Arelene Foster
Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Never has this well-known phrase been more apt than in connection with the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Over the coming days, EU leaders will happily talk about the success of the Belfast Agreement. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Commission, has already implied not only that her organisation played a crucial role in the Agreement, but suggested they were now guardians of it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. And if that revisionist attitude is what they intend to bring to the commemorations in Northern Ireland, their time would be better spent taking history lessons in Brussels. The Belfast Agreement came about after years of political talks and negotiations involving the Northern Ireland parties, moderated by the UK government, assisted by the Irish government, and at various points – mostly at the end of the process – cajoled or encouraged by the American administration, depending on your point of view. All these players have a right and an entitlement to remember and celebrate the events that culminated on April 10 1998.
It is of course true that the EU provided funding to the Northern Ireland Executive after the Agreement and some of it has even made an impact. But to suggest that the EU was in some way critical to the actual making of the Agreement is disingenuous at best. In fact, during the tortuous Brexit negotiations, the EU chose to misrepresent the contents of the Belfast Agreement to the detriment of those of us living here. The EU asserted that there was no border on the island of Ireland, and indeed that the Belfast Agreement promised that. This was news to us, since the border between NI and the Republic had come about as the latter left the UK in 1921. The militarised border, which came to be symbolic of the strife in Northern Ireland, only happened because of the campaign of terrorist violence that engulfed Ulster from the late 1960s. Before then many citizens moved across the border on a daily basis, including my paternal grandmother Kelly, who sold her intricate crocheted Irish lace in Clones, a small market town in the new Republic, four miles from her home in Northern Ireland.
The trope often quoted to justify the disastrous negotiations that led to the Northern Ireland Protocol was that none of us wanted to go back to the “borders of the past”. Of course none of us want militarised borders, but please don’t misrepresent why we had them in the first place – terrorism, not trade. The Belfast Agreement did the opposite of what some in the EU believe. It established that Northern Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom until such time as the people of Northern Ireland decided otherwise. It is not a half-in half-out situation. Yes, we have institutions for the relationship with our neighbours in the Republic of Ireland, but the sovereignty issue was settled.
It is a matter of record that I did not vote for the Belfast Agreement, as I felt it hadn’t dealt with the legacy of terrorism and yet was releasing those who had perpetrated that terror from prison. Those I considered to be terrorists were free to go about their daily lives and even stand for elected office, whilst those who had lost loved ones were just meant to move on, without so much as a recognition that murder was wrong. That, I felt, was morally objectionable. Nevertheless, the Agreement was put to a referendum and then overwhelmingly endorsed. I’ve always accepted that and, moreover, I now acknowledge that it was correct on the crucial issue of the sovereignty of Northern Ireland – something that should be remembered in Downing Street as they seek to deal with the outstanding issues around the Windsor Framework. Those who wish to be part of the events scheduled to mark the Belfast Agreement are welcome to come to Northern Ireland. But there is a special requisite for the EU, whose leaders must reflect on the damage they inflicted through their refusal to listen to Unionist voices during Brexit talks. As used to be said about the implementation of the Belfast Agreement: no cherry-picking.
The Telegraph
