History Lessons

On New Year's Day in 1974, a power sharing Executive took office at Stormont.  Five months later it was brought down by a combination of loyalist workers and loyalist paramilitaries.  It has been described as both a nakedly sectarian strike and as an astonishingly successful political stoppage which brought down an elected government with ease.  33 years and nearly three thousand deaths later, a new power sharing government is under way at Stormont. Don Anderson asks why the first attempt at cross community power sharing collapsed.  Was it a golden opportunity lost to share power and build peace, or an unrealistic, undemocratic pipe dream which ignored political realities?