WATCH: Implementing the Agreement #GFA25
It would take until December 1999 for full powers to be devolved to the first Northern Ireland Assembly. So what happened between April 1998 and December 1999?
It would take until December 1999 for full powers to be devolved to the first Northern Ireland Assembly. So what happened between April 1998 and December 1999?
Watch back last week’s conference that shone a light on work by trade unions, community groups, artists and faith-based organisations in the road towards peace.
The former Irish ambassador to the EU, Rory Montgomery, delivered his inaugural lecture as honorary professor of practice at the QUB Mitchell Institute on Tuesday evening. His topic – The Good Friday Agreement and a United Ireland – had a contemporary feel as the civic conversation intensifies around whether to and how to hold border polls. The 45 minute lecture was followed by half an hour of questions from the audience moderated by Professor Christopher McCrudden. While Belfast Agreement …
With border polls remaining a major topic of conversation, particularly following today’s Sunday Times/Lucid Talk reporting of a poll which found that a majority of voters in Northern Ireland wish a border poll to be held within the next five years, I still find that there remain widespread misconceptions around the Secretary of State’s powers to call a border poll. In particular, people still seem to think that the Secretary of State has no discretionary power to call a border …
Register online to watch and listen to ‘Singing Struggle and Agreement’ tonight at 7.30pm as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. Slugger O’Toole has partnered with Spark Opera to stage the NI/ROI première of Clare Salters’ ‘Good Friday Agreement – p E A C E in 4/4 time’ alongside musical of struggle and a panel discussion looking back at the Belfast Agreement negotiations with Mark Devenport, Monica McWilliams and Kate Guelke.
SLUGGER EVENT. We’ve implemented it, ignored it and extended it, but never before in Northern Ireland has it been sung! But on the opening night of Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics, you can settle down in Accidental Theatre to hear singers from Spark Opera perform the local première of a choral setting of the Declaration of Support at the start of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement text, written by former NIO official Clare Salters. But don’t worry, we know that “singing the d’Hondt formula would just be weird”! Alongside the music will be a politician discussing what it was like to be inside the talks in Castle Buildings and as well as a journalist who anchored hours and hours of the rolling late-night TV coverage that accompanied the negotiations. An evening of nostalgia and reflection.
This very readable, thoughtful book reminds us of the sheer scale of the mountain still to be climbed in Northern Ireland. More worryingly, though, it left me with the feeling (although that may be more to do with my professional cynicism than with Fenton’s own belief) that we haven’t a hope in hell of getting much beyond first base on the mountain.
Twenty years ago this month my wife and I had a child- our first child. As all parents are, we were absolutely jubilant at the birth of our son. Wow! We had created this wonderful, if fragile, thing together! We adored (and still adore) him. A year or so later, I got a call to my work to say that my son was ill. He had a tummy bug and was vomiting. I was asked to come and get him …
Political leaders of old and today gathered at Queen’s University, Belfast for a day of events focussed on the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said that people “should realise that this agreement was never going to support all the problems of Northern Ireland” while former US President Bill Clinton had a triptych of advice for NI: “Keep the cranes up. Keep the voices free. Keep the votes fair. You’ll figure it out.”
Gender based violence, impediments to women’s participation in peace-building, a study on whether abortion was a workplace issue, FGM in NI and the LGBT community’s journey to equality in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement were all discussed in a panel at Saturday’s #Agreement20 conference in Manchester.
A nuanced and at times moving medley of spoken word and song remembrance of past times, incidents and ways of living during the Troubles, gradually working up to the negotiations and the 1998 Agreement. Not so balanced to become boring, but carefully seeded with surprise and honesty in the many perspectives it opened up.
DEALING WITH PAST through understanding negotiation techniques, how comedy is used in conflict, and how the long-running Crumlin Road parading dispute was eventually resolved – three papers from a panel at Saturday’s #Agreement20 conference in Manchester.
Ulster University’s Dr Máire Braniff delivered Saturday’s keynote address at the #Agreement20 conference in Manchester, with her session titled “Progress in Paralysis: Change and Continuity in post-Agreement Northern Ireland”.
THREE PAPERS presented at the #Agreement20 conference addressed the topic of post-Agreement politics in NI, looking at political consensus, what can be learned from white elephants like the Girdwood Community Hub, and comparative studies between Hong Kong, post-war Germany and NI.
At the #Agreement20 conference, Professor Thomas Hennessey explains why he thinks there was a political deal in 1998 and looks at the bottom lines of the different parties and governments involved in the negotiations leading up to the Belfast Agreement, and delves into the significance of the three-stranded approach.
Seán Brennan, from QUB, evaluates the state of our current peace… As the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement (GFA) approaches, much talk will focus on celebrating or condemning – in other words evaluating – our ‘peace process’. When evaluating Northern Ireland’s experience of peace, it may surprise some to learn that our experiences are not universally viewed as a success. In fact, it would be fair to say the ‘liberal peace’ – which is what we have …
Following in Bertie Ahern footsteps what should the two governments negotiate about bilaterally as the Brexit talks proceed? In the Irish Times Noel Whelan argues that “ Ireland and UK must renegotiate Belfast Agreement” The EU has been described as a cornerstone of the Belfast Agreement. This is more than just constitutional flannel. The agreement specifically provides, under stand 2, article 17, for the North-South Ministerial Council to facilitate co-operation and co-ordination in EU matters. The council’s remit in this …
A short BBC report points to an interesting exchange today in the House of Lords where the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office, Lord Dunlop, poured a bucket of cold water on the suggestion that “joint authority” could be an option if the relevant parties fail to form an Executive following the Assembly election in March. From Hansard Lord Lexden (Con): My Lords, this is a grave moment for part of our country—our precious United Kingdom, …
As the BBC report notes, the High Court in Belfast has dismissed two judicial review challenges to the way the UK Government intends to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union to trigger withdrawal from the EU. One of the legal challenges, by victims’ campaigner Raymond McCord relied on legal aid. The other, involving Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Green Party and Alliance MLA David Ford, has been funded, directly or indirectly, as the News Letter reported, by US billionaire Chuck Feeney …
Jamie Bryson is a well known anti-agreement Loyalist activist with an interest in law, politics and writing. He is author of “My Only Crime Was Loyalty”, an account of his role in the Union Flag protests and his subsequent lengthy and complex criminal trial. In an interview with Danny Morrison from the Andersonstown News just over a month ago, the former Republican prisoner remarked that surely the DUP would say that by Ruth Patterson- and other independents- standing in hotly …