The need for political independence, access to more European markets and the impact of Northern Ireland on peace have helped Ireland become essentially equal with Britain, former Irish Prime Minister Garret Fitzgerald told about 100 people Wednesday.

With the aid of a projector and his thesis in hand, Fitzgerald presented the social and economic reasons for the “normalization of Irish-British relations” during the second annual T.W. Heyck Lecture Series in Harris 107.

“What he offered was an original analysis of Anglo-Irish relations interweaving the economic and political relations of the two,” said History Prof. Bill Heyck, for whom the series was named. “(It) differs from the standard Irish Nationalist explanation.”

During his two terms as prime minister from 1981 to 1982 and from 1982 to 1987, Fitzgerald pushed for liberalization of Irish laws on divorce, abortion and contraception, and also strove to reach out to the Protestants in Northern Ireland. In 1985 he and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed the Hillsborough Accord, known as the Anglo-Irish Agreement, giving Ireland a consultant role in the governance of Northern Ireland.

“After 15 years of a strained relationship, the common interest of the two governments led to the agreement,” he said. “(Before the agreement) I remember my father said that the British said so little we couldn’t understand them. We said so much they didn’t know what to believe.”

As a leading figure in the early talks between the Irish and British governments concerning peace in Northern Ireland, Fitzgerald tried to remove some of the overtly Catholic features of the constitution to make the Republic more attractive to Northern Protestants.

“In my last year as prime minister, most of the bitterness of Irish and British relations just disappeared suddenly,” Fitzgerald said. “They found out we could trust them, they could trust us. It worked out.”

Fitzgerald was minister for foreign affairs in 1973 under Liam Cosgrave, and he then became the leader of the Gael