Vicky Cosstick reflects on the events and encounters around the days marking the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

For me, it was a fascinating, privileged and dizzying 10 days, which began with the Agreement20 Conference in Manchester, span through a frenetic event-filled Tuesday 10 April in Belfast, and ended with the final sessions of the British Council Peace & Beyond conference. Some of the most interesting things happened, as always, on the margins. I couldn’t be in Belfast for the Thursday evening, but would have found myself tortuously split between the reflections of, curiously, the Archbishop of Canterbury and, very appropriately, the sage Denis Bradley during the final session of Peace & Beyond; and the magical mystery bus tour of ten arts events across Belfast, Just for One Day, which responded to the “complexity, horror and sorrow of over 3600 lives lost from the armed conflict in Northern Ireland”.

There was the hullabaloo as the political big beasts of the Agreement roared in and then out again, through a carefully orchestrated series of set pieces and photo calls, kicking up a cloud of nostalgia, pre-prepared soundbites, and mutual back-slapping, but carefully avoiding any of the trickier aspects of the current realities. Simon Coveney, Gerry Adams and Bertie Ahern spoke at the Féile “GFA: 20 Years On, A Community Reflects” on the Falls Road.

The roadshow moved on to Queen’s University and the presentation of the Freedom of the City to President Bill Clinton and Senator George Mitchell at Belfast City Hall. George Mitchell, who should be commended for his stamina as well as his generosity of spirit then gave the opening address for Peace & Beyond, amusing the delegates with his wry regret that he had told the parties at the start of the talks that he would “listen to anything they had to say”.

Many of the political heavyweights were also caught during the day by Mark Carruthers for an ambitious and enlightening episode of BBC’s The View. The basic message was that the Agreement had involved really hard graft; in comparison today’s issues should be easy for the parties to resolve. That message, however, ignored the polarised sectarian reality that in some ways was aggravated by the Agreement itself.

I hurtled from the Féile, which had offered us coffee and croissants before the 8.45 am start, across town to the Northern Ireland Public Records Office in Titanic Quarter where the Belfast Interface Project launched its “Reflected Lives”publication of oral histories from Short Strand with a pink iced cake. Joe O’Donnell, Director of the BIP said they had chosen the day deliberately: “Twenty years ago, we became persuaders for peace, now we need to become persuaders for change.”

There was a remarkable arts offering at Riddel’s Warehouse on Ann Street, a fringe event for Peace & Beyond. It included, in an upper level of the freezing, bleak former iron warehouse, with rain dripping through the rotted roof onto our heads, a performance of Laurence McKeown’s “Green & Blue”, a tragi-comedy about an Irish Garda and a Northern Irish RUC officer posted to the border in 1974: “Where exactly is it? What? The Border! It’s the same field, after all.” For over the entire week, like the unwanted guest who manages to break all the china, loomed Brexit. The Warehouse was also showing, for the first time, an extraordinary film by Raymond Watson, called “Grappling Hook”, in which the artist uses the hook – made illicitly in Long Kesh – to scale and look over a peacewall.

 

Absent friends

The week in some ways was defined as much by its absences as by who and what was present: John Hume, sadly too ill to attend, and the late Mo Mowlam – one wondered what she might have thought and which expletives she might have used if she had been there. She would surely have noted the general absence of women.

Monica McWilliams of the Women’s Coalition cut a rather solitary figure – for it can legitimately be asked what has happened to the presence of women and women’s issues in Northern Ireland and its peace process since 1998. In the deep background of last week were the reverberations of the rugby rape trial and the impending abortion referendum in Ireland, but there was no panel or keynote on women in peace processes. And there was also the unavoidable absence of a devolved Assembly – the present crop of politicians were generally invisible, occasionally glimpsed in the front rows, but with little to celebrate or congratulate themselves on.

In the opening keynote at the Féile, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney hoped the week would be a catalyst for renewal – a week later I am left wondering what from the week will have turned out to be style, and what substance?

In addition to the local events, there was intense cross-cultural engagement and conversation with the presence of over 200 delegates from 26 countries at the Peace & Beyond conference, many of them high level and experienced politicians and activists, including many from Northern Ireland. I was honoured to be able to interview Angela Anzola, Secretary for Women and Gender Equality in Colombia, and Professor Thuli Madonsela, South Africa’s former Public Protector and one of the drafters of South Africa’s constitution.

So, what were some of the headlines for me after a week in which the global interweaved with the local, arts interweaved with politics, politics interweaved with community development and activism?

 

1. The 1998 Agreement was a remarkable achievement, which came about because of a unique combination of personalities and relationships.

Relationships in 1997-8 were very good, said Tony Blair: “It was a pre-condition.” Negotiations were friendly, frank and productive. There was a good deal of political capital to be made, primarily by Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Clinton, out of solving the Troubles, and for that reason it was the “legacy” of the politicians’ reputations that was being reaffirmed and to some extent defended last week, while the “legacy” of unresolved justice and trauma issues echoed as explicit and implicit themes of the smaller panels and discussions.

Blair and Clinton would have gotten nowhere without the calibre, commitment and support of a much larger cast of characters, and in the end the 1998 Agreement is celebrated as the crucial point of turning away from violence. So it is impossible to ignore how much has changed locally and internationally in the context for post-conflict Northern Ireland. The leadership being modelled by and relationships among local politicians are at an all-time low.

“We need leaders who understand the conflict”, said BBC journalist William Crawley, chairing a Peace & Beyond plenary. One of the many negative effects of Brexit is that is has led to a disheartening deterioration in the relationship between the British and Irish governments, said Tony Blair. The EU has been the arena in which the two governments could forge a relationship apart from the conflict.

