Opinion

John Manley: 20 years on we're still waiting for a collective political effort to make the agreement work

The basis of the Good Friday Agreement was co-operation and reconciliation but its spirit was never fully embraced
The basis of the Good Friday Agreement was co-operation and reconciliation but its spirit was never fully embraced The basis of the Good Friday Agreement was co-operation and reconciliation but its spirit was never fully embraced

IT'S hard to argue with the assertion that the 'cold peace' we've enjoyed for the past 20 years is immeasurably better than the three previous decades.

Any settlement which brought an end to the conflict was to be universally welcomed – almost – but discussion still rages over whether the Good Friday Agreement provided a sustainable template for peace and power-sharing, and if its shortcomings were down to a lack of sincere support from all quarters.

It's where the art of can-kicking and constructive ambiguity were perfected but with benefit of hindsight we see that such fudges were only storing up trouble further down the line.

The issue of legacy, for instance, is as old as the agreement but has barely advanced and shows little sign of moving to any kind of resolution.

The accord was dogged by difficulties from the get go. Wrangling over decommissioning and countless votes by the Ulster Unionists' ruling council drained momentum and goodwill from the process, fuelling the suspicion and acrimony which ultimately brought the institutions down in 2002 amid the 'Spygate' episode.

Unionists did initially swallow some bitter pills in the form of policing reform and prisoner releases but support for the agreement from political unionism was always conditional and sporadic. For many of its key figures, decommissioning the majoritarian mentality proved difficult if not impossible.

When power-sharing was resurrected in 2008 post-St Andrews the personnel and personalities had changed and while the initial honeymoon period under which the Ian Paisley-Martin McGuinness 'Chuckle Brothers' double act thrived showed great promise, it proved short lived.

After Peter Robinson took over the leadership of the DUP, politics still appeared to be moving in the right direction.

However, the changing mood, encapsulated by Naomi Long's shock 2010 Westminster victory in East Belfast, soon soured and a malaise descended over Stormont, which has yet to lift.

The basis of the Good Friday Agreement was co-operation and reconciliation but its spirit was never fully embraced, while its core was hollowed out.

A salvo mentality infected the executive, while a Balkans-style carve-up took precedence over the power-sharing ethos.

The two governments too tended to retreat from their responsibilities, a strategy for which they are now paying the price.

Strands two and three, those dealing with cross-border issues and east-west relations respectively, were left underdeveloped and under-utilised. Stormont was left to its own devices, stalemate and inertia wrongly interpreted as stability.

In 1999, when talks chair Senator George Mitchell launched a review of the agreement amid one of many crises to beset it early on, he urged the north's political leaders to seize the opportunity for peace but noted that there was no "magic wand" that could make everything work – that task was up to the politicians.

Twenty years on from that historic Good Friday, we are still waiting for a collective political effort to make the agreement work.