The Good Friday or Belfast Agreement,
signed on April 10, 1998 by the British and Irish governments and eight
political parties or groupings from Northern Ireland, was designed to end “the
Troubles” that had taken more than 3,500 lives in that province since 1969.
Another 30,000 had been injured, and
thousands more sent to prison for terrorist offences.
The Agreement contained proposals for a
Northern Ireland Assembly with a power-sharing executive, and new cross-border
institutions with the Republic of Ireland.
Dublin also agreed to drop its
constitutional claim to the six of Ulster’s nine counties that had formed
Northern Ireland in 1922, and remained part of the United Kingdom rather than
joining the new Irish Free State.
Referendums were held on May 22, 1998 in
both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In the north, voters were
asked to ratify the deal. In the south, they were asked to approve a change to
the constitution of Ireland.
In Northern Ireland, the “yes” vote was
71.12 per cent while in the Irish Republic it reached 94.39 per cent.
The
Agreement set out a complex series of provisions relating to a number of areas,
including the status and system of government of Northern Ireland within the
United Kingdom, the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland, and the relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the United
Kingdom.
No one party would be able to control the
assembly. Decisions would have to be taken on the basis of parallel consent,
requiring the endorsement of a majority of parties representing Catholic
nationalists and a majority of those of Protestant Unionists.
The agreement stipulated that Ireland would
not become one united country without the consent of a majority in Northern
Ireland, and that the people of Northern Ireland had the right to call
themselves either Irish or British.
Elections to a new Northern Irish
108-member assembly at Stormont followed.
Ministerial positions in the Northern
Ireland Executive are allocated to parties with significant representation in
the Assembly. The First Minister and deputy First Minister are nominated by the
largest and second largest parties respectively and act as chairmen of the
Executive.
There has also been a devolution of justice
and policing powers, to make them more neutral, for example, the Royal Ulster
Constabulary, which had been almost entirely Protestant and pro-Unionist, was
incorporated into the new Northern Ireland Police Service, now with Catholic
officers as well, in 2001.
At first the more extreme Catholic and
Protestant parties had been wary of the agreement, but by 1997 the militant
Democratic Unionist Party (Protestant) had entered a historic power-sharing
government with Sinn Féin, an arm of the Irish Republican Army.
The DUP leader, Ian Paisley, became first
minister, with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as his deputy.
The current government is headed by Arlene
Foster of the Democratic Unionists, which won 38 seats in the 2011 election,
with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, which gained 29 seats, as deputy first minister.
The next is May 5.
How has the Good Friday Agreement worked
out from the Irish point of view? Fairly well, according to Dr. Ray Bassett,
the Irish ambassador to Canada since 2010, who was closely involved with the
negotiations.
An experienced diplomat, he has worked
extensively on Anglo-Irish Relations, and shared his thoughts at a lecture at
UPEI on April 11.
When negotiations first began, he said,
“many felt that the divisions between Catholics and Protestants were
irreconcilable.”
But after decades of conflict, the economy
was wrecked. So paramilitaries on both sides were looking for a way to end the
violence.
The talks continued even while extremist
groups engaged in sporadic violence, so that “rejectionists” would not have a
“veto.”
Bassett admitted that Northern Ireland
remains a divided society, but violence is greatly diminished. The Good Friday
Agreement was designed in order “to manage differences,” and in that sense has
been a success.
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