The Good Friday Agreement

By Siobhan Fenton

In April 1998, the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to the bloodshed that had engulfed Northern Ireland for thirty years. It was lauded worldwide as an example of an iconic peace process to which other divided societies should aspire.
Today, the region has avoided returning to the bloodshed of the Troubles, but the peace that exists is deeply troubled and far from stable. The botched Parliament at Stormont lumbers from crisis to crisis and society remains deeply divided. At the time of writing, Sinn Féin and the DUP are refusing to share power and Northern Ireland faces direct rule from London. Meanwhile, Brexit poses a serious threat to the country's hard-won stability.
Twenty years on from the historic accord, journalist Siobhán Fenton revisits the Good Friday Agreement, exploring its successes and failures, assessing the extent to which Northern Ireland has been able to move on from the Troubles, and analysing the recent collapse of power-sharing at Stormont. This remarkable book re-evaluates the legacy of the Good Friday Agreement and asks what needs to change to create a healthy and functional politics in Northern Ireland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Release date: May 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785903823

Siobhan Fenton

Siobhan Fenton lives in Belfast, where she reports on British and Northern Irish politics for the UK media. She writes for The Independent, The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Spectator and has guest presented for BBC Radio 4 on Northern Irish politics.

Book preview

iii

THE GOOD FRIDAY

AGREEMENT

SIOBHÁN FENTON

v

CONTENTS

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter One:A Brief History of the Troubles

Chapter Two:Divided Society

Chapter Three:Cold-Case Murders

Chapter Four:Intergenerational Trauma

Chapter Five:Equality and Human Rights

Chapter Six:Brexit

Chapter Seven:Power-Sharing

Index

About the Author

Copyright

1

INTRODUCTION

In April 1998, the seemingly impossible happened. Northern Ireland’s political parties agreed on a peace treaty bringing an end to the bloody conflict that had engulfed the region for the past thirty years. Some 3,700 people had died in the bloodshed, which had become known by the grimly understated euphemism ‘the Troubles’.

I was five years old when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. My parents recall with great distress going out to vote in the referendum held in May that year on whether or not to approve the political parties signing it. They later remembered the intense anxiety and trepidation that followed the referendum as they waited to see if this thing, this new ‘Good Friday Agreement’ experiment really was the end or merely another false start only to be followed by the bitter backlash of more bloodshed. After a botched and short-lived ceasefire just a few years before, we were all too aware of how false hope could add to the sense of despair and helplessness amid the otherwise continuous dreary horror that 2had come to characterise much of Northern Irish existence. Across the region, people waited anxiously to see if or how power-sharing would work, desperate that this would be the means through which peace would finally take hold and Northern Ireland’s nightmare would finally end after decades of unimaginable and inexcusable horror. There was a growing sense that Northern Ireland had long since reached its limits and there was only so much trauma left to take before we would all lose our minds collectively.

The Good Friday Agreement was a significant event, we all knew. But we did not know if it would usher in peace, or merely give enough progress to spark a major backlash of violence in the form of a huge atrocity or killing spree. My mother would switch on our thick ’90s box television set every evening while she attempted to distract herself making dinner, yet always watching the news out of the corner of her eye for another mass murder, another massacre and another sign that the Good Friday Agreement had failed like all the measures before it.

It’s a period that I was too young to understand at the time, something restricted to ‘big people’ talk between adults from which us children were excluded. In many ways such a period of trepidation is simply unfathomable for my generation precisely because of those efforts our parents made towards peace, which mean we simply lack the horrific memories capable of framing such events adequately.

After the referendum passed and power-sharing was established, a whole nation’s hopes were pinned on the Stormont Parliament. As the rusty doors creaked open for the first time in decades, a weary population held its breath. As the first elected 3politicians walked through those doors and into the parliamentary chamber, there was a palpable sense that this was it – Northern Ireland, long out of last chances and final warnings, had its last chance at normality.

