Last June, twenty-four Sinn Féin politicians attended the funeral of a senior IRA figure despite public-health rules introduced during the pandemic. Last week prosecutors announced that they would not take any action against the rule-breakers – who included Michelle O’Neill, the deputy first minister, and the party’s longtime president, Gerry Adams. The statement prompted angry and increasingly violent protests in several parts of Northern Ireland. Seven nights of violence later, pundits are already questioning the future of the 1998 Good Friday agreement and wondering whether it can survive the Johnson government’s post-Brexit manoeuvring.
While members of the Northern Ireland assembly universally condemned the “deplor-able” violence and urged respect for the rule of law, a phone call between Boris Johnson and the Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin, led to both men reaffirming the need for “dialogue and working the institutions of the Good Friday agreement.” Perhaps wary of further posturing by the British, Joe Biden’s press secretary announced that the American president remained a “steadfast” supporter of a “secure and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all communities have a voice and enjoy the gains of the hard-won peace”.
As the protests have expanded, so has the blame game. Unionists allege that heavy handed policing and criminal activity have caused much of the recent violence, especially since many of the protesters are too young to have experienced anything before the Good Friday agreement. But there are, undeniably, simmering resentments at how badly British equivocations during Brexit have damaged the Unionist parties and strengthened the hand of their nationalist rivals. (The Northern Ireland Protocol now in place “solved” the issue of a trade border by introducing economic measures that effectively segregate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.) More important than any specific details, however, is the loss of good faith, the keystone of the “hard-won” peace that may now be unravelling.
Belfast’s crisis is instructive for any part of the world with similar tensions. For generations, entire communities that were barely distinguishable to foreigners attacked each other mercilessly. The cycle of violence was broken by painstaking diplomacy which replaced the confrontation with practical politics. As one pundit observed at the time, when one is immersed in the minutiae of government – debating tax rates and funding priorities – it is much harder to indulge destructive political passions.
The Good Friday Agreement reinvigorated political institutions and enabled a new reality in Northern Ireland. Although full reconciliation between Unionists and Nationalists may ultimately remain unattainable, the deal has shown that shared government is possible, and it can replace unremitting hostility with 20 years of peace. Worryingly, a single week has also shown the fragility of these gains, and how easily they can be jeopardised by the ineptitude of Westminster and the resentments of a few disempowered leaders.
