The Good Friday Agreement, 1998: Implementation

Although the Good Friday Agreement dates from April 1998, its implementation was beset by crises over the formation of an executive, decommissioning of paramilitary arms, and policing reform. It was not until December 1999 that the institutions for which it made provision came into being. Even after that, the Assembly and executive continued to be subject to destabilizing pressures, and ultimately collapsed in 2002. It was only following the St Andrews Agreement of 2006 (which made some minor changes to the provisions agreed in 1998) that the Democratic Unionist Party agreed to restoration of the power-sharing executive and a new and more stable phase of power-sharing government ensued. The witness seminar that is at the core of this chapter discusses the role of civil servants in this process, focussing on the reorganization of government departments, the creation of North–South bodies, and the everyday mechanisms of government in the highly sensitive political context which followed the Good Friday Agreement, where delays in decommissioning and demilitarization and reform of policing were threatening political progress. Two additional interviews describe governmental thinking and strategies to resolve the outstanding issues move to a restoration of the institutions in the run-up to the St Andrews Agreement.

The Sunningdale Agreement, 1973

In an early ambitious attempt to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict in 1973–4, there emerged two key proposals that would radically change the form of Northern Ireland political institutions: power-sharing (rather than majority rule), and institutionalized links with the Republic of Ireland (rather than a ‘hard’ border). This chapter, centred on a witness seminar where several of those involved recorded their memories and interpretations, explores the thinking of officials—especially on the Irish side—as it evolved in the early 1970s. It also documents their changing views as they attempted to reach new new modes of accommodation with their British counterparts. It examines the process by which an innovative package was agreed in Sunningdale, England, in December 1973, and follows the challenging process of implementation of this package. This initiative was ultimately unsuccessful, as the new institutions collapsed in the face of determined unionist opposition in May 1974.

Introduction: Defining Moments in the British-Irish Relationship

This chapter traces the history of the relationship between the two communities in Northern Ireland and the tension between the British and Irish governments within which it was traditionally embedded. It documents the process of incremental—and sometimes radical—societal change that has transformed the nature of the conflict, as the overwhelmingly dominant position of the unionist community has been replaced by a more evenly balanced relationship. Associated with this has been the evolution of institutional machinery designed to facilitate conflict resolution and the emergence of effective channels of communication between British and Irish elites. The chapter describes the manner in which the testimonies of these elites were collected as part of research on the process of negotiation of peace in Northern Ireland. It assesses the value of elite interviews and witness seminars as significant source material for social science research.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement, 1985

The decisive collapse of the Sunningdale initiative delivered a severe blow to the prospects for settlement in Northern Ireland, setting the negotiation process back for almost a decade. The stand-off between the parties was accompanied by continuing violence. Efforts to relaunch a political initiative began in the early 1980s, this time centred on a direct government-to-government axis. The outcome was the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which established machinery for involving the Irish government in the management of Northern Ireland. This chapter examines the perspective of officials on the two sides in arriving at an accommodation. In particular, it illustrates the manner in which civil servants sought to redefine the character of the new institutional architecture, designed to withstand unionist efforts to bring it down. The witness seminar at the core of the chapter provides a fascinating insight into the effective working relationship between civil servants at the highest levels within the two states, and their success in facilitating accommodation between their political leaders.

The Good Friday Agreement, 1998: Negotiation

This chapter discusses the process by which the Northern Ireland parties finally engaged in comprehensive negotiations that included Sinn Féin. The Framework Documents offered a blueprint for these discussions. The chapter notes the difficulties of securing Sinn Féin participation, which came only with the advent of a new (Labour) government in 1997, and at the cost of the withdrawal of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party in protest at this. The set of interviews that documents this process covers the perspectives of the British and Irish governments and of the two main nationalist and unionist parties. The interviews illustrate vividly the painful process of negotiation and compromise that resulted finally in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

The Downing Street Declaration and Framework Documents, 1993–1995

The Downing Street Declaration of 1993 and the Framework Documents of 1995 mark a new direction in British–Irish policy. After the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the Irish government had gained a formal voice in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland, but the IRA campaign continued. At the end of the 1980s, a new initiative was launched: an effort to persuade Sinn Féin and the IRA to move to a purely political path. Spearheaded by nationalist leader John Hume, this took the form of successive redrafting of a statement drawn up initially by Hume following his discussions with Gerry Adams. In the resulting Downing Street Declaration of 1993, the two governments agreed to facilitate Irish unity should this be the wish of a majority in Northern Ireland. This was followed—after several months—by an IRA and then a loyalist ceasefire, and it was amplified by the Framework Documents of 1995, which outline a constitutional blueprint for a future settlement. In the witness seminar used to provide an insight into this process, British and Irish officials recalled in detail the painful redrafting and consultation processes that led ultimately to agreement between the governments and acceptance by the parties.

Conclusion: Benchmarks from the British–Irish Process

Analysis of the process by which a stable peace was secured in Northern Ireland after decades of low-level war and civil unrest suggests a number of features that account for this development. First, policy paradigms and the modes of thought in which they were embedded have evolved: debates about sovereignty, democracy, and equality have followed a distinctive path, from being wedded to specific cultural understandings to becoming broad concepts with application in a much wider domain than that of Northern Ireland. Second, these changes helped to bring the two sovereign states together in cooperative conflict management and peacemaking and permitted the formation of shared policy. Third, political, cultural, and ideological change has also facilitated limited convergence between parties within Northern Ireland. However, these processes of change have not seen the emergence of any consensus on Northern Ireland’s future, highlighting that region’s continuing dependence on effective British–Irish stewardship. Notwithstanding the achievements of the peace process, the new ideological currents unleashed by Brexit and the related political exigencies have exposed strains in Northern Ireland’s political architecture and have shown its vulnerability to stresses in the British–Irish political relationship.