Mercifully, the anxiety that surrounded the Good Friday Agreement experiment in 1998 soon turned out to be unfounded. While not without its hiccups and problems in its initial years, power-sharing at Stormont succeeded in finally beginning to heal our deeply divided society. After decades of bloodshed and division, it seemed Northern Ireland was finally on the path to peace. The Agreement was celebrated the world over and heads of state around the globe urged the parties to work together and ensure the region did not slip once again into the dark days that had gone before. The moment is still cited by many politicians and international relations experts around the world as an example of an iconic peace process to which other divided societies should aspire.

Yet, twenty years on, it’s a rosy image that few in contemporary Northern Ireland might recognise.

Once the world’s media packed up, the cameras stopped rolling and global heads of state flew home, Northern Ireland has ceased to be much discussed or understood. Indeed, one could get the impression that Northern Ireland has been suspended in time since the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the region and its people entirely frozen at the moment the parties put their pens to the document, like an odd fairy tale whereby a nation of one million people slipped into slumber like post-conflict sleeping beauties.

Northern Ireland’s story did not end in 1998. Arguably, it only entered a different phase of complexity. While the society is no 4longer engulfed in violent conflict, hopes that a normalised society would emerge have yet to be realised. Instead, Northern Ireland continues to be home to a deeply unsettled and divided region still split along the Protestant–Catholic axis. It is a society in which armed paramilitary gangs, although no longer the overt scourge they once were, continue to carry out ‘punishment’ shootings, plant bombs and threaten security forces on an almost weekly basis. It is a society still struggling with questions over how or even if it should acknowledge its dark past. It is a society still grappling with whether or not to accept modern social changes and which continues to define LGBT people as lesser in law and to arrest women for having abortions.

To further complicate matters, it is also a society which now faces particular and entirely unexpected challenges on a national and an international stage due to the UK voting to leave the European Union in 2016, as Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another EU country, in the form of the Republic of Ireland. Similarly, stability in the region was further destabilised when the Westminster government entered into a pact with one of Northern Ireland’s parties in 2017 after the general election failed to grant any of the English parties a majority government.

Particularly troublingly, most recently Northern Ireland has been left without any government at all following a power-sharing collapse in January 2017, when the main nationalist and unionist parties could no longer agree to share power and govern together.

This book does not seek to underplay or ignore the major role the Good Friday Agreement played in Northern Ireland’s peace 5process. However, it asserts that on the twentieth anniversary year of the Good Friday Agreement, we owe it to ourselves and each other to question what peace we have and on what it is based.

It seeks to do this for three reasons. Firstly, at a local level: because Northern Ireland deserves better. It is hoped that this can contribute to greater understanding of and reignite debate over the many aspects of life in Northern Ireland that have slipped into being the status quo but ought to be challenged and contested.

Secondly, at a national level: because the UK’s own failure to understand or often even acknowledge Northern Ireland’s existence holds the nation as a whole back. This tendency has most recently been thrown into sharp relief as events such as Brexit, when it was only after the UK voted to leave the European Union that many people (both politicians and voters) realised they shared a land border with the EU in the form of Northern Ireland and this resulted in them scrambling to swot up on their unfamiliar cousin in time for Brexit negotiations – often unsuccessfully so. Similarly, when the UK government entered a pact with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party following the 2017 general election, it once again became clear that many voters and even political experts were unaware of Northern Ireland as online searches of ‘What is the DUP’ jumped to vertiginous heights, becoming the eighth most googled question in the UK in 2017 (slotting in just below ‘What is waterboarding’ and above ‘What is Pink’s real name’). Simply put, it is in Great Britain’s best interests to have at least a basic awareness of this part of the UK, which for decades has been marginalised and misunderstood.

