It’s a cliché, but it seems like it was yesterday. That April 10, 1998, icy for a spring and even winter day, with hail, the representatives of the international press, protected by their coats and anoraks, with their scarves tightly around their necks, waiting for hail in the gardens of Hillsborough Castle that there was white smoke. That months of negotiations between unionists and republicans, Dublin and London, with the mediation of the United States, would bear fruit and put an end to an undermined civil war that in 30 years had taken more than 3,500 lives.
And yes, there was white smoke, after an endless wait in which the conditions of some and others were about to cause everything to go to waste. But it was one of the great victories of diplomacy and today, a quarter of a century later, Northern Ireland is an unrecognizable place. A place where peace reigns, even if it is an imperfect peace, but nothing to do with the horrible place of the sixties, seventies and eighties, when bombs were the order of the day, and so were the dead. When Catholics were discriminated against and victims of British army bullets, and unionists of IRA shrapnel. When the streets of Belfast and Derry were rivers of blood (this correspondent remembers a trip to the province, in 1975, in another life, when he was a cherub, there were military checkpoints on every corner, and he had to spend a rainy night of summer between the bushes of the fence that separated the two lanes of a road along which the tanks kept passing).
Yes, it’s been a long time. Among the signatories of the Good Friday Agreements, the nationalist John Hume and the unionist David Trimble, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize, have died. Also Martin McGuinnes, who played a stellar role as negotiator for Sinn Féin. Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Gerry Adams, Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and US Senator George Mitchell (who acted as mediator) have long since left power and faded into the background. In Ulster there are 18 restaurants recognized by the Michelin Guide, a bus connects the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods (something unthinkable until recently), numerous Game of Thrones scenes have been filmed there, and the old shipyards where built and chartered the Titanic attract tourists from all over the world. For young people, the Troubles (as the three long decades of violence are called) are something as remote as the Civil War for Spaniards born after 1950, boring stories told by grandparents. Tribal politics interest them little, and they have friends on the opposing side.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a wonderland. Segregation continues to be a fact in the field of religion, education, neighborhoods and sports activities. There are Catholic and Protestant taxis and pubs, most families have suffered more or less direct losses at the hands of the other, and many neither forget nor forgive. Enormous steel plates topped with barbed wire, ironically called peace walls, separate the two communities. Belfast looks (and mostly is) a normal city, which has prospered greatly (GDP is up 43% since 1998), but resentment lingers in the background. The past is there.
Even if young people want to turn a page, if your name is Billy in Ulster, you are Protestant, and if your name is Sean, you are Catholic. The way you pronounce the letter hac unwittingly distinguishes you from one tribe or another. In 1998, 93% of voters favored republicans or unionists, in 2023, 20% of the electorate supports the Alliance Party, which is inter-community. More and more middle-class and affluent families are settling in neutral neighborhoods, and more and more parents are sending their children to non-denominational schools. But, even so, we cannot talk about integration. At concerts and football matches, shouts like “oh, ah, up the IRA” continue to be heard.
There are still violent elements on both sides, but very marginal. In the last 12 months, only one death and 37 injuries have been recorded due to sectarian violence, and the police have confiscated a thousand rounds of ammunition, a minimal part of what used to circulate. The former Royal Ulster Constabulary was made up of 92% Protestants. The current Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has 32% Catholics in its ranks.
To reach the Good Friday agreements a quarter of a century ago, everyone had to give in. The IRA proceeded to confiscate its arsenals and renounce violence, and went from seeking reunification through weapons to seeking it through the ballot boxes; the Republic of Ireland accepted that the island would only become one again when the majority of the inhabitants of Ulster wanted it; the United Kingdom assumed the same premise, as well as the existence of cross-border bodies that give Dublin a role in the management of the affairs of the province, and the most controversial issue, all prisoners accused of terrorism were released in a term of two years, despite the immeasurable pain and anger of those who had lost loved ones.
Those who said no to the peace agreements and continue to refuse them are the politicians of the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party), which was then the second in the Protestant bloc and is now the first (with 21% of votes). He allowed himself to be tricked by Boris Johnson into supporting Brexit, when even the Protestant majority did not want it, and has since lost his oremus. Sinn Féin won the last election, the Catholics have more children, the demography plays in their favor, and they, lords of the no, have limited themselves to blocking the autonomous institutions for a year, which require the participation of the party with the most votes of each community. The formula has become obsolete, and there is pressure to change it to a qualified majority of 65% of legislators to pass laws.
Unionists are terrified at the thought of becoming a minority, while Sinn Féin inched its way to power, in Ulster and in the Republic. “How the years have passed, how things have changed, what a different world, and here we are facing each other like two teenagers who look at each other without speaking… How the years have passed, the turns that life gives…” . Roberto Livi’s song is the story of two lovers with white hair. In Northern Ireland, it is that of two old enemies who do not love each other and will never love each other, and who do not make love, but neither do they make war. It seems like yesterday…
