1. O’Halloran 1
Interventionism and Populism:
The Search for Causation in the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’
J.Francis O’Halloran
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Professor Gutterman
Politics and Religion

2. O’Halloran 2
Introduction
All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
-Sir Tony Benn in a speech to the House of Commons, July 2003.1
At the beginning of this month, April 2013, Northern Ireland, Britain and the Republic
of Ireland marked the fifteenth celebration of the signing of the historically momentous treaty,
the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. To historians, politicians, and a vast number of the Irish
population, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement has heralded the end of the infamous
Northern Ireland ‘Troubles,’ and ushered in a new era of democratic litigation and economic
prosperity for all, not the least in terms of political and social equity for Northern Irish
Protestants and Catholics. The intensity of tensions and violence have been reduced to a level
pre-Agreement Ireland had not seen since the beginnings of the Ulster plantations in 1606. What
to many has been a century, plus some, of turbulence, sectarianism, and civil warfare, seemingly
has come to a close, with cross-national and -sectarian organizations constructed around the
singular goal for peace and stability. For fifteen years, says current British Prime Minister, Mr.
David Cameron, “a new beginning for relations within Northern Ireland, between Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and across these islands” has brought a relative stability,
thanks to the provisions and democratic cornerstones laid down in the Good Friday Agreement.2
British Secretary of State, Mrs. Theresa Villiers, echoes Mr. Cameron, agreeing, “Northern
Ireland has come a very long way since the Belfast Agreement (aka, Good Friday Agreement of
1998). Few can deny that life here has changed for the better.”3
Similar recollections resonate throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere,
concurring and remarking on the brilliant advances in peace and reconciliation the Good Friday
Agreement has delivered or seems to have enabled Northern Ireland to achieve. Former British
Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, reflects on the outstanding willpower of the Irish people
towards peace, remarking that because of “the will of the people in Northern Ireland, that
historic Good Friday signaled the start of a peaceful future.”4 Similarly, United States’ Secretary
of State, Senator John Kerry, has proudly proclaimed the “courage, conviction, and hard work
of leaders and communities over the past 15 years… have led to a more peaceful and vibrant
Northern Ireland.”5 Fianna Fail’s leader and Republic of Ireland’s Taoiseach for the decade of
1997 to 2008, Mr. Bertie Ahern, has also praised the process the agreement has made. He said
on the fifteenth anniversary of the Agreement, early last month, “It’s fifteen years on and I think
it has worked, and worked well. The politicians in the North, I think, have stuck faithfully to the
Good Friday Agreement. The process was always meant to be inclusive and I think that it has
1 Salman Shaheen, “An interview with Tony Benn,” The Third Estate, published 15 July 2009, accessed
29 April 2013, http://thethirdestate.net/2009/07/an-interview-with-tony-benn/.
2 “Good Friday Agreement: Cameron hails 15th anniversary,” BBC News: Northern Ireland, published 10
April 2013, accessed 29 April 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-22086248.
3 Ibid.
4 “No going back: Reflections on Good Friday Agreement – the deal that changed everything in Northern
Ireland,” Belfast Telegraph, published 10 April 2013, accessed 29 April 2013,
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/no-going-back-reflections-on-good-friday-agreement-the-deal-
that-changed-everything-in-northern-ireland-29185899.html.
5 “US urges Northern Ireland to ‘consolidate peace gains.’” BBC News: Northern Ireland. Published 29
April 2013. Accessed 29 April 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21972720.

