A British soldier checks a driver’s ID at a vehicle checkpoint on a border road in Co Fermanagh, in 1976. Photo: Getty
This day 100 years ago, the Irish government was preparing to travel to London for a bout of knife-edge diplomacy in Downing Street — the results of which still resonate today.
WT Cosgrave’s government faced an existential threat. Four years earlier, Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins had signed up to the peace treaty with Britain on the basis that it promised the eventual achievement of what Griffith called “essential unity”.