Belfast Agreement at 25: Plea for Stormont renewal to avoid leaving peace efforts ‘in vain’

For what felt like the first time in a long time, Stormont was busy.

The normally empty Great Hall had been laid out with chairs, a platform and podium set up before its grand staircase. On either side, large screens displayed the Northern Ireland Assembly logo and, beneath it, the words “25 Years: A New Beginning”.

For most of the last year, the collapse of the Assembly has left Stormont quiet. Now, staff were enjoying the hustle and bustle. “It’s nice having a bit of a buzz about the place again,” said one.

On this Good Friday a special ceremony, hosted by Assembly Speaker Alex Maskey, marked the achievements of that Good Friday 25 years ago when a deal was reached that ended the Troubles, brought peace to Northern Ireland, and brought politics — this time based on sharing power — back to this place.

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“It was an honourable compromise,” Maskey told those present. “It was a new beginning — a new beginning for this society and a new basis for us all to work through our differences collectively.”

Seated at the front were those who, in turn, have borne that responsibility. In the front row were the leaders of 1998, including Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams, Mark Durkan, Reg Empey and Monica McWilliams.

In the second row were the politicians of today — Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill, Naomi Long, Doug Beattie —and, in the third row, members of the Youth Assembly: representatives of a generation that will determine the direction of Northern Ireland in the next 25 years.

Behind them, the pattern was repeated. Current MLAs mingled with others who helped make the peace in 1998 including Daphne Trimble, widow of the late David, and former minister Liz O’Donnell, as well as civic leaders including Archbishops Eamon Martin and John McDowell, Chief Constable Simon Byrne and head of the civil service Jayne Brady.

Proceedings began with a reading of the poem which has done great service in the name of the peace process, Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy. Reflections followed, one from each party.

Despite the occasional comic memory, the mood was sombre and reflective — as was appropriate when reflecting on the ending of a conflict which killed more than 3,500 people, and on the losses since then, including John Hume, David Trimble, Martin McGuinness and David Ervine.

Viewed from high up on the balcony overlooking the Great Hall — the designated observation point for Stormont media correspondents — it felt at times as if the weight of history built into the giant columns and the elaborate ceiling was pressing down on those below.

The only party which did not speak was the DUP; it did not accept the invitation to do so, though some of the party’s MLAs were in the hall. The DUP did not take part in the peace talks in 1998 and opposed the agreement at the time.

Twenty-five years on, its absence from the powersharing institutions set up by the agreement — which are unable to function due to the DUP’s boycott in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements — was referenced repeatedly from the podium.

“I don’t think it is sustainable or desirable or fair to the people of Northern Ireland that the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement … are not working,” said Bertie Ahern. “I just wish that those who have the power nowadays to make these things happen will do so very quickly when these few weeks are over. Otherwise, our efforts are partially in vain, and I don’t think any of us wish that.”

Senator George Mitchell, in a video address, said it was now up to the current leaders of Northern Ireland, the Republic and United Kingdom “to act with the same courage and vision as did their predecessors 25 years ago.

“Current leaders can and must do whatever is necessary to preserve peace, to restore self-government to Northern Ireland, to ensure for those they represent freedom, hope and opportunity for all.”

In the Great Hall, there was no shortage of that hope — from seven-year-old David McKenna, part of the Belfast School of Performing Arts, who has just received his second kidney transplant, to US-born singer Dana Masters, who told how she had fallen in love with a man from Northern Ireland and followed him “home” to a place where “I didn’t look like you, I didn’t sound like you” but “you welcomed me with open arms”.

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Elsewhere, other events were taking place to mark the agreement’s 25th anniversary. On the peace wall which separates the nationalist Falls from the unionist Shankill in west Belfast, people linked arms to create a human chain spanning the divide, while at dawn [on Friday] members of the victims and survivors group Wave Trauma Centre gathered on the beach at Killough, Co Down, to watch the sun rise.

“It was incredible being here with all these people, Catholic and Protestant, unionist and nationalist, republican and loyalist — we have all lost people,” said Alan McBride, whose wife and father-in-law were killed in the IRA’s bombing of the Shankill Road in 1993.

“To look out at the sea and see the sun come up, that is the vision of the Good Friday Agreement, people standing together.”

For a few hours, they stood together in Stormont too and recalled the moment the agreement was signed. Monica McWilliams, former leader of the Women’s Coalition, said “on Good Friday, as I stood up, I turned to my colleagues around that table and I said, ‘I hope from this day on every Friday will be a good Friday’. And that from this day on, 25 years later, we will have many more good Fridays.”