Northern Ireland

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B. THE PEACE PROCESS

The period after the suspension of the devolved government was followed by a series of policy initiatives by the British government designed to bring the conflicting parties together at the talks table and to reach an agreement on new devolved institutions for Northern Ireland. All these various attempts failed to reach a settlement. What is commonly known as the 'peace process' started with the Hume-Adams talks, which commenced on the initiative of John Hume, the then leader of the SDLP and the main protagonist of non-violent nationalism, between January and August 1988 when the talks were broken up and only resumed in 1993, and resulted in the so-called Hume-Adams Document on 23 April 1993.

The document was groundbreaking in the sense that it culminated Hume's efforts to bring the Republican movement on board and to persuade Sinn Fein to agree to the peace process ('nationalist understanding'). An alternative definition of the start of the peace process is to date it back to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

1. The Anglo-Irish Agreement (Hillsborough Agreement)

The Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) signed on 15 November 1985 by the British and Irish Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald, was a compromise between both governments. London agreed to confer with the Irish government on all matters that affected the rights of the nationalist minority within Northern Ireland¹ and committed itself to making "strenuous efforts to overcome any differences" between the two governments.

The Agreement established permanent, institutionalized cooperation between the two governments, dedicated to achieving a durable settlement for the Northern Ireland problem.

Article 1 of the AIA declared that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland was based upon the consent of the people in Northern Ireland and that this would remain unchanged until a majority of the people consented to such a change (the consent principle).² To fulfil Dublin's desire for cooperation on matters regarding the nationalist minority, an Inter-governmental Council was established under the provisions of Article 2 of the AIA.³

2. The Downing Street Declaration (Joint Declaration of Peace)
The Downing Street Declaration (DSD) was signed on 15 December 1993 by the British Prime Minister John Major and his Irish counterpart Albert Reynolds. It recognized that "... it is for the people of Ireland alone ... to exercise their right for self-determination". At the same time, however, the principle of consent was confirmed as meaning that any change in the status of Northern Ireland could only occur with the consent of the majority of its citizens. The document proved to be the 'catalyst' for the peace process and was followed (after a period of 'clarification') by the first IRA ceasefire on 31 August 1994. The IRA ceasefire was followed by a ceasefire of the Combined Loyalist Command (CLC), an umbrella group of the loyalist paramilitaries, on 13 October 1994.

However, the issue of decommissioning became a major stumbling block for further progress after the ceasefires and prevented all-party talks which included Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). John Major's weak Conservative government at Westminster was divided over the issue of Europe and had to rely on the votes of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MPs to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. It was the comfortable position that the UUP held in the Westminster Parliament (commonly referred to as their 'understanding' with Major) that prevented Prime Minister Major from making any concessions towards Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein was banned from the talks table on the provision that it first decommissioned its weapons. As a result, the IRA ceasefire ended after the explosion of a bomb in the docklands area of London on 9 February 1996.

The victory of Tony Blair in May 1997 ended the comfortable position of the UUP at Westminster and led to a change in policy regarding decommissioning as an aspiration and no longer as a precondition for talks. The IRA renewed its ceasefire on 19 July1997 and, subsequently, Sinn Fein were allowed to attend the talks.

An agreement was finally reached on 10 April 1998 and approved by a referendum on 22 May 1998. The agreement got a majority 'yes' vote of 71.12 per cent overall in Northern Ireland.⁴ This confirmed the early polls on the agreement, which had indicated a 73 per cent vote in favour.⁵ The agreement got a majority of 94.4 percent in the Republic of Ireland.

3. The Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement)

The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was based upon the formula of the three strands (Strand One: relations within Northern Ireland; Strand Two: North-South structures; Strand Three: relations within the United Kingdom and Ireland), a formula that talks participants had been familiar with ever since the Brooke/Mayhew initiatives, which lasted from March 1991 to November 1992 ('talks about talks') but failed to reach a settlement.

The Good Friday Agreement deals with the constitutional question and the three strands. Other issues involved are the release of paramilitary prisoners, the demilitarization of the country, the safeguarding of minority rights (Gaelic language and Ulster-Scots), the reform of the police force, the parading issue, and the treatment of the victims of the civil conflict.

a) The Constitutional Question

What had become known as the 'Corfu test'⁶ played an essential part in dealing with the constitutional issue in the Agreement. It was in 1994, at the European Union summit in Corfu, that the then Prime Minister John Major pressed his Irish counterpart on two questions: was the Irish government prepared to amend their constitution to the point where they would state that their constitutional claim over the North had been removed, and would they publicly recognize the legitimacy of British rule in Northern Ireland as long as it reflected the wish of the majority?⁷

