The long road to Good Friday Agreement: The final push for the deal that brought the Troubles to an end
Posted by Jim on March 31, 2023
In the second of three articles, a former adviser to David Trimble recalls the fortnight leading up to the Good Friday Agreement
David Kerr Belfast Telegraph
Today at 01:00
As much as he liked us all, by March 25, 1998, the talks process chairman, Senator George Mitchell, had seen and heard enough. He had spent almost 700 days supervising talks about talks, talks about areas for talks, talks about ceasefires, parties walking out of talks and parties being suspended from talks.
We had made little progress on any substantive issue. Senator Mitchell wanted an outcome, so he announced a hard deadline of Thursday April 9 to reach an agreement, or he was going home.
Deadlines always focus the mind. Nowadays, the veterans of Northern Ireland’s political scene treat them differently. They tell us political negotiations should take as long as they need. Perhaps they should? Or perhaps this rather casual approach, is because the parties now have the benefit of 25 years of relative peace to fall back upon if their negotiations falter?
In 1998, we had no such luxury. If Senator Mitchell’s talks process became yet another failed initiative, in a long litany of failed initiatives stretching back to the early 1970s, we knew violence would follow and many people would lose their lives. We were acutely aware of how highly proficient both sides were in Northern Ireland at bringing misery to each other’s doorsteps.
As we entered the final fortnight of the talks, David Trimble would later quip it was the ‘white knuckle ride’ phase of the negotiations. It most certainly was. All the parties were told to submit their respective ideas and position statements and the UK Government, through Senator Mitchell, would aim to produce a working draft document by Friday April 3.
While the UUP and SDLP talked regularly and to both Governments, the UUP refused to speak to Sinn Fein.
The UUP couldn’t work out whether the IRA was committed to peace and a settlement. We knew there were major internal divisions within republicanism. Could Sinn Fein really sign up to the principle of consent? Could Adams convince them to support a devolution and partitionist settlement, when Sinn Fein had declared in September 1997, at the opening round of the ‘Strand 1’ talks (about the internal governance of Northern Ireland), that there would be ‘No return to Stormont’?
The truth is no-one knew what they could accept, and at that stage if they couldn’t support an Agreement, as far as we were concerned, that was their problem.
As a veteran of the failed political initiatives of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, David Trimble knew the price of failure for unionism and Northern Ireland. His sole focus was on getting the constitutional architecture of any deal right.
He wanted to banish the ghosts of Sunningdale and ensure that any North-South cooperation would be accountable to a new Stormont Assembly.
He wanted Stormont restored, the principle of consent accepted by all, and the territorial claim over Northern Ireland in Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Republic’s constitution removed.
Within the two loyalist parties in the talks as we entered that final week, there was quiet support for Trimble’s approach. If the complex constitutional aspects of the deal were good enough for the UUP legal experts, they would support it.
The strategic concern of the UUP and the loyalist parties was that if the talks collapsed, Tony Blair would cut a deal with the Irish Government in an Anglo-Irish Agreement Mark II, with no gains for unionism and most likely, hidden concessions to Sinn Fein.
Friday April 3
We had expected to receive a comprehensive final draft version of the Agreement on April 3, but it didn’t arrive.
Senator Mitchell had been told by the Governments to delay while they continued to work on the document. The UUP team feared the worst — that the Irish would be busy inserting their wish-list into the document. We would later learn that Sinn Fein had told the Irish that if the Strand 2 (North-South institutions) section of the deal was substantive enough, the IRA would declare a permanent ceasefire.
Monday April 6
When the draft agreement finally arrived on April 6, David Trimble split the document into sections to be analysed by specialist sub-groups within the UUP talks team covering Strand 1, Strand 2 and Strand 3.
The UUP team took seconds to conclude that the Strand 2 section was completely unacceptable. It had three annexes, with annex A covering 25 areas for immediate cooperation, annex B setting out 16 areas and a further eight areas in annex C.
Worse still, the structures were independent meaning no accountability to Stormont, and that if devolution failed in Northern Ireland, the North-South structures would carry on regardless.
Trimble was furious. Senator Mitchell was almost apologetic to him, as we would later learn, he had warned the Governments that he knew the UUP wouldn’t accept it.
Sensing disaster that evening, John Alderdice, then leader of the Alliance Party, would famously say outside Castle Buildings to the assembled media, ‘If the Prime Minister wants a deal, he’d better get over here fast’.
Tuesday April 7
As we arrived back to Castle Buildings on the Tuesday, the UUP talks team was still examining the overall draft agreement. David Trimble was concerned about the proposal for an independent commission on policing, but his attitude remained, the document would have to be changed and the UUP would not walk away without a fight to get a deal secured.
Senator Mitchell told Trimble that Tony Blair was trying to get changes to Strand 2 but the Irish were refusing to budge. Trimble phoned the Prime Minister to underline our problems with Strand 2 and he asked Blair to come over and take charge of the situation.
The Prime Minister and his entourage would subsequently fly to Northern Ireland and base themselves at Hillsborough Castle, where that evening, in front of the assembled TV cameras, Tony Blair would feel the infamous ‘hand of history on his shoulder’.
