THE TWO MOST BORING WORDS IN THE ENGlish language? For a time, the answer from almost every news editor in London was “Northern Ireland”. Then came the Belfast Agreement, signed 26 years ago on Good Friday, 1998.
Three decades of deadlock had come to an end. The unlikeliest combination of political actors, and it’s worth listing them — the Irish and British governments, Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Ulster Unionist Party, Progressive Unionist Party, Ulster Democratic Party, Alliance Party, Labour Coalition and the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition — had somehow reached an understanding. Only hours after it was reported that the negotiations in Stormont were close to collapse, the parties had agreed to a permanent ceasefire, the release of paramilitaries from jail, changes to the Irish Republic’s constitution and, most eye-catchingly of all, power-sharing.
Roughly 30 years after it had begun and following the loss of more than 3,500 lives, the terrorism we knew as “the Troubles” was over. Even
