This is the Good Friday agreement – one the most celebrated peace deals ever signed. In
April of 1998, these 34 pages helped put an end to a 30-year conflict that killed over 3,500 people.
The deal was a major achievement, but the road to its signing was an arduous one.
In the last episode we examined how all sides of the conflict had become exhausted by the violence.
Now, in this final episode of our Troubles series we’ll explain the timeline of events that lead to
Good Friday, how the deal worked and why Northern Ireland’s peace remains fragile to this day.
The 70s, 80s and 90s had seen a number of peace talks and negotiations , but thanks
to extremists on both sides these had always broken down. The challenge was
maintaining a Paramilitary ceasefire long enough for political talks to bear fruit.
Ending a conflict as bitter as this one, would not be easy.
As we covered in our last episode, 1994 was time of genuine hope for peace. In April,
the Provisional IRA – the largest Republican paramilitary – announced
a ceasefire. And in October, the three leading Loyalist paramilitaries did the same.
Meanwhile, informal talks were taking place with a changing roster of political groups from
all sides. However, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA was not invited.
There have been ongoing negotiations with the British government and one of the
main sticking points was a thing called prior decommissioning. Whereby the government wished
for the IRA to decommission its arms before they would allow Sinn Féin to enter into any
talks. However this was the main bargaining chip the IRA had. They hadn't been beaten
and they hadn't surrendered and they felt no compunction to actually down their weapons.
In November 1995, British Prime Minister John Major planned to
launch new ‘all party’ talks at Stormont to end the Troubles once and for all.
This was followed in January by a new report authored US Senator George Mitchell. In it
he set out a series of rules for entry to the talks. He also proposed a twin-track approach,
whereby arms decommissioning would take place at same time as the talks. It seemed like the
perfect solution, but there was a problem. The British Prime Minister John Major had lost his
majority in Westminster and relied on votes from the Ulster Unionist Party or UUP. Reservations
within the UUP led to a rejection of the two-track approach, Sinn Féin remained on the outside.
In Protest, on February 9th, the Provisional IRA detonated a truck bomb on the Isle of Dogs
in London, killing two and wounding over 100. Their two-year ceasefire was over.
Nonetheless in May elections were held to determine who would take part in the
Stormont Talks And in June they finally began, with Senator Mitchell at the helm. However, with
Provisional IRA still actively on campaign, Sinn Féin were once again excluded. That same month,
the Provisional IRA set off another truck bomb, this time in Manchester which injured over 200
and destroyed much of the city centre. That was followed up by a further descent into violence
around the town of Drumcree. As violence continued over the following months and it seemed that
Northern Ireland might return to the dark days of the 1970s. But everything was about to change.
1997 the Republic of Ireland and the UK elected new leaders in Bertie Ahern
and Tony Blair . Their efforts would help reinvigorate the peace process.
Tony Blair's Labour government has a massive majority in its victory which means it no longer
needs to rely on the Ulster Unionist Party to get things through. Blair, along with his new Northern
Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam who is the first woman to do the job, move in earnest to get peace talks
going. The pre-decommission of IRA weapons is put aside and this twin-track stream is the
one they go for. Decommissioning will come back, but for the moment Sinn Féin are in the talks.
In July the Provisional IRA restarted their ceasefire and in August Sinn Féin
were invited to the talks. However, this prompted a walkout from some hard-line
Loyalist parties. With the talks set to restart on September 15th,
no-one was sure whether the more moderate loyalist parties would even turn up. But on September 17th,
the UUP, PUP and UDP entered the talks together. This was a massive moment in the peace process
to have so many of the parties in one room. However, the hard work was only just beginning.
In January of the following year the Loyalist Ulster Democratic Party was
expelled from the talks over killings by its paramilitary wing. And in February,
after the Provisional IRA were linked with two killings in Belfast,
Sinn Féin were excluded too. Many within different paramilitary movements did not
want to give up the armed struggle which was so important to them. As splinter groups began
to emerge it was on the leaders of each faction to keep their movements together.
Martin McGuinness and Jerry Adams were vital for this deal to go through. Both of them
ran a very fine line. Martin McGuinness in particular given his standing within
the Provisional IRA as the commander had to bring the bulk of the IRA organisation
with them and marginalize the dissidents who didn't want peace. This in itself was a huge
undertaking and a huge achievement and was so vital to the Belfast Agreement's signing.
Likewise, there were problems in the Loyalist camp. Though their ceasefire from 1994 had held,
it took a prison visit from Northern Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam to convince UDA members to
back the peace talks. After both parties returned to the table,
Senator Mitchell set out a deadline for the parties to reach an agreement. It fell on the
9th of April 1998. But with just a few weeks to go, the talks would come down to the wire.
