IV.

Toward a Peace Settlement

From 1969 to 1998 the obstacles to settlement included an uncertain balance of power, continued inequality of the Catholic community, and continued insecurity of the Protestant population, who had been the main victims of the IRA campaign. After the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) of 1985, the pace of reform increased so that by the late 1990s Catholic inequality in employment was being remedied. The AIA also provided an incentive for unionists to negotiate: only if they accepted power-sharing could they lessen the role of the Irish government.

Republicans’ motivations for peace were in part due to the military stalemate: By the late 1980s it was clear that an armed struggle would not force British withdrawal. There was also the increasing demographic strength of Catholics (44 percent of the population in 2001) and the hope that alliance with constitutional nationalists, the Irish state, and the Irish diaspora in the United States might provide a gradual path to Irish unity; these alliances, however, were conditional on an end to armed struggle.

The 1998 settlement, known as the Belfast Agreement, offered greater equality in Northern Ireland, a place for all parties in government relative to their strength in the elected assembly, increasing functional and economic integration between the two parts of Ireland, and constitutional security for unionists while they remained a majority in Northern Ireland. It involved the creation of institutions where Catholics and Protestants worked closely, proportionality in elections and in executive formation, mutual vetoes for the unionist and nationalist blocs, and a dual premiership. Unionists saw it as a way of stabilizing a now more egalitarian union with Great Britain. Republicans saw it as a step on the way to more radical change.

The reluctance of the IRA to decommission (surrender) its weapons—and the unwillingness of many unionists to settle for anything less—brought the peace process and implementation of the Belfast Agreement to an impasse on several occasions. In 2002 the British government suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly for the fourth time since the Belfast Agreement had been reached and returned Northern Ireland to direct rule from the British Parliament. Even though it was suspended, elections for the Assembly went ahead in 2005. Both Sinn Féin and the DUP gained strength, and the IRA came under increasing pressure to disarm. In July 2005 the IRA formally declared an end to its campaign against British rule and announced it would decommission its weapons. Decommissioning was completed later in the year.

Power-sharing, as called for in the Belfast Agreement, was restored to Northern Ireland’s government in 2007, when longtime foes from the DUP and Sinn Féin took office together. Paisley was sworn in as Northern Ireland’s first minister. Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander and chief negotiator for the largely Roman Catholic Sinn Féin, became deputy first minister. The task of healing and rebuilding lay ahead.