The Good Friday Agreement and its mythology [opinion piece]
We mythologise events without even realising it in the modern world. Say the word ‘Istanbul’ to a Liverpool fan and their eyes will gleam with nostalgic glee as they construct heroes and villains of the story with the plucky underdog inevitably turning the odds to their favour. Old and dead musicians become deities whose past is reinterpreted and remolded to fit modern needs. As we grow farther from the original events, we find ourselves pulled deeper into the fantasy and less connected to the reality of the situations we hold dear. This can be seen in the American Constitution, possibly the best example we can find of a mythologized event in modern history. A constitution created hundreds of years ago is now an immovable legendary artifact which is used to validate every argument from every position found in modern American. The text is combed over, with each word picked apart to attempt to find the magical real meaning, allowing ideologues to philosophise over the true intent of the founding fathers. The American constitution is no longer a piece of policy but a quasi-religious text whose myth has overtaken its own reality.
Why bring all of this up in the context of Northern Ireland? I fear that we are approaching (if we have not already passed) the point where the Good Friday Agreement and all of its accoutrements are becoming more mythos than political policy, more of a symbol than a piece of legislation which has a temporal bias.
I should point out how brilliant I think the GFA is. It was not only an essential and pivotal moment in seeing sustained peace in this part of the world but also gave hope to other deeply divided societies around the world that even bitter enemies can come together. The GFA was signed only a year after my birth and I have seen, amongst my age group, how well regarded the GFA is and deserves to be. Even when we get past the emotional praise, the GFA was also a revolutionary method which took two warring factions and created a governmental system which both sides could support. The importance of this legislation is not lost on me and I completely understand why many see it as something which should not be changed but another part of me sees the flaw in that thinking.
We do not need to look far to see how the mythology of the GFA has been used and abused by our political elite. To take a recent example, after Biden’s electoral win in the US, both Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill felt it was appropriate to passive aggressively ask for the new president to ensure that he would do his utmost to protect the GFA. This effectively displayed the way in which our politicians attempt to use the ethereal ‘spirit’ of the GFA to further their own aims rather than uphold any true intent of the agreement. An agreement which placed the burden of stable government upon the shoulders of locally elected officials and not upon the elected officials of other nations.
This mythologised ‘spirit’ of the GFA can oftentimes actually miss how context changes the application of the legislation. The Good Friday Agreement was signed more than twenty years ago and in that time Northern Ireland has changed drastically. We no longer live in a tension filled political climate which threatens to explode into violence at the first spark of disagreement. We additionally do not see the other side in the same way as we used to. In the past, there were not only physical walls which prevented cross-community activities but there were social walls and psychological walls which unconsciously prolonged the divide. Today, we find ourselves in a Northern Ireland where many young people do not care about the religious or national identity of the people around them, even if those traits are still important aspects of their own identity. This is not to say that sectarianism does not exist today, but it is very different from the kind that was prevalent in the previous century. Additionally, in our new century, we have learned a lot about what has worked and what has not worked since the signing of the GFA. Since then, we have seen multiple collapses in government and a sustained level of incompetence from within Stormont. Not only has our perspective of each other changed, but our perspective of our government has changed the context in which the Good Friday Agreement applies.
We have to seriously ask which parts of the current system truly belong in the current version of Northern Ireland’s society and whether certain parts of the agreement actually are holding us back. Are they safeguarding us against sectarian political action or is it allowing Machiavellian mechanisms/simplistic egotistical fumbling (it can be hard to tell between the two at times) to overpower our politics. For example, we have continuously seen the petition of concern used as a roadblock to progress in Northern Ireland rather than a tool to protect Northern Irish communities. Due to its connection to the GFA, it is felt that the PoC is an untouchable and necessary part of our governmental system. While I would agree that it is necessary for the time being, there is clearly a need for reform but it is hard to see that reform coming to fruition.
I am not an advocate for wholesale change of the GFA but it has to be acknowledged when our governmental system keeps on failing us that maybe the problem does not lie with the politicians completely but partially with the rules which they are allowed to function within. There was a time when those rules fit the needs of the current circumstances but today they prove only to contribute to an executive which is constantly in the balance between happy contestation or open war.
Even as an extremely cynical person, I believe that if we changed parts of the GFA we would not see a return to the troubles. Instead, we might see an improvement to our current governmental systems which could allow for more expansive decision making to be completed at Stormont (a legislature which has barely been able to pass any new bills since its creation). This can only be achieved if we take a realistic and retrospective look at the agreement, instead of allowing ourselves to become swept up in the myths which we have built up around it. We do not want to get to a stage where we mimic the arguments of the republicans and democrats in the USA, who constantly battle over the minutiae of their constitution while the world around them burns. I have more faith in the people who live in this part of the world, as we have shown an ability to improve relations between communities over the past twenty years and have often been the driving force for true change in government.
I will admit that there is a counter argument to my own. That argument would say that the myth that surrounds the GFA is as important as the GFA itself. That the belief which follows behind the legislation is far more powerful than the actual legislation itself. I will openly admit that this is a valid point to make and that by changing the GFA we could possibly leave one of the most important works of policymaking in modern times open to legitimate criticism. Yet, I think this view would be slightly reductionist to the people of Northern Ireland and where the intent for peace actually resides. The GFA did not truly create peace as some have parrotted over the past two decades, it was the people of Northern Ireland who had long been calling for an end to the violence. We created it and at some point we may need to change it if we want to see our politics move forward.
