Dearbhail McDonald: Patience and hard work needed to realise potential of Good Friday Agreement

Reflecting on the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Dearbhail McDonald cautions that the South must listen to the North before any debate on unification

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar meets members of the late David Trimble's family Lady Trimble and Nicholas Trimble at the Sharing Peace, Sharing Futures event in the Abbey Theatre on Sunday night. Picture: Julien Behal

Had she had the right to vote, Gail McConnell, 17 years of age at the time of the Good Friday Agreement, would have voted yes.

She would have voted yes even though her 35 year old father William, a prison officer in the Maze, was gunned down in 1984 by the IRA in front of her and her mother as they waved him off to work.

McConnell, an only child, was three and a half. But she would have voted yes in 1998, even though it would lead to the early release, from prison, of one of her father’s murderers.

Last Sunday night, the distinguished poet and Queen’s University, Belfast, lecturer ushered a devastating silence into the historic Abbey Theatre as a stellar line-up of artists and dignitaries gathered to mark the anniversary of the agreement.

Beamed into our national theatre on a screen, and invited at the behest of the Government of Ireland, McConnell quietly but firmly castigated politicians of all hues for failing the generation of children born after the agreement.

This is the generation who cannot recall history being made, but whose physical and mental health are impacted by a violent conflict that predated them.

“We owe them so much,” said McConnell, who teaches many of the ‘ceasefire babies’ bearing scars of inter-generational trauma, whether through state or paramilitary violence, at first hand or at one or two removes.

It is trauma their parents, perpetrators, wider society and Westminster — with its much decried and hugely controversial Troubles legacy and reconciliation bill — have sought to draw a veil of silence over.

“The politicians elected to govern in Ireland, in the UK, and in a devolved assembly that hasn’t been in session for over a third of its life — seven years — owe them so much,” said McConnell.

“Twenty five years on, let us hold them in mind for whatever comes after.” 

Dearbhail McDonald: The agreement saw around the corners of consent, demography and identity, allowing people like me — a Catholic school girl growing up in Newry — to identify as Irish, British or both. Picture: Andres Poveda

Seated in that hallowed hall, arrested, as I was, by McConnell’s words, a summons to action, were many of the architects and hidden hands of the globally feted agreement.

Bertie Ahern, Mark Durcan, Monica McWilliams and Liz O’Donnell, to name but a few.

Present, too, were the newer generation of politicians tasked with leading the island of Ireland and the UK through the next phase of the agreement.

They included Mary Lou McDonald, Leo Varadkar, Naomi Long, Claire Hanna and Chris Heaton Harris, the UK’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, who reminded us of the powerful words of Co Down poet Damian Gorman.

It was Gorman, in his poem, 'If I Was Us, I Wouldn’t Start from Here' who wrote: “Especially in a broken home like ours/ Where broken doors and windows feed the cold,/Each generation has a sacred task:/ to tell a better story than it was told.

Notable, by their absence, were any members, past or present, of the DUP. Former UUP leader, David Trimble, was critical to the agreement’s difficult conception and birth.

But the PUL (protestant/unionist/loyalist) community was well represented in the Abbey by cross community leaders and organisations, who keep showing up, even — and especially — when political leaders walk off the pitch.

There is, of course, much to celebrate on this, the 25th anniversary, of the Good Friday Agreement.

Its architects, who navigated incredible risks, deserve all of the accolades that will be bestowed on them in the coming days and weeks.

But has the political generation that followed honoured Gorman’s sacred task of telling a better story than it was told? The answer, regrettably, is no. Or at least, not yet.

Negative peace

Twenty five years on, we have, in Northern Ireland, achieved a negative peace characterised by an absence (largely) of violence. But we have yet to achieve a positive peace marked by true integration and reconciliation, as a stark apartheid in housing and education, amongst other things, sorely demonstrate.

The agreement was, in so many respects, an ingenious act of strategic planning, as well as a once unthinkable leap of faith, for the entire island of Ireland.

It deserves its place in history.

The agreement saw around the corners of consent, demography and identity, allowing people like me — a Catholic school girl growing up in Newry — to identify as Irish, British or both.

It gave us space to grow, unencumbered by sectarianism, to imagine a world that is not binary, one that is not dictated by the religion, tradition or housing estate we were born into.

As Linda Irvine, the Irish language rights activist from East Belfast told the Abbey, the agreement gave her the space to learn a language that had been denied to her before its passing.

Irvine has impeccable PUL credentials — her late brother-in-law David Ervine, a former member of the UVF, to his eternal credit, helped broker the Good Friday Agreement.

