The Significance of the Good Friday Agreement, a Q&A with John Bew

To commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Shannon Felton Spence spoke with John Bew, 10 Downing Street Head of Foreign Affairs and Integration Review Policy Unit. Professor Bew works across foreign affairs, defense, and Northern Ireland policy as Special Advisor to the British Prime Minister. He grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and his father, Lord Bew, was a key figure in advising Nobel Peace Prize winner and unionist leader David Trimble.

The following is a transcript of a conversation on March 23, 2023.

Shannon Felton Spence: Next month marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. What was it about this peace negotiation that was so complex?

John Bew: The Good Friday Agreement people have got to remember comes off the back of 30 years of violence known as "The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, in which more than 3,500 people were killed and many more injured. There was great destruction done to commercial property, and it was a huge security challenge for the British state.

There were many attempts at different points in time to institute or kickstart some sort of political process that would find a formula to create stability in Northern Ireland and have sufficient consensus or sufficient buy-in to take away the conditions for violence. So there are lots of examples of that over the period of talks and negotiations. All Party Talks, talks involving the UK government, the Irish government, and sometimes external actors like the US, mainly in the 1990s. 

The honest answer is the historian’s answer that context is everything. So, a lot of things converged at the same time, up to 1998, to make the difference. One important facet of this was political leadership, and I think most importantly, the leadership of local politicians who'd been involved at different stages of the politics.

David Trimble, from the unionist community, and John Hume, from the nationalist community rightfully and deservedly won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. They were probably the two most important protagonists in leading their communities towards 1998 and uncomfortable compromises for all people.

There was the role of international actors. Obviously, the US was intimately involved. I think after Trimble and Hume though, Tony Blair as British Prime Minister, Bernie Ahern as Irish Taoiseach (“prime minister”) were also two key components of the peace process.

And then there were just changing circumstances, so the security situation had changed. There's a debate about how infiltrated or otherwise the IRA was. There have been many years of All Party Talks leading to that point. Northern Ireland was economically faring a little bit better than it had in the past as well. It converges in 1998 in a way it hadn't since the late 1960s when the conflict really began, so it gets over the line in a way that other attempts at peace hadn't.

Shannon Felton Spence: Talking about political personalities, there is something very famous about the way that Ahern, Blair, and Clinton jibe together, and they were forward-looking. They had a lot of political capital in the bank at this point. How much of that really made the difference to make 1997 and 1998 the time to really go for it?

John Bew: Yeah, absolutely in the UK context. To give you one example, Tony Blair won a massive electoral landslide in 1997. So just a year beforehand he had changed the whole structure and shape of British politics. He also had this devolution agenda to give local parliament to Scotland and Wales. So what was happening in Northern Ireland seemed like less apart and more part of this broader endeavor. Because he had such a big majority in that election, he had the space afforded to allow a large focus on it. It seems quite strange in hindsight, but the British Prime Minister spent 40% of his time on Northern Ireland issues during his first year in office. This is estimated by his chief of staff at the time. It got a kind of disproportionate amount of time, proportionate given its significance, but it got a lot of time and attention. Perhaps it hadn't always. The relationship between British Prime Ministers and Irish Prime Ministers was not always good.

If you think of Charlie Haughey and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the Blair-Ahern relationship was really quite effective. And then they took brave decisions in that period of time as well. Bertie Ahern, in particular, took a number of brave decisions in a way that he broke with traditional Irish state orthodoxy in some respects, he changed the Irish constitution and its claims to Northern Ireland as well. At a key critical time in the negotiation, he took decisions to help bring unionists on board in the way that Irish Prime Ministers previously hadn’t. So there were some really quite statesmanlike performances in that period of time. And as I say there are the four key protagonists, if you were to push me, would be Trimble, Hume, Blair, and Ahern.

Now obviously, Clinton is important as well. And externally, [Senator] George Mitchell and General John de Chastelain, the Canadian general who was involved in the decommissioning process. There’s an external sort of side to it. But, you know, it’s a Northern Irish dispute, with UK-Irish dimensions primarily, and those bits they got right, and the US lent in very effectively at key critical moments in time as part of that process.

Shannon Felton Spence: Today, the UN holds the Good Friday Agreement up as one of the most successful models of a peace process and an agreement. I suppose part of that is how inclusive it was, but also the focus post-agreement on reconciliation. How did the agreement lay the framework to heal a society and move forward in those years after?

John Bew: The most important thing is the agreement means the end of violence. And that's the most divisive thing in society up to that point. To be frank, there's a bit of a debate as to how effective reconciliation or societal reconciliation has been since 1998. There's still quite a division in the school system. There's still a quite stark political divide in Northern Ireland, but the absence of violence is a transformative thing. All these peace processes are necessarily imperfect, complex, and difficult and leave behind them unresolved issues and challenges, such as the legacy of the past and how you deal with former paramilitary prisoners in 1998 and afterward. You release all sets of people responsible for the worst of the atrocities in Northern Ireland. On that basis, that makes it hard for a society to reconcile, actually. So the story's a little bit more complex. It's not a perfect moment of reconciliation.

There's a famous scene of the lead singer of U2, Bono, holding the hands of Trimble and Hume in a concert after 1998 as a symbolic moment of peace. But actually, the story after that was really quite complex.

One of those things that happened after 1998 is that those moderate parties -- moderate nationalists and moderate unionists -- began to be eaten away at by those on their extremes. Partly because the mood is not fantastic, the mood is not great. But ultimately, when those on the other side come closer to the center, then they adopt the framework of the Good Friday Agreement and enter the framework of the Good Friday Agreement, and operate within it. And that’s the kind of structural achievement that happens thereafter.

