Conflict analysis specialist, the University’s Professor Feargal Cochrane comments on the Good Friday Agreement that heralded a new era of peace in Northern Ireland and brought a two year multi-party negotiation to a successful conclusion 20 years ago today.
‘A few weeks later on 22 May 1998, the GFA was endorsed by referenda in both parts of Ireland by large majorities (71% in Northern Ireland and 95% in the Irish Republic). The GFA was duly endorsed by both the UK and Irish parliamentary systems and by the wider international community.
‘The main protagonists were lauded by the global media – not least those with links to the paramilitary factions on both sides, credited with convincing the ‘men of violence’ to opt for the ballot box, rather than the “Armalite”.
‘The two main party leaders, David Trimble of the Ulster Unionist Party and John Hume, leader of the SDLP, won the Nobel Peace Prize and Northern Ireland shone out a beacon of hope around the world that negotiated settlements based on power-sharing really could work.
So 20 years on what should we make of the GFA and its legacy? It will certainly go down as a key moment in Irish history and in Anglo-Irish relations more broadly. It demonstrated that the main political parties in Northern Ireland could negotiate and construct a political settlement based on sharing power with one another.
‘It drove a coach and horses through the bloodless diplomatic view that there was no solution to the ‘Irish problem’ and that an ‘acceptable level of violence’ was the best that could be hoped for. The GFA gave the lie to this dismal vision and inspired Ireland’s greatest contemporary poet, Seamus Heaney, to believe that a further shore was reachable from here.
‘Yes the power-sharing institutions that followed have been chronically unstable and dysfunctional but we should not forget what the GFA has achieved. It took the heat out of the political conflict and brought large scale violence to an end.
‘Today you are much more likely to be struck by lightning, win the lottery, or die in an agricultural accident in Northern Ireland, than to be killed on the basis of your assumed religio-cultural background. The GFA championed the principle of ‘parity of esteem’ for the unionist and nationalist traditions allowing the former to choose to be British and the latter to be Irish.
‘The GFA was also based on the ‘consent principle’ which in effect meant that both Northern militant republicans and the Irish state had to accept that any change in the political status of Northern Ireland was a matter for the people living there to decide.
‘The consent principle is stitched into the GFA and its institutions and runs through the DNA of the entire peace process – at least until the Brexit referendum complicated matters. Northern Ireland voted to remain in the Brexit referendum but the integrity of the self-determination of this vote (and that in Scotland) was mowed down by the Brexit juggernaut.
‘It produced the irony that the Irish government and Sinn Fein, who traditionally had political or constitutional difficulties in recognising the legitimacy of Northern Ireland as a political entity – have since been championing its right to consent. The DUP meanwhile, a party that has traditionally been a keen supporter of devolution, now want to integrate with the rest of the UK against the expressed wishes of Northern Ireland.
‘Of course we should not forget the role of Ireland here in the context of Brexit. It had a referendum too in 1998 though the question posed to voters in the Republic was slightly different. People were not just asked if they did, or did not, support the GFA.
‘They were also asked if they approved a constitutional amendment to Articles 2 and 3 that softened Ireland’s political claim over defining and reuniting the national territory. This was converted into more aspirational language to sweeten the deal for unionists.
‘This was a big concession at the time and a significant commitment by Ireland. If Brexit unpicks the GFA and the undertakings that were entered into by the UK government, then Ireland might be understandably aggrieved that it stuck by its side of the GFA bargain while the British undermined it on the altar of Brexit.
‘It is inconceivable that Ireland would have another referendum to harden this claim up again – but it might be in the back of some Irish political minds as the negotiations reach their conclusion in 2019.
‘Beyond the respective referendums in 1998, the institutions that were established after the GFA have failed to deliver on a number of levels. They have been endemically unstable and have been without functioning institutions for over a year following disagreement between the two main parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP.
‘More broadly, the GFA has not changed people’s lives for the better in a tangible way or dealt with the embedded structural segregation within Northern Ireland society that replicates the binary ethnonational antagonism that fuels the conflict. The two main communities in Northern Ireland, for the most part, go to separate schools, live in separate areas, play separate sports, and get buried in separate graveyards.
‘At the moment the further shore referred to by Heaney does not seem to be reachable from here – at least in the short term – but the violent phase of conflict in Northern Ireland is over and the GFA was instrumental in bringing that about. That is certainly worth celebrating.’
Feargal Cochrane is vice chair of the Political Studies Association and professor of International Conflict Analysis at the University of Kent. He is director of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre and deputy head of the School of Politics and International Relations at Kent. His current research is examining the impact of Brexit on the peace process in Northern Ireland and its devolved institutions.
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