How the Good Friday Agreement fell apart and came back together

Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in Belfast which ended more than a quarter century of bitter, bloody fighting — the latest iteration of the 800-year struggle against British rule on the island of Ireland.  

As an Irish-American who was involved in the Irish issue long before I came to Congress and whose grand-uncle fought against the British during the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s, it was particularly gratifying to have had some role in the events leading up to that historic agreement and bringing about its actual fruition.

The island of Ireland consists of 32 counties. In 1922, after several years of fighting, Britain granted independence to 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties but carved out six northern counties whose overall population remained loyal to the British crown. Those six counties were extracted from the northern Irish province of Ulster. The three Ulster counties not included were overwhelmingly Catholic. This six-county statelet was named Northern Ireland. 

Wanting to maintain this Northern Ireland foothold and fearing that the higher Catholic birth rate might shift the population ratio, the British implemented measures to maintain unionist control. Catholics were denied certain voting rights and access to equal housing and employment. 

Beginning in 1980, I traveled to Northern Ireland many times meeting with representatives of the Irish Republican Army, which wanted to end British rule in the north, and the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defense Association and observed non-jury trials of loyalist and republican paramilitaries. I became convinced that the only chance for a peaceful resolution of the bloody stalemate would be all-party negotiations to include Sinn Fein (“Ourselves Alone”), the political wing of the IRA, with the United States being a guarantor. 

Unlike any previous president, Bill Clinton made the Irish issue a foreign policy priority and took jurisdiction of the issue from the pro-British State Department to the White House. His first dramatic step was to overrule the State Department and the British government and grant a temporary visa to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in February 1994.

Because I was the only member of Congress who personally knew and had a personal relationship with Gerry Adams when he was given his first visa, I was asked to greet him on his arrival at JFK Airport and would become very much involved in the ensuing peace process. 

With fits and starts and endless intrigue, peace talks continued but then seemed to dead end in March 1998. All the parties had been in Washington, D.C. for days of St. Patrick’s festivities and negotiations but still nothing final. There was a limit to Sen. George Mitchell’s (D-Maine), chairman of the talks, patience. He announced on March 25 that the talks could not be endless. They would have to conclude by Holy Thursday — April 9th. Success would depend on how seriously the unionists, led by David Trimble, really wanted an agreement. 

Holy Week arrived. Tony Blair flew to Belfast to directly take part in the negotiations at Stormont Castle just outside Belfast as did former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern who, because of the death of his mother that week had to helicopter back and forth between Dublin and Belfast.

On Holy Thursday morning, I was in my Long Island office getting ready to fly to Washington with my wife, Rosemary, when I received an unexpected phone call from Mo Mowlam, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. She asked me with concern about an ad in an Irish-American newspaper taken out by hardliners. I assured her there was nothing to it but she asked me to “tell that to Bertie.” I immediately called Ahern who was in negotiations and spoke with his main adviser Dermot Gallagher, who I’d known well when he was Ireland’s ambassador to Washington and told him the same thing I had told Mo: 99% of Irish-Americans would support an agreement that was signed onto by Adams. When I asked Dermot what the outlook was, he said it was very slow. Trimble was resisting any meaningful cross-border institutions with the Irish Republic which were essential to Dublin and Sinn Fein. Time was running out.

My flight out of LaGuardia was delayed for more than two hours. The plane’s phone system was knocked out by a storm and I had no contact with the outside world until I got to Washington, where my staff told me I got a barrage of media calls trying to learn the status of the talks. I immediately called Rita O’Hare, Sinn Fein’s Washington representative, who told me, “Things look bad. Sinn Fein’s getting screwed.” I then called the White House and spoke to Jim Streinberg’s assistant at the National Security Council who told me he was hearing that, though the talks would go beyond midnight, everything was being “worked out.” I said I was hearing the opposite.

My chief of staff, Rob O’Connor, arrived at the apartment with Chinese food for the team. I looked at the clock. It was 6:30 p.m. — 30 minutes until midnight in Belfast. I decided to call directly to the Sinn Fein negotiators’ office at Stormont and was told all was “grim.” Trimble was getting a Northern Ireland Assembly, which would only reaffirm the status quo of Unionist rule and there was nothing firm on cross-border bodies. I passed this on to the NSC, who assured me they would check it out. C-Span was transmitting live British coverage of the talks from outside Stormont Castle where the British announcer said “Tension is approaching fever pitch.” 

Just then, Sinn Fein called to tell me the situation was getting worse. At the 11th hour, Trimble was insisting on the IRA decommissioning its weapons, which had been mostly silent for almost four years. The Sinn Fein aide couldn’t be certain but thought this might cause their group to walk out. I immediately called Jim Steinberg at the White House and Pat Hennessy, the political counselor at the Irish Embassy, to tell them about the possibility of a walkout. Sinn Fein would not accept an agreement presented to them as a fait accompli.

Then I got a call from Dermot Gallagher at Stormont and I gave him details of my conversations with Sinn Fein.  He thanked me saying “We can’t afford to lose Sinn Fein.” A few moments later I got a call from BBC Radio, which I assumed was prompted by Sinn Fein, asking me what I’d heard. I told the reporter Sinn Fein’s concerns were so great they were considering walking out. She expressed shock and then as I’m watching the British television feed, I see Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s vice-president and reputed former IRA chief of staff, exiting a side door at Stormont. My heart skipped a beat. Turned out they were taking a smoke break!

 Holy Thursday was now Good Friday.

At 1:00 a.m. (6:30 a.m. in Belfast) I decided to get some sleep. At 6:15, I was awakened by a White House phone call telling me an agreement had been reached and would be announced in a few hours. When I said congratulations, I was told the credit goes to President Clinton who made multiple middle-of-the-night phone calls to Adams and Trimble. 

Basically the “Good Friday Agreement” provided for a Northern Ireland Assembly which would prevent unionist domination by requiring majority approval from both the unionist and nationalist communities for legislation to be enacted. There would be a meaningful North-South Ministerial Council and all efforts would be made for weapons decommissioning within two years. Plaudits to Bill Clinton for bringing about a diplomatic miracle!  

Minutes later I received a call from Gerry Adams, who said he accepted the agreement because of the “personal assurances I received from President Clinton that the United States would stay engaged until the entire agreement is implemented.” Gerry thanked me for my efforts and I thanked him for keeping me in the loop.

While the Good Friday Agreement is not perfect and the Northern Ireland Assembly is often locked in a stalemate, the reality is that for a quarter century, a generation of kids growing up in Northern Ireland has not seen warfare in their streets and neighborhoods. 

The armored cars and barbed wire are gone. There is no fortified border. People travel freely back and forth from Belfast to Dublin. Sinn Fein is the leading political party and King Charles is welcomed in Belfast. All this must be remembered on the 25th anniversary of such a historic achievement.

Peter King was the U.S. representative of New York’s 2nd and 3rd congressional districts for 28 years, including serving as chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Follow him on Twitter @RepPeteKing.