‘Bequeathed to one another’ from Belfast to Hillsborough via St Andrews
Janet Quilley looks at developments in Northern Ireland
Was it an accident or a fine sense of timing that Channel 4 scheduled its documentary-drama ‘Mo’ for the same week that was to see the signing of an agreement at Hillsborough, after ten days of nail-biting tension? ‘Here we go again!’ was a natural reaction on this side of the Irish Sea, as we recalled the eleventh-hour negotiations that led to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998. At that time it felt like the breakthrough it truly was; we appreciated the hard work of the two governments – of Bertie and Tony and, of course, Mo. We lauded John Hume and David Trimble – and rightly so – for taking risks in persuading the nationalist and unionist communities to move forward. We were impatient with the hardliners for their reluctance to move at the same speed. Most of us probably did not understand the efforts that were going on behind the scenes; the impossibility of achieving a lasting settlement without taking into account the whole spectrum of opinion, rather than simply focusing on the centre ground. In 1998 outsiders, in particular the British and Irish governments and the Americans, played key rôles in brokering the Agreement, cajoling the participants. It was not insignificant that the St Andrews Agreement involving Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in 2006 took place over the water in Scotland, when desperate efforts were once again needed to restore devolution for a second time. A great deal was achieved by these efforts over more than a decade, but unresolved issues remained at each stage and community tensions and the actions of dissidents continued to hinder progress. The electoral triumphs of those seen as hardliners eroded the narrow margin of support for the centrist parties and underlined the fragility of the peace process.
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