The Tory-DUP pact has severely compromised the role of the British government, and the US government, with President Trump’s disinterest and no sign of a US envoy, has left the stage. A number of speakers called during the week for the revival of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, established under Strand 3 of the 1998 Agreement but which has not met since 2007.

 

2. Peace agreements are tough to negotiate and to be accepted by populations, but implementation is even more difficult and fraught with complexity. Peace agreements mark a moment in time, but peace is a very long-term process.

There are a number of reasons for this. As former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said at the Féile, the Agreement “was on a journey but not a destination.” No-one, he said, should be surprised at the twists and turns of the last two decades.

Queen’s University Professor John Brewer said, during a panel on the importance of trust for social transformation after conflict, that following the Agreement, political trust did not break out in Northern Ireland and the need for social trust had been ignored.

Peace agreements often contain promises to populations which may not be delivered in reality, and when they are not acted on, frustration then imperils the peace agreement itself. In Northern Ireland, there were promises of a “peace dividend” which for many, notably in the interface areas of Belfast, has not materialised. We “need a prosperity process”, said Gerry Adams.

Justice, said Prof Brewer, includes jobs, roads, houses, hospitals. Angela Anzola said, of Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement, “We have been slow in delivering promises to those who demobilised. It is a source of frustration.” Peace is a “contest of our spirits”, said Enilda Jiménez, also from Colombia. “It is our responsibility to keep believing in the peace”. Professor Thuli Madonsela said: “the journey of dreaming is much easier than the journey of implementation. Achieving a peace agreement is an important milestone – it opens the door to normalisation of society and peaceful co-existence. But then realisation of the dream doesn’t happen at the pace people expect.”

 

3. In every country that suffers conflict the legacy of trauma and the journey to reconciliation are enormously difficult.

In Colombia, there are 9 million registered victims. There were 1.4 million disappearances over a war that lasted for five decades. There were landmines and huge levels of violence against women. Yet one achievement of civil society was to start a Centre for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation in the midst of the conflict. Next to these statistics, Northern Ireland’s issues with legacy and trauma should be relatively solvable. Yet, 20 years after the Agreement, speaker after speaker named the work that remains to be done.

Victims’ needs for healing and justice have not been met, said Victims and Survivors’ Commissioner Judith Thompson, and they are not at the heart of the proposed legislation. The wellbeing of children and families is still being negatively affected by the conflict.

When I asked members of the panel on “Embracing our Most Marginalised” whether they thought there had been adequate recognition in Northern Ireland of systemic, cultural and transgenerational trauma in Northern Ireland, they agreed that there had not. It is not recognised in the educational system, said Caroline Murphy of Children in Crossfire. Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin agreed: “There’s lots of good work, but it’s not as coordinated or as fulsome as it should be.” The absence of an Assembly isn’t helping, said Billy Gamble of the International Fund for Ireland.

 

4. Politicians can inhibit the process. Polarisation and partisanship in politics appear to be growing globally.

The big beasts refrained, apart from exhortations to get back around the table, from criticism of any politicians. I suppose they would, wouldn’t they. I didn’t see Bertie Ahern flinch at all as he said he believed in the political leadership of today. But speakers in the Peace & Beyond conference referred a number of times to the way that politics may inhibit the progress of peace and reconciliation. “Peace processes are too important to be left to politicians”, said John Brewer.

Media and political parties in Northern Ireland sometimes behave in ways that give the impression that victims are divided, which is not the case, said Judith Thompson. There are delays and political resistance to implementing measures to support victims.

In Colombia, said Angela Anzola, “political usage of historical memory hinders reconciliation efforts”, while in South Africa “political entrepreneurs” have “mined the gap” of the inequalities in society. Thuli Madonsela regrets the way politics has become “toxic, partisan and adversarial.” “As humanity we have to reimagine democracy,” she says.

 

5. In the end, the peace will be made by the thousands of unsung heroes working on the ground, and by victims themselves as they inch their way towards self-acceptance, and acceptance of the other. 

Last week, the Belfast Interface Project launched its “Reflective Lives” publication, based on interviews with 23 residents of Short Strand and Inner East Belfast, either side of the peacewalls. They also offered conference participants the chance to try out VR headsets, allowing users to “virtually” knock down and see across interface gates and sections of peace wall. During “Embracing our Most Marginalised”, Gary McAllister, youth worker from Ballymena, and Sean Murray, youth worker in Dungannon, told of their experience on the AMBIT programme in Washington, funded by the International Fund for Ireland, and how they had learned about the impact of trauma on young people’s lives.

In Ballymena, ”heroin capital of Northern Ireland”, which is 90% Protestant, there is unemployment and deprivation, and a lack of ambition and pride in the area. In the border area of Dungannon, there are high levels of mental ill-health, self-harm and suicide – compounded by “Brexit anxiety”. Seventy per cent of young people show signs of conflict related trauma and transgenerational impact. In these areas, McAllister and Murray are offering drop-in centres, diversionary activities and holistic responses to trauma.

Speaking at the end of the week on UTV’s View from Stormont, Denis Bradley recalled with sadness the failure to implement the 2007 Eames-Bradley report of the Consultative Group on the Past. It has, he noted, been transmogrified into the recommendations of the Stormont House Agreement – although they lack the spirit of the original proposals. He said, “You have to try to do the past, even if you don’t do it well.”

When all is said and done – and last week a lot was said – Northern Ireland must still try to tackle its past, whether it ends up doing it badly or well. And globally, said President Santos of Colombia, in a message beamed to Peace & Beyond participants, “the challenge is to change a culture of hate and division to one of inclusion.”

Read the rest of Northern Slant‘s coverage of the GFA at 20 here.