But it's messy, and it's complicated, and you have to be wary, I think, of telling too beautiful of a story of it all being wrapped up in a bow. Because it’s a contested place, reconciliation is limited. But the absence of violence is a transformative thing in the life of Northern Ireland. And that's the thing that provides stability. Peaceful coexistence. That's the thing that provides protection of people's rights and respect for the aspiration identity of all parts of the community in Northern Ireland.

Shannon Felton Spence: There’s been an entire generation who's lived without that violence. Obviously, it's in the history books, but how do we make sure that peace remains a priority for the future?

John Bew: I think all the governments involved are responsible for it primarily. So the British and Irish governments are what are known as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement. So their job was to protect that. In addition, when the agreement was forged in 1998, the UK government, as the sovereign government, had unique responsibilities in Northern Ireland to protect the economic rights of the people in Northern Ireland and make sure the aspirations and identity of all communities are respected. It’s about maintaining those commitments, maintaining the balance in the Good Friday Agreement. It's a balance between the aspirations of two communities. There's increasingly a third force in Northern Irish politics as well, a moderate center ground as well, which wasn’t so catered for in 1998. That has created a kind of question as to whether you reform those institutions or keep them as they are. Like all constitutional settlements and agreements, it requires iteration, and it requires reform and change, and management.

The key thing, though, is to maintain a) the balance inherent in it and b) the three strands. And the three strands are number one, the internal relationship in Northern Ireland. Strand Two, the North-South relationships. And then Strand Three, the East-West relationships. And at various points, people thought that one or the other had been prioritized over the other. And that can't work in Northern Ireland. It’s explicit in the agreement that those strands are equally important and interlocking. So maintaining that balance is how you maintain it.

And then there's a question as to whether you would have reform or otherwise. But it's such a finely crafted constitutional settlement that there’s a challenge with reform, even though there's a kind of growing voice with it, but then you wouldn't want to upset that balance. So it's about the commitments written down and making those institutions work, but they've had their problems and difficulties. They've only been in play, I think, for half of the time since 1998. For three years, Sinn Féin wouldn’t sit in the government. As they sit now, the DUP are not going back into the power-sharing at the moment. So, it's complex, requiring patient management, preservation, and protection.

Shannon Felton Spence: Where do you think we are today? Can you give me a rough sense of where things stand and if you're optimistic?

John Bew: Someone who remembers vividly my first vote in 1998 without revealing my age, I remember the negotiations very vividly.

I remember what it was like beforehand, and I'm pretty optimistic about the place. If you return to Belfast, which I do regularly, I live in London now, but my family is still there. It's an absolutely transformed place in terms of the standard of living.

The restaurant culture and the fact that the city center used to be a bit of a shell because of the prospect of commercial bombing and had more police presence and army presence. All that's changed. It's quite hard not to be optimistic. It's pretty normal. It's a pretty normal part of the United Kingdom. And I think that that sort of normality is the biggest test.

Sometimes people in Northern Ireland will tell you they're rather bemused by all this international attention. If you took, say, gun crime rates in let's say Chicago or Miami, and major US cities compared to this small corner of Northwestern Europe, which has a great interest in it. It is relatively stable and prosperous and secure versus much of the rest of the world. They’re a bit bemused by the international attention bestowed.

But that's not a bad thing as well. I'm absolutely optimistic about it. It's unquestionably a better place in the 25 years since 1998 than it was in the 25 years prior to that, where it was pretty gruesome, depressing, and divided. Tragic. And anyone who has experience in both sides of that period will reflect that. But I think absolutely, if you look at the polling and the next generation of people coming up, they understand and respect that. Absolutely. On the other side of things as well. So it still has some way to go regarding reconciliation, but so do many different parts of the world.

I remember in the early 1990s when you had the Oslo Accords and hoped for a breakthrough in the Middle Eastern peace process. It was actually its most depressing and bleak in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s than it had been for many years, really since the early 1970s, in terms of the murder rate and tension and the issues. And just five years later, it was transformed by this peace settlement. So history can throw up these surprises and challenges at different points in time. But you can't be anything other than optimistic. It's more prosperous and secure, but it has its challenges. It has its challenges in terms of sectarian division still. It has its challenges in terms of the structures of the institutions. And it has big challenges, which are most important to anyone in Northern Ireland, are the things that really matter in terms of public services, police, and the health service waiting lists. These are the things that matter in people's lives. Those are the things that matter in politics. So getting a grip on those things, that's still a job of work to be done.

Shannon Felton Spence: Okay. Last one. You're back at the hotel tonight. You're exhausted, and you turn on Netflix. You going Derry Girls, The Crown or Love Island UK?

John Bew: So Derry Girls, I took a while to watch, but it is brilliant, I’ve got to say. It's my exact school year, so I remember the things they have clips from local media at the time.

Shannon Felton Spence: That’s right, because in the last one they take the vote.

John Bew: Yeah, they take the vote.

I was based at school the same year as the Derry Girls, so the music, the songs, take you back like cultural references to bands that visited Belfast. There was a lion that escaped from Belfast Zoo, which is a whole premise of the story. So it's hard not to watch that and feel a certain sort of affiliation with it as well. So it's funny and not too preachy and emotional, which would be very un-Northern Irish to have, right? To be honest with you, it gets a bit like that in the third series. But it’s mostly just funny, and silly, and normal, and that is basically what Northern Ireland was like.

I haven’t watched The Crown. And I won't tell you what I think of Love Island UK, but I do quite like it. I haven’t watched the winter one, though.

Shannon Felton Spence: No, I haven’t either. I'm still heartbroken about Liam and Millie.

John Bew: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You really watch, I remember that too. That series.