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been. Okay, there’s been some violence but the agreement has worked well.”6 Even the famous
Northern Irish journalist and political dissident, Mr. Eamonn McGann, has admitted, “the Good
Friday Agreement brought about relative peace, and it must be acknowledged that the
Agreement was accepted by an overwhelming majority in referendum in North and in the South,
so it has good democratic validity.”7 The general consensus, across the board, has been in a tone
of congratulations and optimism.
However, for each statement of sanguine confidence given, there are two additional
sentences of warning and political safeguards attached. Agreement mediator, US Senator and
Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, Mr. George Mitchell, sugarcoats the obstacles and current
agitation in Northern Ireland the best, saying with a plastered smile, perfected over his years as
US Senate Democratic majority leader, “as we all know of course there were many problems,
setbacks, issues over the past fifteen years, but they have worked hard to resolve them and I
certainly believe, and I hope most people do, that Northern Ireland is a better place as a result of
the Agreement.”8 Prime Minister David Cameron reiterates his celebration for the Irish with the
deadpan, contradictory statement, “there is still a tendency in Northern Ireland to view politics
as a zero-sum game, in which there are only winners and losers.”9 While reaffirming his
pleasure of the progress the peace process has made since the Good Friday Agreement, Mr.
Eamonn McGann has boxed his aspirations in a mood more descriptive of trepidation and doom,
saying with eloquence and fluidity of a well-practiced reporter,
I believe the Agreement had the effect of deepening the sectarian divisions of Northern
Ireland, or at least consolidated it, because of the foundation of the Agreement is
consocialism, it had the dynamic of not bringing people together, but pull them apart,
and keep them apart, in their own individual guaranteed spaces and political parties.10
The Reverend Ian Paisley concurs with Mr. McGann’s perspective, though he would never
admit it. Dubbed as extremist and uncooperative, Rev. Paisley’s opinion must be taken
seriously, not only for reason of his enormous influence in delivering his inflammatory speeches
in the midst of the Trouble Years and the resulting divides he entrenched in his Protestant
audience, but also because the Northern Ireland Executive is now controlled by his political
entity, the Democratic Unionists Party, as the largest political party of Northern Ireland. It was
originally under his direction that in 2007-2008 Northern Ireland Executive restarted, as acting
First Minister. According to him, the future of the Agreement and the Northern Irish peace
process looks bleak indeed; he has said, speaking to reporters in 2005, “the Good Friday
Agreement should be given a reasonable burial.”11 Later, when asked about the future of
provisions in the Agreement regarding the interrelations with their Nationalist counterparts, he
responded, “no, I don’t see powersharing with Sinn Fein in the foreseeable future because I
6 Ronald Quinlan, “We can’t rewrite history- Bertie played hero’s role in peace deal,” The Independent,
published 14 April 2013, accessed 29 April 2013, http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/ronald-quinlan-we-
cant-rewrite-history-bertie-played-heros-role-in-peace-deal-29194809.html.
7 “Good Friday Agreement (Part 2/2),” 12 September 2012, video clip, accessed 29 April 2013, Youtube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoQUefMMtZU.
8 “No going back: Reflections on Good Friday Agreement.”
9 “Good Friday Agreement: Cameron hails 15th anniversary.”
10 “Good Friday Agreement (Part 2/2).”
11 Matthew Tempest, “Bury Good Friday agreement, urges Paisley,” The Guardian, published 19 May
2005, accessed 29 April 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/may/19/northernireland.devolution.

4. O’Halloran 4
don’t trust them and the people don’t trust them.”12 Naysayers cannot argue that improvements
and prosperity in Northern Ireland have evolved since the Good Friday Agreements, but they are
doomed and symptomatic only of this temporary ceasefire that will soon erupt once more into a
second Troubles, or at least the common opinion trends seem to indicate.
These cautionary comments reveal a tension amongst the onlookers and Northern Irish,
as if they can only wait with abated breath for the next wave of IRA bombings or for another
Unionist march to erupt into the chaos and indiscriminate ‘revenge’ killings commonplace of
the Troubles. A vote of no confidence in the integrity and, as McGann called it, the ‘democratic
validity’ of the Good Friday Agreement has pegged a cynical fatalism to the future of Northern
Ireland. While the Agreement may have democratically grounded Ireland in a controlled,
relatively stable, political system, the product has failed to produce a bureaucracy that can
proliferate a culture of continued toleration and reconciliation to reknit the deep and deepening
rifts between the Nationalists and their Catholic appendages, and the Unionists with their
Protestant laymen.
Certainly a theoretical answer can suggest why such a momentous treaty as the Good
Friday Agreement of 1998 has only enough potential to climb to the halfway benchmarks of
achieving an aura of stability, but lacking in a real atmosphere of understanding, rapprochement
and reconcilement. The answer for the continued differences and divides between the
Nationalists and Unionists of Northern Ireland lies in the political framework of government
constructed from the Agreement. From lessons learned in the earlier civil wars of Lebanon,
South Africa and the Balkans, the craftspeople of the Agreement crafted the treaty framework
for the negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland in a political dialogue that acknowledged each
party constituency’s legitimatization for representation in any kind of resulting, devolved
political institution for Northern Ireland. As McGann notes, the political theory behind such
rationalizations and powersharing, while essential for viable democracy insofar as a protection
and respect for the minority, has the necessary effect of solidifying political power for those
who may, in fact, be demographically minor or insignificant. However, failure to represent
every political interest in negotiation will only sustain conflict “because the stake is control of
this new government and is, thus, literally, life and death for the combatants.”13 Characteristic of
warfare, including the ethno-nationalistic nature of Troubles, “negotiations to end civil wars are
very difficult to attain because the high improbability to achieve each party’s ends in a manner
that the other parties are willing to accept.”14 Roy Licklider, a political theorist studying tactics
and strategies to achieve sustainable peace after a civil war, while recognizing the democratic
principles of egalitarianism and suffrage, criticizes the Good Friday Agreement’s consocialist
tendencies to “underrepresent certain political tendencies, over-represent others without a real
mandate and expose moderates to disagreeable political risks by forcing them to compromise
with extremists.”15 A dialogic approach to powersharing governments, such as the one taken by
the Agreement, can therefore be argued to embed a division, to separate and keep separate the
conflicting societies, in the blind hope that time itself will be the healing agent to repair or
forget the rifts that once tore at the community.
12 Ibid.
13 Roy Licklider, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993,” The
American Political Science Review, vol.89, no.iii (Sep., 1995), accessed 22/04/2013,
www.jstor.org/stable/2082982.
14 Ibid., 684.
15 G.K. Peatling, The Failure of the Northern Ireland Peace Process (Dublin, IR: Irish Academic Press,
2004), 113.

