The historic Good Friday agreement that ended three decades of the Troubles, brought peace to Northern Ireland and saw the Irish Republican Army and others lay down their arms, is 25 years old this Easter.
It was signed on 10 April 1998, which fell on Good Friday that year, and led to a joint Nobel peace prize for David Trimble and John Hume, leaders of the Ulster Unionist party and the SDLP.
Although the power-sharing government it established is suspended over a Brexit row, it is seen as such a diplomatic achievement that the anniversary is being marked by visits from US president, Joe Biden, former president Bill Clinton, King Charles, former prime minister Sir Tony Blair and former taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
Getting Sinn Féin and unionists in the same building was a feat in itself.
“The level of hatred was a shock to me,” Ahern recently told Oireachtas TV.
“I mean these people had never dealt with each other; they refused to share TV studios, radio studios, that they had no knowledge of each other.”
Why is the Good Friday agreement/Belfast agreement so significant?
The Americans have long hailed the agreement as a model that has yet to be bettered to end conflict between opposing ethnicities or communities.
But they are not the only ones.
John Taylor, now Lord Kilclooney, Lord Trimble’s deputy and a key member of the peace talks, recently recalled: “I remember bringing the Belfast agreement to Ramallah to give a copy to Arafat. I said, ‘Here’s the basis on which you should get an agreement between Palestine and Israel’.”
But the main reason some of the most important political figures are gathering in Belfast is to try to re-assert the narrative for Northern Ireland after the turbulent Brexit years. The big prize has been enduring peace, they will say. And there is unfinished work to ensure the peace process continues, particularly in relation to endemic paramilitary activities in drug wars and illegal moneylending.
What was the Good Friday agreement?
Signed on 10 April 1998, the Belfast agreement was a pact by unionist and nationalist leaders to share power in Northern Ireland through a new devolved government.
It was a masterclass in constructive ambiguity, allowing all sides to agree to disagree and maintain their opposing goals, albeit through peaceful means.
It also set up the process for the later decommissioning of arms and the controversial release of prisoners, including killers of police officers, from prisons as a means of persuading the IRA to swap the Armalite for the ballot box.
It was seen as a huge diplomatic feat and the culmination of a week of knife-edge negotiations led by Blair, Ahern and US senator George Mitchell, with Lord Trimble representing the unionists. The DUP did not participate in the talks.
A host of other officials and politicians, including former Labour Northern Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam, Sir Reg Empey, Sir John Holmes, Lord Murphy and SDLP’s Mark Durkan, played critical parts too, with the steely determination of SDLP leaders Lord Hume and Seamus Mallon widely recognised as pivotal.
Three sleepless nights to get the deal over the line
All-party talks, chaired by Mitchell, began in 1996, and collapsed a year later. But they established a process and the six Mitchell principles that eventually brought Sinn Féin in, committing to democracy through exclusively peaceful means, total disarmament and the renunciation of the use of force and an end to punishment beatings.
In April 1998, with a draft agreement to negotiate and talks back on, the effort was to keep the unionists in the room.
Lord Kilclooney recalled last month how he pulled the unionists out of talks just moments after they started when an Irish minister objected to an agenda point centring on the legitimacy of Northern Ireland’s right to be in the United Kingdom.
This was a huge issue at the time because Ireland’s territorial claim to the six counties was written into its constitution.
“I told George Mitchell, ‘I’m now taking the unionist delegation out of the talks,’” Taylor recalled. “That was very serious on the first day of the talks … and Mitchell said, ‘Right, but stay in the building’. So we stayed in the building all day from 10am until 5pm, when Mitchell called us back, and he said, ‘Dublin have now reconsidered the position.’”
In due course Ireland changed its constitution to remove the 62-year-old territorial claim on the six counties of Northern Ireland after a referendum.
Talks lurched from crisis to crisis with parties barely getting any sleep in the 58 hours between Wednesday 8 April and the historic announcement on 10 April.
Clinton was available by phone on demand to keep the talks alive. So critical were the hours between 8 April and 10 April that Bertie Ahern helicoptered back to Belfast after his mother died, returning a few hours later to Dublin for her funeral and flying back up to Northern Ireland after her burial to rescue the talks, which were once again near collapse.
Ahern recalls that talks on the release of prisoners went from 2am to 6am on Good Friday, with a last-minute letter of comfort to the unionists from Tony Blair that would come back years later to haunt him.
Did all parties agree to the pact?
No, the Democratic Unionist party, headed by Ian Paisley, was opposed to the pact, and even protested outside Stormont while negotiations took place.
And while the UUP signed up to the agreement, the deal sparked bitter divisions in the party that was to later cost Trimble his job as leader.
How did it pass into law?
By two referendums. In Northern Ireland, 71.12% voted in favour while south of the border, 94.39% voted in favour of the pact.
Has the Good Friday agreement worked?
It took more than 18 months to get the devolved government up and running and at times the outlook for the peace process seemed bleak.
In the 25 years since peace, Stormont has been out of action for at least nine years.
Many have asked whether the consociational government created by the agreement has passed its sell-by date, including former Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis who described the deal as “fraying if not outright broken”.
Ahern agrees that the agreement should be an evolving agreement but has urged patience, arguing reform talks can only happen once Stormont is restored.
