The Good Friday Agreement holds a lesson for Brexit
AN incongruous but striking image has rightly come to symbolise the Northern Ireland peace process. At a Belfast concert hall in May 1998 global rock star Bono was joined on stage by two middle-aged men in ties. One was Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble. The other was veteran Nationalist statesman John Hume. Before a cheering audience of 2,000 young people the politicians first shook hands then, together with Bono, raised their arms aloft.
It was an inspirational gesture of reconciliation that resonated worldwide and cemented public support in Ireland for the Good Friday Agreement signed a few weeks earlier.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the peace deal, one of the most moving episodes in the modern history of the British Isles. After months of tough negotiations the settlement finally brought an end to the Troubles which had plagued Ulster for more than three decades and had resulted in over 3,000 deaths. Since then the atmosphere in the province has been transformed with paramilitary violence all but disappearing. It is ironic that today the streets of Belfast are far safer than those of London.
THE Good Friday Agreement had a special meaning for me, having spent my early life in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. At school in Belfast in the early 1970s, when the sound of bomb explosions regularly echoed across the city, the idea of peace seemed an unattainable dream. But the impossible became a reality that April day 20 years ago.
It is a tribute to the enduring strength of the agreement that even recent political problems, such as the suspension of the power-sharing executive, have not threatened its existence. And that remarkable, longterm success has profound lessons for the Brexit process, though not in the way that the pro-EU brigade imagines.
Full of their usual gloom Remoaners continually tell us that Brexit is a disaster for Northern Ireland, with the potential to bring back conflict. Much of this scaremongering is focused on the prospect that Britain’s departure from the EU will inevitably mean a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, thereby promoting division. But the opportunistic hysteria over the Irish border ignores the truth that a solution will be found through exactly the same spirit of goodwill that characterised the Good Friday Agreement.
A prime reason for the success of the Belfast talks in 1998 was the willingness to allow room in the final text for ambiguity and compromise.
Recently arch-Remainer Lord Adonis complained that “fudge after fudge is being used” in the Brexit negotiations over the Irish border. But that is precisely the approach we require today. Temporary provisions, half-measures, obfuscations and creative avoidance worked in 1998. They can do so again. Pragmatism, not ideological certainty, should be the driving spirit.
This also applies to Brexit purists, some of whom recoil at the suggestion that Northern Ireland might have some form of special status as a trading partner. But it is a delusion to pretend that Ulster is the same as Durham or Devon. The province is different because around 40 per cent of its people have an allegiance to another country, namely the Irish Republic.
The genius of the Good Friday Agreement was to recognise and accommodate that unique position through structures such as the devolved assembly and a host of crossborder bodies.
The fact is that Northern Ireland already has a special status. In many different areas, such as sport, the churches, the trade union movement, and the arts, Irish unity exists.
Moreover, since the advent of southern Irish independence in the 1920s, there has never been a commercial hard border on the island. Instead a “common travel area” has been in operation, another reason why the manufactured Remoaner outcry over Brexit is so misplaced.
There are two other vital lessons from the Good Friday Agreement. One is the triumph of hope over negativity. In 1998 the self-styled realists liked to claim that a deal could never be reached, that the differences were irreconcilable, the obstacles insurmountable. Even when the agreement was signed the merchants of doom said it would never last. But they were proved wrong, just as all the bleak Remoaner propaganda will turn out to be hollow. A trade deal will be negotiated, the British economy will not collapse, Northern Ireland will avoid a return to paramilitary violence.
EVEN more crucial for Brexit is the importance of faith in democracy. Yesterday artist Tracey Emin, raging against Brexit, said that “it shouldn’t have been down to the people”. That sums up the mentality of Remoaners, who have contempt for the will of the electorate. Such arrogance is the direct opposite of the Good Friday Agreement, with the principle of consent at its core.
The belief that the people of Northern Ireland should decide their own destiny was demonstrated in the referendum held on the agreement in May 1998. The Yes campaign, which was launched by that Bono concert in Belfast, won overwhelmingly with 71 per cent of the vote.
In a 20th anniversary event this week in Belfast, Bill Clinton warned of “people who are aggressively trying to destroy the very idea of popular democracy.” His language could be applied to the Remainer obstructionists. They must not prevail.
‘Opportunistic hysteria over the Irish border’