Thirdly, at an international level: within the context of wider 6discussions about Great Britain’s global legacy of colonialism and imperialism. Northern Ireland is merely one example of the ways in which Great Britain has colonised other countries throughout history for its own economic and strategic interests before withdrawing once they cease to be of use (though in Northern Ireland’s case, this withdrawal has arguably been merely psychological). This has been most brutally observed in countries such as India and Uganda. Britain’s Plantation in Northern Ireland has fortunately never been as brutal or violent as its oppression of some other nations, largely due to the white privilege enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of Northern Irish people, and so the limits of comparison to other colonised nations must not be overstretched. However, it is important to consider the ways in which Britain interacts with countries with which it has had a colonial relationship and to look at the issue of colonial legacy, memory, trauma, responsibility, reparations and other recourses to justice.

WRITING THIS BOOK

Like many young people growing up in Northern Ireland, I was filled with an urgent desire to leave as soon as I could. Northern Ireland, it was often said, was an interesting place to have come from but a much less interesting place to be in. When I was nineteen and went to university in England, I latched on to my way out with a deep sense of relief. Northern Irishness was something odd, awkward and imbued with a kind of pain that could make English people feel uncomfortable just from hearing your voice. It 7was something I was keen to shrug off during my time in England, although it was almost invariably betrayed by my gruff accent and gobbledygook name.

I began my career as a journalist based in London, mainly reporting on British politics and social affairs. In March 2017, I was sent on assignment by my editors at The Independent to cover the snap election in Northern Ireland, which had been called to try to save power-sharing. Uncertain of how long negotiations might take, I booked a one-way flight from London to Belfast, thinking it would take a week or perhaps two for a deal to be reached. One year on, the Parliament at Stormont lies vacant as negotiations continue, and that return flight has yet to be booked. This book has been the product of my reporting and researching during that year. It was written primarily over the course of 2017 when the main nationalist and unionist parties refused to share power together. During this period, I was based in Stormont (Northern Ireland’s Parliament building) while negotiations were taking place between the parties to see if the government could be salvaged. During this time, I also attended inquests of ‘cold-case’ murders from the Troubles which are only now coming before the courts. I also interviewed people from across different communities and perspectives and invited them to discuss the issues that they felt most urgently needed addressing twenty years on from the Good Friday Agreement.

Like almost everyone from this place, my feelings towards my home country are complex. If growing up in Northern Ireland has taught me one thing, it is to be wary of blind national pride, as it has the potential to be a harmful and toxic thing with an 8unnerving capacity to dehumanise those who are considered to run outside of our national identity. Therefore, I will not describe my feelings towards the place as a sense of love or duty per se, but perhaps a complex mix of responsibility, affection and tenderness towards this extremely abnormal place which has been the site of so much suffering. This book does not seek to be party political in advancing the views or agenda of any one party or any one ‘side’. But it will of course be deeply political due the nature of life in Northern Ireland, which has a relentless way of politicising the quotidian quite unlike anywhere else in the world. The only political stance I wish to advance is that Northern Ireland’s peace process is far from resolved and that the progress in the region has been hampered by an unwillingness both locally and internationally to look squarely at the kind of peace we have, on what it is based and where it is going. I seek only to share the experiences and stories of people here in the hope that better awareness of this place may result in better understanding of it. Beyond that, the political solutions will be for the individual reader to contemplate and question.

I am conscious that I do not wish this book to appear to be dismissive of the efforts that the generation above made. Their work in ensuring that elusive concept of peace finally took hold should never be underestimated or downplayed. However, I am also aware that so many of those efforts were made in my generation’s name – the refrain often uttered was that this had to be done ‘for the sake of the wee ones’. Now the ‘wee ones’ are grown up and being arrested for having abortions, treated as lesser if they are LGBT, go to solely ‘Protestant’ or ‘Catholic’ schools, live on solely 9‘Protestant’ or ‘Catholic’ streets and suffer from intergenerational trauma. It is in this context, therefore, that I feel it is important for the post-peace generation to take up this ethos of those who brought us peace, not to erase their efforts, but to continue their ethos in pushing for Northern Ireland to do better for the most vulnerable people for whom it is home.