David Trimble was invited to Hillsborough to meet the PM that evening where, over dinner, they talked in detail for two hours about the draft agreement.
Meanwhile, back at Castle Buildings, UUP deputy leader John Taylor was in charge and following another internal meeting to discuss the draft document, I was dispatched upstairs to tell Senator Mitchell that we were now publicly rejecting the deal.
In all my time during the talks, I don’t think I ever saw anyone look so visibly stressed as Senator Mitchell looked as I delivered this message.
In his typically flamboyant manner, Taylor would leave that evening to attend a function in London telling the assembled media, he ‘wouldn’t touch the draft document with a 40ft barge pole’.
Whilst all of this political drama was being played out in Belfast, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was dealing with a profoundly more distressing and personal tragedy — the death of his mother.
He had been keeping vigil beside her since she had passed away on the Sunday night, from a heart attack. Her funeral was to take place on Wednesday afternoon.
Following the formal and very public rejection of the draft deal by the UUP, the message was sent to Ahern that unless something was done, the talks would collapse.
Wednesday April 8
To his eternal credit in the circumstances, on the morning of his mother’s funeral, Bertie Ahern flew to Belfast around 6.30am to meet with the UUP to discuss the problems with Strand 2. He spoke to Tony Blair and then flew back to Dublin for his mother’s burial.
He would then return to Castle Buildings that evening, to take personal charge of the Strand 2 negotiations. As he arrived back and walked past me in the corridor, he looked as I expected him to look — awful.
When I delivered the message to our team, that he was back, we knew he wanted to get a deal done.
The UUP and Irish Government would negotiate late in the early hours of Thursday morning to eventually agree a completely revised Strand 2 agreement. Three annexes were reduced to one, which set out 12 defined areas for co-operation to be discussed and agreed by Stormont.
They would not be described as ‘Executive’ bodies. A unionist minister would have to be present at all North/South Ministerial Council meetings to approve decisions.
The UUP had successfully banished the mistakes of Sunningdale. Trimble was delighted.
We would later learn that Sinn Fein were so outraged about this, they threatened to walk out, but with promises on prisoners from both Governments and their own political shopping list of some 60 items, Sinn Fein would choose to stay.
Thursday April 9
As we arrived back at Castle Buildings on the Thursday morning, the focus had shifted to the other parts of the Agreement. Intensive talks between the SDLP and UUP centred around Strand 1 matters, which basically concerned the format of a Stormont Assembly and a possible Executive.
As far as we were aware, despite the UUP having never met Sinn Fein during the talks process in a bi-lateral format, Sinn Fein had not taken part in any of the discussions for Strand 1.
They were certainly true to their ‘No return to Stormont’ mantra — and it gives a clear indication of how far they would subsequently travel by signing up to the Good Friday Agreement.
There were approximately 38 drafts of the Strand 1 papers and the UUP and SDLP did pretty much all of the negotiating between themselves.
The UUP Strand 1 team was led by Reg Empey. He had initially proposed the Welsh model or ‘Committee system’ as it was known.
The UUP calculation was that this would avoid the political drama of Sinn Fein holding Ministerial positions, as Committee chairs could be rotated between MLAs, much the same as they do on councils around Northern Ireland.
Viewed through the prism of 2023, it would be easy to misrepresent this approach as exclusionary. But the UUP team at that point simply felt it was a bridge too far for the unionist electorate to accept a Sinn Fein Minister in a devolved Government — especially if there was no evidence the ‘war’ was over or decommissioning would take place.
It’s also worth noting that even 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail still refuse to share power with Sinn Fein in Dublin.
The UUP would eventually agree to an Executive and Assembly structure, as a better form of Government, especially when promoting Northern Ireland to an international audience.
The UUP negotiators felt they had secured their constitutional objectives on Strand 2, so they needed to come to an agreement with the SDLP, who wanted an Executive structure.
Strand 1 was eventually signed off late on the Thursday night with the SDLP.
David Trimble would say afterwards that he thought John Hume was going to burst into tears. As the meeting concluded, Hume embraced John Taylor in a moment of profound symbolism between the UUP and SDLP.
Talks had been proceeding on various issues in parallel to this, such as Strand 3 (East-West structures) and the long talked about concept of a British Irish Council (BIC).
The BIC was intended to give unionists the equivalent institutional dimension to the Strand 2 North/South Ministerial Council. It would bring together the various devolved Governments of the UK, Ireland, the Isle of man and Channel Islands in a unique forum, to discuss matters of mutual interest and cooperation.
As the clock moved towards 6pm on the Thursday evening, David Trimble had another engagement to attend — a meeting of his 110 member ruling UUP Executive, in Glengall Street. He had promised to brief them before any deal was agreed at Stormont.
The meeting was scheduled for 6.30pm. We still hadn’t agreed anything on policing, prisoners or decommissioning and time was running out.
The next 24 hours would turn out to be the most important — and arguably career defining — for everyone in the UUP talks team.
Senator Mitchell had wanted a deal agreed before Good Friday, but he was going to have to wait a bit longer.
The concluding article of this three-part series will focus on the final 24 hours of the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998. It will be published on Good Friday (April 7), ahead of the agreement’s 25th anniversary.