Introduction: Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland

Abstract

When the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement was signed in 1998, those involved believed that they ‘were finally able to bring about peace in Northern Ireland’. The process of implementing the accord and resolving tensions between the various political parties began and on 7 May 2007, the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein entered government together. Nine years after the Agreement was signed, this ‘historic’ day was heralded by the British and Irish political classes and the media as the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland. As noted by Blair in his description of that day, this achievement signalled the ‘normalisation’ of the region's politics to the British and Irish governments through a movement away from division: Every time we set foot in Northern Ireland there were protests … always showing how divided the politics of Northern Ireland was from that anywhere else. That day for the first time there was a protest not about Northern Ireland, but about Iraq. When I saw it, I felt that Northern Ireland had just rejoined the rest of the world. The British and Irish governments believed that the Peace Process, with its focus on elite political settlement, was complete and it was expected that the rest of society would follow the example set by their leaders and overcome divisions to work together. However, the resolution of conflict is not simple and, as will be demonstrated later in this introduction, Northern Ireland is not peaceful.