This book seeks to shine a light on some of the main issues in contemporary Northern Irish society by sharing the stories of some of the people most affected by these issues, as well as explaining the challenges that different groups both face and represent. It is by no means an exhaustive exploration. Twenty years of any society is far too rich and complex to be distilled into one book. However, it seeks to arm readers with an awareness of some of the main issues in the hope that it will increase their awareness and understanding of many of the core issues facing Northern Ireland at this time. I hope it can be of use in some small way in informing discussions both locally and internationally as we mark this milestone of the Good Friday Agreement’s twentieth anniversary.

At this critical junction of two decades, it is not enough to merely say that Northern Ireland is at peace. Instead, we must look critically at what kind of peace has emerged, at what cost it came and whether it is something we can continue to take for granted. Through this exploration, we can best understand how this peace can be protected in the present day and further secured in the future.

This book is also inevitably shaped by my experiences as a Northern Irish person. One of the questions I am most frequently asked by editors, producers and fellow journalists from elsewhere 10in the UK about my reporting is this: am I Protestant or am I Catholic? It is a question asked apparently on the assumption that my writing is written either from a Catholic perspective or a Protestant one and that knowing clearly which ‘side’ I am on will alert them to the biases and prejudices in my work, or what in academia tends to be referred to with the euphemism of ‘positionality’. I can understand why it is a question that people unfamiliar with Northern Ireland ask. Nonetheless, it is a question to which I do not have a clear or simple answer.

It is a question I have had considerable reservations about addressing, as it is a deeply personal one. But, knowing it is one that might otherwise be in the reader’s mind throughout this book, I will try to address it as fully as I can now. The true answer, which will no doubt be a disappointment anyone hoping for a straightforward one, is that I am not quite either. I was born to an English father and a Northern Irish Catholic mother at the tail end of the conflict. At the time of their marriage in 1985, relationships such as theirs were known as ‘mixed marriages’ and were taboo in Northern Ireland. In Republican communities especially, there was strict policing of relationships across what were considered to be ‘enemy lines’. In particular, Catholic women in relationships with Protestant men or Englishmen suspected of having connections to the army or MI5 were considered the most objectionable. During the conflict, such women were often subjected to a horrific process known as ‘tarring and feathering’, whereby they would be dragged from their homes by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), shaved bald, tied to a lamppost, covered in hot tar and then doused in feathers in a sadistic act of humiliation to punish their perceived ‘disloyalty’. 11

Belfast at that time was a dangerous place to have an English accent, as was shown most horrifyingly when two Englishmen were effectively lynched as they drove past an IRA funeral in the west of the city in 1988. After locals became suspicious of the strangers and heard their English accents, they formed a mob around their car, dragged the men from the vehicle and viciously beat them, before driving them to a secluded area where they were ruthlessly executed. It later emerged that the men were off-duty soldiers. Many people, particularly in Catholic communities, were deeply mistrustful of anyone with an English accent.

As a result, after they married, my parents moved to England to start our family, as far as possible from the IRA, from the threat of being tarred and feathered and from lynch mobs sparked by English accents. My siblings and I were born in Southampton and lived there until the IRA declared their 1994 ceasefire, after which my parents hoped it would now be safe to return and moved back to Northern Ireland. I was three years old when we made the move. I am therefore part of a generation known in Northern Ireland as the ‘peace babies’ or the ‘ceasefire babies’, as my peers and I largely have few memories of the conflict itself and instead have mostly encountered it through its shadow. For me, this was true bar one traumatic incident, and I have known more of Northern Ireland’s peace process than its violent days. Following our return after the IRA ceasefire, my family was raised in a little village in a rural stretch just outside Belfast, which was mostly composed of recently married young Catholic couples from West Belfast who moved there specifically to raise their children away from violence and Republicanism. My upbringing was therefore 12primarily Catholic, as almost all of our neighbours, classmates and friends were Catholic. However, as my father was English and had had a very brief stint training in the British Army (though he was never involved in any combat), he fell within the Northern Irish context of being ‘Protestant’ due to being associated with England and Britishness. This meant that many in our community considered our family a ‘mixed family’ which was not quite Protestant or Catholic, inhabiting something of a grey area.

