Good Friday celebrated, but what happens next?
THE past and present were heavily represented at the Good Friday Agreement commemorations at Queen’s University, but what happens next was indeterminable.
At a time when the future of Northern Ireland, the Irish State and the UK are being dragged in different directions, by varying vested interests, the gathering of pretty much every person alive who made significant effort to deliver peace to the island seemed as if it were timed deliberately to concentrate minds.
Contributions from former activists like Danny Morrison, once a senior IRA volunteer, or Peter Robinson, the former DUP leader, former first minister and Unionist leader David Trimble, and Republican negotiator Gerry Adams, made for invaluable arguments in favour of protecting the Agreement.
And protect it at all costs; even if that meant stopping Brexit – the biggest threat to the Good Friday Agreement.
It was former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair who dared go there when he said Brexit “may still not happen”. His comments, expressed purposefully, received a rapturous applause – by far the loudest throughout the day: “I’m passionately opposed to Brexit; I think it is a profound mistake.”
It would be “disastrous for the Good Friday Agreement and for the relationships between the Republic and the
UK and therefore the people of Northern Ireland,” he said.
Naturally and fittingly there was also deep reflection and discussion about the squalid, treacherous and hostile environment that once characterised life in Northern Ireland.
“Northern Ireland was on the brink of a civil war and I’m not exaggerating it,” said Seamus Mallon, who was the first deputy first minister. Alongside John Hume, the two titans of the SDLP were unremitting in their quest for peace.
He said the process of law, including the judiciary, “had broken down” and recalled a time when an RUC officer was brought before the courts and charged with bombing innocent people in a pub “because of their religion; the Lord Chief Justice said they had done the state some service”.
The presence of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, former US president Bill Clinton, former prime minister Mr Blair and senator George Mitchell appeared as if the whole event was being staged to save the future from itself.
“Thirty people a month for 30 years ,” said Mr A he rn of the relentless conflict.
Mr Clinton pleaded for all sides not to take the Good Friday Agreement and its delivery of peace and stability for granted.
He described the Agreement, which ended decades of state and paramilitary violence and provided for the equal right to self-determination for both Irish and British people in British-controlled territory, as a “work of genius”.
“You have the preservation of democracy under extreme duress; you got it; don’t underestimate it,” he urged.
He reminded everyone how the Agreement even led to the unlikely warmth and genuine solidarity between erstwhile enemies IRA-leader turned peace-maker Martin McGuinness and firebrand Presbyterian Ian Paisley, who Mr Clinton described as “the odd couple”. “Celebrate that this day,” he said.
As for the next chapter nobody was willing to guess. Mr Mallon said he still favours “Irish unity” in theory but said his “big worry” was people using Brexit as a reason to railroad it without the consent or “ownership” of Unionists:“Do we want another bloody disaster? ”
Peter Robinson said he “wouldn’t contemplate the possibility”.
‘You have the preservation of democracy under duress; you got it’