Feakle 1975 Symposium

Feakle 1975, Blessed were the Ceasefire Makers

Monday, 9th December 2024, 5.30 - 8pm

The Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin. Registered Guests Only.

This event will explore the events leading to and following the Secret Talks held at Feakle in December 1974

Fifty years ago, on 10th December 1974, eight Protestant church leaders took part in a secret unofficial meeting with the Provisional IRA Army Council in the rural Smyth's Village Hotel in Feakle, Co Clare. It was an incredibly courageous and risky peace initiative. Among them were Methodist leaders: Rev Eric Gallagher and Rev Stanley Worrall from Belfast, with Rev Harry Morton from London; Bishop Arthur Butler from the Church of Ireland; two staff members from the Irish Council of Churches, Rev Ralph Baxter and Rev Bill Arlow; Rev Jack Weir, Clerk of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and Rev Arthur McArthur from the United Reformed Church in England.

Their mission was to end the political violence that had raged for five years since the start of the Troubles in 1969 so that negotiations might begin. It was not a failure. The IRA unilateral ceasefire lasted for nine months from Christmas 1974 until September 1975.

Symposium Running Order

5.30pm: Registration, Tea & Coffee
6pm: Opening Remarks by Geoffrey Corry & Symposium Chair, Andy Pollak
6.15pm: Speakers Prof Niall Ó Dochartaigh & Dr Brian Hanley
7pm: Symposium Discussion - panel and floor
8pm: Event ends

Feakle 1975 Symposium - Panel

Andy Pollak

Event Chair

Andy Pollak is the founding director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh (1999–2013). Previous to that, he was Belfast reporter, religious affairs and education correspondent with The Irish Times and editor of Fortnight Magazine. He is co-author (with Ed Moloney) of a biography of the Rev. Ian Paisley. In the early 1990s he was coordinator of the Opsahl Commission, a Citizens Inquiry into the ways forward for Northern Ireland, and edited the influential 1993 Opsahl Report that resulted.

Geoffrey Corry

Geoffrey Corry will honour this remarkable ceasefire initiative by recalling how it came about and what is now known from historical research of the part it played in the First Peace Process 1972-6. The arrangements that led up to the talks with the IRA Army Council and what happened at the Smyths Village Hotel in Feakle. The subsequent meetings held with the NIO and British government and some lessons from the whole ceasefire initiative. Geoffrey is a political dialogue facilitator with the Glencree Centre and a lecturer on the peace process in Maynooth. He recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mediators Institute of Ireland for his developmental work in community and family mediation.

Prof Niall Ó Dochartaigh

Prof Niall Ó Dochartaigh is the author of Deniable Contact: Back-channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland. A Fulbright Fellow 2024-25, he is Director of MA Public Policy at the University of Galway - view profile >

Dr Brian Hanley

Dr Brian Hanley is Assistant Professor in the History of Northern Ireland at Trinity College Dublin - view profile >