When with my father, I would be assumed to be a Protestant child due to his accent. Conversely, when with my mother, I would be read or perceived as being a Catholic child. This resulted in very different experiences of police or the British Army, who would naturally relax when they encountered my father, who was considered ‘one of them’, in ways that they would not around my mother. Similarly, Catholics or Republicans would speak with an ease around my mother while stiffening upon hearing my father’s accent. One of the key ways in which people in Northern Ireland work out which ‘side’ someone is on is through their name. In that regard, my name has also often proved confusing for people due to my first name being in the Irish language, and therefore read as being Catholic or nationalist, while my surname, in its stiff Englishness, would not be out of place on an English MP or a character in a Jane Austen novel. My positioning in the Northern Irish context was therefore somewhat fluid while I was growing up, being at various times within or without, considered at once both and neither. Whether this has given me a useful perspective through which to view Northern Irish society from multiple sides, or is so odd an experience as to entirely 13invalidate my ability to understand either, will be for the reader to decide.

LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY

As we will see, language and terminology are highly politicised and fiercely contested in Northern Ireland. Throughout this book, I have used the standard terms generally used by mainstream media outlets and the legal or official terms for places and regions, as they are generally deemed the most neutral terms used in reporting. For instance, I have referred to the region as Northern Ireland, as that is its official name and is generally considered the most neutral term, though I acknowledge that some in the Protestant/unionist community prefer the term ‘Ulster’ or ‘the province’, while some in the Catholic/nationalist community prefer the term ‘North of Ireland’ or ‘the six counties’. Similarly, the name of the region’s second city is deeply controversial: unionists prefer to refer to it as ‘Londonderry’, while nationalists call it ‘Derry’. As a result, the term ‘Derry-Londonderry’ is used by many media outlets and government bodies in Northern Ireland as a means of acknowledging this tension while not passing a judgement on the validity of either perspective. For the same reasons, the term ‘Derry-Londonderry’ is used throughout this book. 14

15

CHAPTER ONE

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TROUBLES

Full disclosure: what follows is not a definitive, objective, exhaustive history of the Troubles conflict. Nor could it be. There can be no one, sole, definitive, objective history of the Troubles.

Any writer of history who claims to offer a definitive document on an event or community is trading in snake oil – at worst wilfully misleading and at best self-delusional. This is true of any portrayal of the past, which cannot be viewed through one lens alone but is best approached by considering different accounts, perspectives and versions.

This limitation is particularly acute when writing a history of a conflict which pivots on ‘two sides’, each having vastly varied understandings and interpretations of historical events. Indeed, much of the conflict in Northern Ireland itself stems from the different communities fiercely contesting historical events.

Nor is it merely the case that there is a ‘Protestant history of the Troubles’ or a ‘Catholic history of the Troubles’, although of course 16many conflicting accounts do differ along these ethno-religious lines. Rather, a reading of events centred on working-class people’s experiences might yield different results from one which prioritises the middle-class experience. Similarly so with a history centred on the experiences of women, LGBT people, ethnic minorities or people with disabilities.

Therefore, what follows is a history of events which I consider important in giving a framework to understand the main issues involved in causing and constituting the Troubles conflict as well as the parallel peace process climaxing in the Good Friday Agreement. Of course, it is not exhaustive. While it seeks to present a history as free from ideological bent and bias as possible, there are no doubt other events that other authors would include or prioritise.

For the reader who is unfamiliar with Northern Irish history, therefore, reading other histories and accounts in addition to this is encouraged as providing further context and an awareness of some of the contested histories of the region.

THE ULSTER PLANTATION

Although the Troubles itself largely took place between the late 1960s and late 1990s, the roots of the conflict stretch back some 400 years, to the sixteenth century.