The Ulster Unionists will speak to the SDLP, the more moderate National party,
but they have no real talks with Sinn Féin at this point. Northern Ireland is holding its breath,
Britain is holding this breath, in a sense because nobody's really sure if anybody's going to agree
with this. However on the day of the 10th of April, by about five in the evening the
momentous signatures are actually endorsed on the document and the Good Friday agreement is passed.
The Belfast Agreement was based three important principles: That the status of Northern Ireland
would not change without the consent of its people. Equal rights for republican and loyalist
communities. That Northern Irish people would be free to identify is Irish, British or both.
Alongside this, new institutions were founded, including a new Northern Irish assembly with
compulsory power sharing between Loyalist and Republican parties. The agreement also
addressed the end of the Republic’s claim to Northern Ireland, the decommissioning of all
paramilitaries by May 2000, the early release of prisoners for all paramilitary on ceasefire,
a new commission on reforming the RUC and gradual withdrawal of British Army.
The agreement was essentially a fudge - It passed over many areas which would cause problems down
the line. However, it had to be this way to get parties from all viewpoints to sign it.
Having done so, the people of Northern Ireland finally had the chance of a peaceful tomorrow.
In May the agreement went out to referendums in both NI and the Republic of Ireland,
with the DUP the only party to campaign against it. By an emphatic margin, yes carried the day.
In the north 71% of people vote yes for this. If we're looking at the compositions here over
90% of those votes were nationalists and only around 50% were unionists so there's
an issue there with unionism and still a strong suspicion of Sinn Féin and of the Provisional IRA.
However in the south it's even more overwhelming the yes vote,
around 91% of people vote yes. But although peace had been signed there were a number of issues that
were still to be dealt with after this point. The conflict in Northern Ireland was far from over.
Three months later, Northern Ireland would see the deadliest single incident
of the Troubles. On a busy Saturday, an IRA splinter group set off a bomb in middle of
Omagh, County Tyrone – killing 29, including a pregnant mother.
The bombing in Omagh was a huge test for peace in Northern Ireland. However after going through
so much to get to this point it galvanised people. People still wanted peace and they
didn't want to slip back into the carnage of the 1970s. Nevertheless the dissident Republicans who
carried this out and other groups are still at large. A report carried out by both the Police
Service of Northern Ireland and the security service MI5 just a few years ago concluded that
all the paramilitary groups that existed during the Troubles still exist in some form today.
On December 2nd 1998, the new Northern Ireland executive finally took power. But
the government would fall apart several times over the following years. Slow progress in Provisional
IRA decommissioning caused three short suspensions of Stormont during 2000 and 2001. Before, in 2002,
power sharing fell apart for far longer, this time over an alleged IRA spy ring inside Stormont.
By 2003, the Northern Irish electorate had polarised around the two most hard-line groups,
with the DUP and Sinn Féin becoming the largest representatives of each
side. The DUP did not accept the Belfast agreement and refused to share power,
meanwhile Sinn Fein chose not to recognise the newly reformed Police
Service of Northern Ireland. As such, the assembly at Stormont remain closed.
But in 2005, the Provisional IRA was adjudged to have fully decommissioned its arsenal and,
though it did not disband, announced that its armed struggle was at an end.
It would take up to 5 more years for some Loyalist paramilitaries to do the same.
This was a crucial step, which eventually led to the St Andrews Agreement in 2006. In it
Sinn Fein recognised PSNI and the DUP agreed to power sharing. After a new election in 2007 the
Northern Ireland executive finally reformed. The DUP’s Ian Paisley became First Minister,
with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness his Deputy. They would become the most unlikely of friends.
In July that year, the British Army announced the end of Operation Banner after 38 years,
its longest ever continuous military operation.Today,
the conflict known as the Troubles is at an end, but the groups who fought it have not disappeared.
The presence of these groups is still there in Northern Ireland, often controlling communities,
often policing these communities and carrying out punishments against drug dealers and also
engaging in criminal activities such as drugs dealing itself. In addition,
the segregation and the sectarianism still remains in Northern Ireland and
the walls that separate many communities particularly in Belfast remain to this day.
More recently Brexit has proven to be a major challenge to the peace process in
Northern Ireland. The Brexit deal led to the DUP’s withdrawal from Stormont, and as of the making
this video, Northern Ireland has no parliament – leading to fears the violence could return.
One issue is young people who either weren't born during the Troubles or were incredibly
young when they ended have no real concept of what it was like and some have been
moved towards violence by groups within their communities. Similar on a more positive note.
Many younger people see no identity issues with having friends on either side of the
community and don't associate themselves with the sectarianism of the Troubles. So there is a
balance here and it's difficult to know exactly what direction things will go in in the future.
The Troubles was a bitter conflict, fought between two sides with little in common other
than the loss they suffered. The deal signed in April of 1998 is not perfect. But it helped put
an end to violence that had cost over 3,500 lives. The Belfast Agreement is a testament to compromise
in the most difficult of circumstances. That peace is possible for those with the courage to seek it.