The Good Friday Agreement, which ended the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, a period of civil war, insurgency, assassinations and bombings, was signed on 10 April 1998, 25 years ago. That anniversary is being celebrated by visits by President Biden, King Charles 111, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, under whose leaderships the Agreement was negotiated.
Throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, amidst conquests, occupation, dispossession, exploitation, suppression and deprivation, the Irish resisted British rule, the most damning consequences of which were many, including: the Catholic/Protestant divide, created when Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, imposing Protestantism through the Church of England, over its refusal to give him permission to divorce Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn, who he later beheaded; and the Irish famine of 1845-1851 in which an estimated 2 million people died. Irish dairy products and wheat harvests were exported by British diktat to Britain while hundreds of thousands in Ireland were suffering from hunger.