Prior to this time, the English had had some considerable presence in neighbouring Ireland but never succeeded in subsuming the island totally under their power. During his reign, Henry VIII 17was keen to neutralise the threat of having a Catholic enclave just off his shores. The newly Protestant monarch feared a Papist attack could be launched as relations between him and Rome further soured. In 1541, he was declared King of Ireland.

The Ulster Plantation began in earnest in the early seventeenth century under James I, as the British forcibly confiscated land and property from the native Irish and gave it to thousands of trusted Protestants from England and Scotland instead. The scheme benefited Britain as it stripped potentially rebellious Irish Catholics of their land and prominence and transferred it to loyal British Protestants who could be counted on to support the crown. In turn, it benefited the planters financially and socially, as through the scheme they received not only valuable property and land but also considerable social influence and power as they were installed as the new ruling class.

However, a further dynamic also affected how many of the planters perceived themselves – a crucial dynamic that helps explain some of the mindset of hardline loyalists to this day. Many planters considered themselves to be doing God’s work in setting up home in Ulster, a region they considered to be a promised land which they had a divine right to own and to rule. Following the intense religious tensions of the Reformation, they considered themselves to be righteously subduing errant and damned Catholics by instilling the correct and true religion.

Under the Plantation, a number of discriminatory practices were enacted against the native Irish communities. The two communities seldom mixed. Many present-day Protestants are direct descendants of the Protestant planters, while many present-day 18Catholics are direct descendants of the native Irish Catholic communities.

Therefore, it is important to note at this stage the terminology that emerged when describing the two communities in Northern Ireland. When discussing the Troubles, the common terms used for the conflicting ‘sides’ are ‘Protestants’ and ‘Catholics’. This stems from long-held terminology dating back to the Plantation era. The terms are, however, somewhat misleading and risk giving the unfortunate and over-simplistic impression that the conflict is a religious war. There can be no doubt that religion plays a part in both groups’ identities; however, the terms ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ are convenient linguistic signifiers for much more complex identities and conceal as much as they convey about the real causes of division. When people in Northern Ireland speak of ‘Protestants’ in the context of the Troubles, they refer to the culture and identity of these English and Scottish planters who identified strongly with the Protestant faith but also with English and Scottish culture, who consider themselves to be British and have a reverence for and loyalty to the British monarchy. Similarly, when we speak of ‘Catholics’ in the context of the Troubles, this tends to indicate not only people of the Roman Catholic faith but also the culture of the native Irish communities, for instance a desire to see Ireland self-determined rather than ruled by Britain or the British, and an affinity for Irish cultural pursuits such as Gaelic sports or the language.

Reviews for The Good Friday Agreement

[Alice Chan · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Personally knowing Siobhan from growing up together all the way until she made it into Oxford university to study English Literature (after a retake of her original "U" score in her first attempt, falsifying her mental health wellbeing that gifted her an A* upon retaking then interviewing and gaining acceptance) as an undergraduate. It is a statement to both an undeserving entitled individual, who has spent most of her adult life coasting along her cushy career path on mainland Great Britain. Her writing style is not "intentionally" done in a vague shallow manner to aid understanding for those who are not nationals of Northern Ireland to get a grasp of such a complex crucial part of Northern Irish history. Rather it's a perfect example of how she personally states "Stormont is run from London" in a cry for a United Ireland, only half Northern Irish and half English. Spent her adult years and career ruthlessly clawing her way disposing of those who she added no personal value to her anymore, and was willingly selected and willing to write this shallow vague perspective that Great Britain want people to read and see.

It's not entirely Siobhan's fault, but being only 6 years old when the Good Friday Agreement took place. She was exactly the specification of undeserved entitled author with just enough of a connection to Northern Ireland and the "Oxford" stamp of approval in graduation of English literature to be easily talked into publishing this under her name. All parties involved the production of this book Siobhan Fenton, Biteback publishing, I'm sure undisclosed higher up political parties behind the scenes were merely a perfect fit to achieve their narcissistic personal goals. To that end, it could be seen as a masterpiece.