, whose time has come’.  A key feature of the agreement was articulation (point 10) of the principle that political parties which committed themselves to use ‘exclusively peaceful methods and which have shown that they abide by the democratic process, are free to participate fully in democratic politics and to join in dialogue in due course’. Prime Minister Major emphasised to Parliament that the agreement represented no change, or timetable for change, in Northern Ireland’s constitutional standing.  The Ulster Unionist Party leader James Molyneaux had been consulted in the process leading to the declaration the DUP’s, and saw the agreement as posing little threat.  However, Ian Paisley proclaimed that the declaration was a tripartite agreement that included the IRA.

The period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s saw increasing disillusionment with the use of force as a strategy to effect change, and increasing attention to the possibilities of a political solution.  The agreements of 1985 and 1993 set down pathways that would prove critical to subsequent developments.