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For Ireland, 1974 was dominated by the rapid unravelling of the Sunningdale experiment and by violence that reached with appalling force into the Republic. The year opened with a new Northern Ireland Executive formally taking office on 1 January. It was the practical outcome of the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973: an administration containing unionists, the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and the cross-community Alliance Party, alongside proposed all-Ireland institutions including a Council of Ireland. Liam Cosgrave’s Fine Gael–Labour government in Dublin regarded that cross-border element as a necessary acknowledgement that Northern Ireland could not be governed securely without the Irish Government’s involvement. For many unionists, however, it appeared to threaten Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.
Ireland became a member of the EEC on 1 January 1973. The step followed the accession treaty signed in Brussels in January 1972 and the Irish referendum of May 1972, in which an overwhelming majority had approved entry. Membership did not instantly transform farms, factories or family budgets. It did, however, alter the framework within which Irish governments, businesses and farmers would make decisions. Ireland now participated directly in a Community enlarged from six to nine states, while Britain’s simultaneous entry mattered especially because Irish trade had long been tied closely to the British market.
Northern Ireland entered 1971 with the institutions at Stormont under severe strain. The civil-rights movement had exposed long-standing grievances over housing, electoral arrangements and policing, while republican and loyalist violence, alongside the expanding British Army presence, had made everyday security precarious in many places. The split between the Official and Provisional wings of the Irish Republican movement, completed in 1970, had also created competing armed organisations rather than reducing republican militancy.
