As Joe Biden visits Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Christine Jardine writes in the Scotsman that we should not take the huge step forward to peace for granted.

She started by looking at how we got to the agreement:

Progress towards the Belfast Good Friday agreement had begun shortly before Christmas 1993 with the Downing Street Declaration. The joint statement by Prime Minister John Major and Taoiseach Albert Reynolds stated it was the right of the people of Northern Ireland to decide between the UK or a United Ireland. It also acknowledged the importance of mutual consent in the north and south of the island in resolving issues.

In the following five years, there were ceasefires, cross-party talks and false starts before that historic announcement on April 10, 1998, which in essence contained three basic principles. They are: the parity of esteem of both communities, the principle of consent underpinning Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, and the birth-right of the people of Northern Ireland to identify and be accepted as British or Irish, or both, and to hold both British and Irish citizenship.

And she highlighted the dramatic reduction in loss of life and injury that has followed in the ensuing quarter of a century:

In the 25 years before the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, there were more than 3,000 deaths and 47,000 people were injured as a result of the conflict. Since 1998, there have been fewer than 200 deaths. Still too many, of course, but a reflection of changed times.

Current circumstances, she says, mean that we still have to work to maintain this peace.

In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, we saw violence return to the streets of Northern Ireland as the vagaries of our EU exit cast doubt on what it would mean for the Good Friday Agreement. The most recent devolved elections in Northern Ireland were in 2022, but the elected assembly has still to sit. Its predecessor had been suspended from 2017 until 2020.

As this anniversary approached, Westminster was keen, like others, to pay tribute to the success of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and those who achieved it. But in the immediate wake of the dispute with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocols and the new Windsor Agreement, there was also a very real sense of caution. We have seen the threat level increase recently and the re-emergence of old tensions on the streets and in political debate.

It is as incumbent on all of us in positions of influence now, as it was on those in power 25 years ago, to do whatever we can to protect what is an ongoing process. The Belfast Good Friday Agreement was perhaps above all else a statement of belief in the ability of people to mend decades of grievance and to forgive.

You can read the whole article here.

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