The outcome of the Agreement was a reinforcement of the consent principle: it recognized the right of the majority of people in Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, but also pledged legislation to make possible a united Ireland if the majority so chose. Again, with the help of 'constructive ambiguity' the irreconcilable was reconciled: both contradictory aspirations found expression - an amendment of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution ('yes' to the Corfu test) and the provision in British legislation for 'border polls' (at intervals of no less than seven years).⁸

b) Strand One: The Northern Ireland Assembly

The established Northern Ireland Assembly's main institutional feature is based on executive power sharing. Brendan O'Leary argues that the Agreement establishes two quasi-presidential figures, a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister with identical powers, in a devolved Assembly.⁹ 'Presidentialism' means an executive that cannot be destroyed by an assembly except through 'impeachment'. Both positions can only be deposed if enough Nationalists collude with enough Unionists to enforce it. This is because the voting procedure in the Assembly works according to the Agreement, i.e. on the basis of parallel consent. Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) have to register whether they are Unionist, Nationalist or neither. A decision can only be enforced once it receives cross-community support (a majority within the Unionist MLAs and within the Nationalist MLAs) or with so-called 'weighted majority', i.e. an overall majority of 60 per cent of all the MLAs, including at least 40 per cent of both the Nationalist and Union-ist blocs.

The terms of the Agreement suppose that Nationalists have succeeded with their demand for power sharing, since on a symbolic level this meant the 'end' of Unionist dominance and majority-rule. But in practical terms, the parallel consent principle established a mu-tual veto that can block any progress of the working of the Assembly. So, had Gerry Adams' Sinn Fein party been able to overturn the SDLP as regards the number of Assembly seats (or in other words, if the results of the General Election in 2001 had been confirmed by the next Assembly elections), Unionists could still have blocked his election as Deputy First Minister. This provision also led to the quite curious position that after Trimble's resignation as First Minister on 1 July 2001, Seamus Mallon of the SDLP also had to resign as Deputy First Minister.

c) Strand Two: The North-South Ministerial Council

The most problematic and contentious part in the 'endgame' of the talks was the design of Strand Two. Executive power sharing was not the bone of contention for Unionism. This became evident as early as January 1987 when the UDA think tank Ulster Political Research Group published their paper "Common Sense". The philosophy of the paper was that in any intelligent settlement there must be seen to be no winners or losers in the constitutional game.¹⁰ The central phrase was 'co-determination', which meant a mutually acceptable resolution of two opposing ideas of self-determination within Northern Ireland.¹¹ However, the Irish dimension was the bone of contention for Unionism and not power-sharing.

The terms of the Agreement attempt to address the wishes of both communities: Nationalists were not granted a freestanding body; instead the GFA lays much more formal stress on the accountability of the North/South Ministerial Council (NSMC).¹² The NSMC itself was not given executive power: it functions very much like the Council of Ministers in the European Union.¹³ While the NSMC would be established initially by legislation at Westminster and Dublin, the Northern Ireland Assembly would decide in what areas implementation bodies would subsequently be established.¹⁴ Nationalists and the Irish Government were reassured that the NSMC would have a credible function by the fact that the Assembly would have to accept that there would be cross-border implementation. In the end, they got their desired separate, institutional expression of their all-Ireland identity. The NSMC and the Northern Ireland Assembly are mutually interdependent, one cannot function without the other.¹⁵ Unionists cannot destroy the NSMC while retaining the Assembly, and Nationalists cannot destroy the Assembly while keeping the Council.¹⁶

d) Strand Three: The British-Irish Council

The design of the Third Strand of the Good Friday Agreement is the creation of a confederal East-West relationship, symmetrical to the North-South relationship. This meant a totally novel institutional structure, which comprises representatives of the British and Irish Governments and representatives of the devolved institutions in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.¹⁷ But Unionists did not succeed in their demand for a British-Irish Council as an umbrella for North-South cooperation. Instead, the East-West relationship was established on a weaker basis and on a consultative basis. The established British-Irish Council is legally empowered to set up modes of cooperation parallel to the North-South cooperation but is not required to do so.¹⁸

Footnotes

¹ Cochrane (1997), p. 23.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid, p. 25.
⁴ Another poll indicated that the main reason people were planning to vote 'no' was the planned release of paramilitary prisoners under the early release scheme of the Agreement's terms.
⁵ Note also that the referendum in Northern Ireland was carried out on a single constituency basis so it was not possible to give a breakdown of the 'yes' and 'no' figures into the two main communities. This did not stop the 'Yes' and 'No' camps claiming that the majority of Unionists had supported their position. The best estimates indicated that the overwhelming majority of Catholics/Nationalists voted 'Yes', perhaps as many as 96 or 97 per cent. In the case of Protestants/Unionists who voted 'yes', it is estimated that the figure was between 51 and 53 per cent.
⁶ The 'story' is described by Bew (2000), p. 42.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Bew (2000).
⁹ O'Leary (1999), p. 69.
¹⁰ Aughey (1989), p. 125.
¹¹ Ibid., p. 126.
¹² Bew (2000), p. 44.
¹³ O'Leary (1999), p. 81.
¹⁴ Hennessey (2000), p. 177.
¹⁵ Strand Two, paragraph 13; cf. Ruane/ Todd (1999), p. 14.
¹⁶ O'Leary (1999), p. 80/81.
¹⁷ Bew (2000), p. 46. Hennessey further explains that the essential difference between the British-Irish Council and the NSMC was one of priority: the main devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales were still in the process of establishment when the Agreement was signed. See Hennessey (2000), p. 179.
¹⁸ Ruane/ Todd (1999), p. 15.

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