Grotesque insult

It took a lot of time to deal with issues such as decommissioning, policing and justice, and rightly so. But progress has faltered and the mechanism by which the DUP and Sinn Féin have repeatedly pulled down Stormont for more than a third of its life is a grotesque insult to the electorate in Northern Ireland who just want to get on with their lives and thrive.

There have been many dividends, but prosperity, that much promised crucial elixir, has stubbornly eluded Northern Ireland. And, for all its ingenuity, for all its scenario planning, the agreement did not contemplate the one event, namely Brexit, that has exposed further still its many fault lines and its egregious list of uncompleted tasks.

Columba McVeigh, who was murdered and secretly buried by the Provisional IRA. The search for his remains resumed on Monday. 

Chief among these is legacy, truth and reconciliation, as McConnell and so many victims — including the heartbroken family of one of our remaining disappeared, 19-year-old Columba McVeigh — attest.

The past is ever present for thousands on this island and beyond its borders.

As the sets were dismantled at the Abbey last Monday morning, yet another search for McVeigh’s remains at Bregan Bog in Co Monaghan, was under way, his sister Dympna Kerr tearfully hoping for a discovery, a Christian burial, so that her teenage brother might be buried with their parents.

The agreement was, in the words of the prolific American author, Patrick Radden Keefe, “a forward-looking miracle” that, perhaps inevitably, did not dwell on the past.

The author of Say Nothing, a peerless account of the murder of Jean McConville, told the Abbey gathering that the failure to deal with legacy, to provide a truth or reconciliation process, rendered the agreement incomplete.

The younger generation should feel free of the Troubles’ pathology, Radden Keefe urged, but they too are dogged by the past.

Divisive debate on reunification

Into this cauldron of legacy, trauma, hurt and unresolve hurtles the prospect of a divisive and bungled debate on unification that may squander, even further, the gains and potential of the Good Friday Agreement.

As a ‘northerner’, living in the Republic more years now than in my native Co Down, I am constantly amazed by the tenor of the debate about unification. One full of passion, yes, but all too frequently framed as Northern Ireland joining the Republic of Ireland and seamlessly adopting all of its norms.

Shibboleths about shared spaces and understanding are often thrown about like the proverbial snuff at a wake, and sincerely so.

But dig beneath the surface of identity, emblems, flags and anthems — let alone the prospect of increased taxation to ameliorate the cost of unification — and attitudes to unification are much more mercurial and, at times, bellicose.

Clannad and the Cross Border Youth choir perform the theme to 'Harry's Game' to bring the evening to a close at the Sharing Peace, Sharing Futures event in the Abbey Theatre. Picture: Julien Behal

What does a Shared Island or Shared Home Space really look and feel like? Whose health, social welfare or tax systems do we adopt? Will the North still have a separate administrative assembly, or how many seats in the Oireachtas do we maintain for unionists and other minorities in a country where a significant proportion of our population were not born here.

The existential, many would argue self-inflicted, crisis in unionism notwithstanding, how do we ensure that unification is not a hostile takeover or the imposition of ‘our’ culture and traditions on the ‘other’?

How willing are we to accommodate the culture and identity of more than 1m people on the island of Ireland, who would not identify as Irish, who are British, in the event of unity?

Should the all-island Irish rugby team, who have distinguished themselves in recent times, drop Amhrán na bhFiann altogether and stand only for the love-it-or-hate-it Ireland’s Call?

What about a new anthem and flag altogether, one for a new, truly shared island?

How ready, are we, south of the border, to deal with those complex issues of trauma, culture and identity? How do we become good neighbours when — and this is the real tragedy of partition more than 100 years ago — we still do not really know or understand each other?

I’m 45 and I still have friends in Dublin, Cork, Kerry, and elsewhere who have never been to Northern Ireland, who still see us as an othered place.

It’s not just Northern Ireland that is divided. It’s not just, in the words of Bertie Ahern, that it is “going to need tender love and care for a long time”. The big question is whether we, south of the border, are ready to truly embrace the legacy of the conflict and the trauma of all its communities, including those not yet born.

As the Abbey commemoration drew to a close, Clannad, led by Moya Brennan — herself flanked by the Cross Border Youth Choir — stilled the gathering with a haunting, inter-generational reprise of the theme from Harry’s Game.

Tears flowed down my face as a small group of children, including children of colour, from the island of Ireland and beyond, stood face-to-face with the generations that had gone before them, challenging them — challenging us — to do so much more.

We owe them so much. Signing the agreement was merely the first step.

We need to realise its full potential: it’s up to this generation to tell a better story.

• Dearbhail McDonald is an author and broadcaster