Editorial : Historic Deal Recalled

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Editorial / Periscope - Niall O'Dowd

Editorial : Historic Deal Recalled

April 2, 2008

By Niall O’Dowd

THE Good Friday Agreement will be celebrated in a blaze of glory next week when the 10th anniversary of the historic pact that brought lasting peace to Northern Ireland was signed. It was a magnificent document that managed to contain two utterly opposite ideas at its core.

For Unionists the document contained enough to convince them that the union was safe. For Nationalists it contained enough to promise that the framework for a united Ireland could be reached.

Those wishing to have a clear sense of just how incredible and tough the negotiating process was could buy the latest book Great Hatred Little Room by Jonathan Powell, who was at British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s side during the tough and seemingly intractable negotiations. The book gives a rare insight into the last second compromises, pitfalls and final successful tradeoff that made the historic deal happen.

That duality of purpose was the agreement’s greatest secret and its greatest accomplishment. David Trimble and Gerry Adams could see the same problem through their own prism and believe they had enough to convince their own people to buy into it.

There are many who deserve credit for its passage, not least the two governments who helped negotiate it, but perhaps none more than John Hume, the Nobel Prize winner who saw the necessity for the agreement to have a democratic mandate and the need to ensure that neither side could claim victory under its provenance.

There was also the American input of Senator George Mitchell and President Bill Clinton. Had they not been involved, the deal could never have been reached.

At a critical moment as both sides dithered, Mitchell called them together and insisted they sign or go home. His gamble paid off in spades.

It has been a close run thing since. Trimble has gone to be replaced by the Reverend Ian Paisley, who opposed the deal utterly when the agreement was first mooted.

But with the passage of time even Paisley came to acknowledge and accept the bargain at the core of the agreement, the belief that both sides could take enough from it to co-exist and govern together.

The past 10 years have seen a slow but steady advance towards the goal of the agreement of a joint administration in Northern Ireland with an all-Ireland dimension and a functioning government.

There is still one major aspect that is unfinished at this 10-year anniversary mark. That is the devolvement of justice and policing issues to the Northern Ireland government.

There are few more important functions for a government than to oversee the legal and policing work that is at the heart of any democracy.

The Unionist insistence that the powers not be devolved until a date uncertain makes little sense given the clear momentum and support that the new government has built up on both sides of the community since its inception.

To pause on the brink of total devolvement of powers make little sense, except as a delaying tactic, and we have seen far more of those than we needed too. The harsh litany of the decommissioning debacle, painfully recounted in the Powell book is warning enough that allowing issues to fester and simmer is in the long run, intolerable.

The end of ambiguity in the process about such issues as the IRA’s intentions and the true nature of Paisley’s intentions allowed the deal to reach its stated goal. It is now time to end the final stand off on the devolvement of policing and justice.

Then we can finally write finis to a remarkable chapter in Irish history.

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