From the perspective of the British state, you could easily assume that the Good Friday Agreement was designed to achieve, and indeed it did achieve, many things.
The cumulative financial cost is said to have run both the British and Twenty Six County governments an estimated £20 Billion since 1969. The economic cost of the ongoing conflict and the financial losses for the British exchequer are practically unfathomable when considering the broader effect across the Six Counties in terms of lack of foreign direct investment, job creation, taxation and infrastructure development.
Indeed, bringing an end to the conflict would allow the opening up and development of new markets for British businesses. It would also allow those businesses to benefit from a highly educated workforce at significantly lower costs compared to Britain, with significantly reduced overheads. This, combined with increased tax revenue for the British exchequer as a result, would also allow the British state to offset the overall cost of the now £15 Billion per year ‘Block Grant’ subsidy to the Six County ‘Executive’.
Infrastructure development post-conflict would allow the transition of vast amounts of public funds into the hands of private businesses. City Centre development and high rise buildings would flourish alongside the businesses that would occupy them. The housing market would expand and house prices would rise significantly alongside the sale of public housing via neo-liberal Thatcherite housing policies, hastening the end of vast social housing developments and the creation of a mammoth private rental economy and a burgeoning landlord class.
The Republican Movement would be wholly subsumed into the political cul-de-sac they call Stormont, forever caught up in the sectarian carve-up of a failed statelet destined for instability; re-writing the Good Friday Agreement every few years until it effectively no longer existed.
Significant numbers of British troops would now leave the Six Counties alongside their broader military apparatus, though the occupation would continue with a large garrison, a scaled down infrastructure, and a beefed up intelligence network. Enough to pacify the people.
In a masterstroke, the British managed to convince the Republican Movement to hand over the vast bulk of its weaponry and ordnance to the enemy. That arsenal, assembled over many years by IRA Volunteers and at significant cost to life and liberty, was subsequently destroyed by British General John de Chastelain, removing a significant threat to the British presence in Ireland.
The frontline force that those now decommissioned weapons were used to gun down, the PSNI (legally incorporating the RUC), would now be wholly supported by the leadership of that same Movement. Not just in terms of practical advice but in recruitment and intelligence. They too would now criminalise the Republican struggle, calling for information to be passed to the PSNI and supporting both British courts and prison systems in occupied Ireland.
From a British perspective, the Good Friday Agreement had effectively achieved all of its objectives of Ulsterisation, Normalisation and Criminalisation in one fell swoop, and Sinn Féin would no longer stand as a major barrier to those objectives; instead, they would do it for them. A masterstroke in British manoeuvring.
Hook, line and sinker.
From the perspective of the Republican Movement, the Good Friday Agreement represents an abysmal failure to achieve its objectives. Unable to score any meaningful goals, it persists in moving the goal-posts – gone are the cries of ‘a Socialist Republic’, replaced with calls for ‘a New Ireland’, whatever exactly that might be; though absent of socialism, that much is clear.
Sinn Féin’s tenure as the poster child of post-conflict ‘democracy’ has been overshadowed by the constant failure of that supposed ‘democracy’ to remain standing. In the quarter of a century since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Stormont has collapsed no less than six times, leaving the state with no devolved government for almost ten years in total.
Stormonts supposed ‘success’ has been shrouded with the prevalence of nepotism and persistent public scandals. A 2014 probe discovered the funnelling of £700,000 of public funds into businesses run by Sinn Féin, alongside bogus claims for party expenses. The Renewable Heat Incentive scheme or ‘Cash for Ash’ as it became known, is reported to have cost the public over £500 million pounds. The Red Sky scandal saw the drawing down of public funds into private business for work on public housing which was not completed, and Stormont political parties arranging for contracts to be extended.
These scandals, alongside others, are the hallmark of governance in a failed state. The same failed state that has written into its laws an effective veto for Unionist political parties to stand in the way of any change in the status quo – the ‘petition of concern’ is a mechanism whereby a block of 30 Stormont members (MLA’s) can petition the Assembly requiring a matter to be passed on a ‘cross-community’ rather than a simple majority basis. In effect, it allows Unionism to block any form of legislation it deems to stand against its needs and desires, granting them an effective veto over governance in the Six Counties.
Indeed, the introduction of legislation supporting the Irish language or underpinning a woman’s right to choose in the Six Counties has only been brought about due to the fact that Stormont political parties were not in a position to block legislation due to Stormont instability. In essence, Stormont itself is a roadblock for any kind of progression or advancement in human rights.
Twenty five years of unstable government has not advanced any significant Republican objectives, on the contrary, those who claim to be Republicans in government have thus far rolled back on significant Republican demands. ‘A United Ireland by 2016’ has been replaced with hopes for a border poll; a new hitch for the Sinn Féin wagon. Such calls ignore the fact that such a poll would have to be supported through Stormont legislation and the Unionist ‘petition of concern’ veto, as well as the British ‘Secretary of State’ who can decide if it is in Britain’s interests to allow it, before even winning a single vote, never mind a referendum. Such calls see no realistic proposition of such a poll occurring now or in the near future.
Sinn Féin is effectively resigned to persistent public relations campaigns as it constantly jostles the realities of governing an occupation for the occupier whilst trying to shore up its own voter base. A new generation has been born into a so-called ‘post-conflict society’, absent of the ravages of war. But that generation will experience the horrors of something else not wholly unexpected; unbridled capitalism.
They say that the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to violence – it didn’t. It was an attempt by the British state to end the violence directed at its presence in Ireland. The violence of homelessness, mental illness, forced stop & searches, addiction, suicide, plastic bullets, access to healthcare, abject poverty and more was allowed to continue for the rest of us.
Twenty five years of the ‘peace process’ was an outstanding success for the interests of capital and the British state, and an exceptional failure for the achievement of Republican objectives or any other meaningful outcomes for the rest of us.
Do we condemn subsequent generations over the next quarter century to the same fate or, when we reach the 50th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, will we have used those intervening years to advance new strategies and build new Movements in the fight for Socialism and Liberation in Ireland?
You decide.
