The Good Friday Agreement in context: Q&A
What caused the conflict?
The conflict in Northern Ireland – responsible for more than 3,500 deaths – has political, religious and colonial roots that stretch back several centuries. The rift between Protestants and Catholics can be traced back to the (often brutal) British conquest of Ulster in the early 17th century, when mainly Protestant plantation settlers from England and Scotland were given land – confiscated from the native Irish Catholics – and political privileges. In subsequent centuries, Protestants maintained their relative advantage over Catholics – an imbalance that was to separate the two into permanently antagonistic camps and spark enduring sectarian violence.
Have the surface motives for sectarian violence changed over the years?
They have, although the underlying causes remain largely the same. The conflict’s transition to its current representation occurred in the late 19th century, when the issue became one of Home Rule: those who supported the Act of Union versus those who opposed it. The two sides formed mutually opposing political parties in 1886: the mainly Protestant unionists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom; and the predominantly Catholic nationalists, who wanted it to leave the UK and become the Republic of Ireland.
How long has the country been divided?
The 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, an attempt by militant Irish republicans to win independence from Britain and the most significant Irish uprising since the rebellion of 1798, sparked a chain of events that sparked two wars and cleaved the island in two via the 1920 Government of Ireland Act. In the south, 26 counties formed a separate state, while six counties in the north remained within the UK. Over successive decades, the Catholic minority in the north suffered discrimination over housing and jobs, which fuelled already bitter resentment. Partition confirmed that the Irish people were deeply divided between loyalist Protestants, primarily concentrated in Ulster, and the overwhelmingly Catholic overall majority who sought independence.
What effect did being declared a separate jurisdiction have on Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland remained part of the UK following partition, but was granted its own Parliament and devolved government (albeit with limited powers) – a move seen by many as Westminster’s attempt to rid itself of ‘the Irish question’ that had dogged the British government for so long. Protestant unionists, the majority in Northern Ireland, welcomed the new regime, but the Catholic republicans refused to accept the legitimacy of the state, claiming the division was illegal.
What sparked the Troubles?
The term was originally used to describe the violence that broke out between 1919 and 1923, during the Irish war of independence and subsequent civil war, but it was resurrected several decades later. The years between 1920 and 1960 were marred by occasional outbreaks of sectarian violence, but Northern Ireland was relatively stable by the early 1960s. That stability, however, was to be short-lived: in 1966, a perceived revival of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising prompted the emergence of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an illegal loyalist paramilitary movement. In 1968 and 1969, Catholic civil rights marches and counter-protests by Protestant loyalists spiralled into violent unrest, signalling what is generally accepted as the start of the Troubles.
What were the key events?
In August 1969, amid escalating violence, British troops were called in to support the government. IRA militants formed the Provisional IRA in a bid to defend Catholic neighbourhoods and force the British to withdraw. In response, Loyalist paramilitary groups launched a campaign of sectarian violence against the Catholic community.
The introduction of internment without trial in August 1971 led to a dramatic increase in republican violence. A series of incidents, culminating in the killing of 13 unarmed demonstrators by British paratroopers on January 30 1972, Bloody Sunday, prompted London to impose direct rule.
In January 1974, a power-sharing executive – the Council of Ireland – was formed using moderates from the nationalist, unionist and cross-community parties. A strike by loyalist trade unionists, paramilitaries and politicians, however, prompted many of the executive’s moderate unionists to resign.
By the late 1970s, a crisis was developing in Northern Ireland’s prisons as republican prisoners staged protests. In 1980, they commenced hunger strikes that won much sympathy in Ireland and overseas. Northern nationalists elected one hunger striker, Bobby Sands, as a member of the Westminster Parliament in a by-election. Margaret Thatcher, then British prime minister, refused to compromise and ten strikers, including Sands, died – prompting supporters to vote in significant numbers for candidates of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, at subsequent elections.
In 1979, having secured arms from Libya, the IRA escalated its violence, murdering Lord Mountbatten. In October 1984, the IRA nearly killed Thatcher in a bomb attack on the Conservative Party Conference at Brighton.
In 1985, spurred into diplomatic action by rising support for Sinn Féin, the Irish government produced the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) – conceived as a way of ending nationalist alienation and increasing security cooperation between the Irish and British states. Despite massive unionist protest, the agreement survived.
By the late 1980s, a peace process was developing, with informal discussions between republicans, the SDLP, and the British and Irish governments. In 1994 the IRA called a cease-fire, followed by a similar decision six weeks later by the loyalist paramilitaries.
All-party talks, which included Sinn Féin, stalled in 1997 when the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Protestant cleric Ian Paisley, refused to attend. But under the chairmanship of former United States senator George Mitchell, the talks reached agreement on Good Friday, April 10 1998, on a long and detailed list of constitutional and institutional provisions.
What was included in the agreement?
The 1998 settlement, known as the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement, offered greater equality; a place for all parties in government relative to their strength in the elected assembly; increasing functional and economic integration between the two parts of Ireland; and constitutional security for unionists while they remained a majority. It involved the creation of institutions where Catholics and Protestants worked closely; proportionality in elections and in executive formation; mutual vetoes for the unionist and nationalist blocs; and a dual premiership. Unionists saw it as a way of stabilising a now more egalitarian union with Great Britain, while republicans saw it as a step on the way to more radical change.
Was the agreement readily adopted?
The reluctance of the IRA to surrender its weapons—and the unwillingness of many unionists to settle for anything less—brought the peace process to a halt on several occasions. In 2002, the British government suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly for the fourth time since the Good Friday Agreement had been reached and returned Northern Ireland to direct rule. In July 2005, facing renewed pressure to disarm, the IRA formally declared an end to its campaign against British rule and announced it would decommission its weapons, which it duly did later that year.
Power-sharing, as called for in the Good Friday Agreement, was restored to Northern Ireland’s government in 2007, when perennial foes from the DUP and Sinn Féin took office together. Paisley was sworn in as Northern Ireland’s first minister. Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander and chief negotiator for the largely Roman Catholic Sinn Féin, became deputy first minister.
Has the agreement brought lasting peace to Northern Ireland?
Divisions within Northern Ireland still exist and devolution has been suspended several times since it began. In 2002, allegations of a republican spying ring at Stormont resulted in a suspension, although the case later collapsed. In 2006, just as the Northern Ireland Assembly was due to resume power-sharing, loyalist killer Michael Stone burst into Stormont. He was later charged with attempting to murder Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and two security guards. At the grassroots level, divisions between Northern Ireland’s unionist and nationalist communities are also very visible: residential segregation continues to be a significant issue, with more ‘peace lines’ separating Protestant and Catholic communities having built since the agreement. In short, the task of healing and rebuilding still lies ahead.
by Laura Snook, Editor, MSN UK News
April 9 2008