5. O’Halloran 5
Almost prophetically speculated by Reverend Paisley, the powersharing structures of the
Agreement collapsed in 2001, when IRA and, to an extension, Sinn Fein failed to publically
exonerate their remaining arms cache as prescribed by the Agreement. In 2007, the government
was reinstated with the St. Andrews Agreement, essentially replicating the provisional charters
of the Good Friday Agreement, but with a greater demand for translucency and cooperation
from paramilitary groups and extremist’s political parties. As the Reverend has said,16 in order
for negotiations and successful intergroup government and bureaucracy to fluidly function, trust
between parties must be a mantelpiece, a virtue that cannot even be questioned for dialogue and
powersharing to be truly progressive. Especially since the government’s shutdown in 2001, but
dating from the beginning of the Troubles, “no one has been prepared, or has the political or
moral authority, to initiate a process of dialogue that will lead to a solution to the persistence of
sectarianism in the area.”17 Without any prime and consensual directive guiding the Northern
Irish to a field of reconciliation, “members of local community groups have been reluctant to
engage in discussion with their neighboring communities about local violence and disorder.”18
Kept in their sectarian prejudices and in a perspective of zero-sum game theory, as Prime
Minister Cameron has lambasted of the Northern Irish government and people,19 “violence
therefore seems to be an extension of the divisions” found in the type of forced “segregation” of
the Good Friday Agreement.20 The Agreement’s guarantee of formally pitting opponents against
each other has brought stability to Northern Ireland, but not peace.
Thesis
Yet, the case is two sided. It is true that, despite almost two decades of work and
supposed progress in the Northern Irish peace process, there is not nearly as much speculated
intergroup harmony as thought or proclaimed to be. The Reverend Paisley may not be wholly
correct in calling the entire process defunct, but it is true that neither the process of fostering
understanding nor the cross-cultural government have performed to the level of optimum hope.
However, such a hasty, almost biased judgment would be impetuous. No one, not even the
Reverend Paisley or McGann, can argue that the situation in Northern Ireland is not better post-
Agreement than pre-1998. The signing of the Good Friday Agreement symbolizes a climax or
culminating relief of tension wherein the bloody friction of paramilitaries became leashed by the
populist call for democratic sovereignty. Something in the historiographical rise and ebb of the
Troubles changed to allow the Good Friday Agreement to come to fruition and the resulting
relative stability at least a temporary palliation.
This force was not present in the past to fund peacemaking endeavors and endorse those
who sought the path to peace as it was evident in sufficient quantities in 1998. Identifying this
subject, plural or singular in form, and ranging from the entire spectrum of sociological
possibilities or political explanations, is essential to comprehending and ameliorating
16 Tempest, “Bury Good Friday agreement, urges Paisley.”
17 Neil Jarman, “Managing Disorder: Responses to interface Violence in North Belfast,” Researching the
Troubles: Social Science Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Conflict, ed. Owen Hargie and David Dickson
(Edinburgh, UK: Mainstream Publishing, 2003), 231.
18 Ibid.
19 “Good Friday Agreement: Cameron hails 15th anniversary.”
20 Owen Hargie and David Dickson, “Putting it All Together: Central Themes from Researching the
Troubles,” Researching the Troubles: Social Science Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Conflict, ed. Owen
Hargie and David Dickson (Edinburgh, UK: Mainstream Publishing, 2003), 295.

6. O’Halloran 6
peacekeeping undertakings. The practicality of applying a context-specific solution to civil
warfare on a wide scale can and should be called into question for its possible diversity, but
nevertheless can be demonstrably indicative to factors leading to effective political governance
and social cohesion. Analyzing the actors and subjugating the circumstance surrounding the
1998 Good Friday Agreement to comparative cross-examination of previously failed attempts at
achieving peace, this paper will seek to highlight the specific, particular contextual variables
that formulate what Dr. Richard Jackson, editor of the academically acclaimed journal, Critical
Studies on Terrorism, has called “the tipping point,”21 where previously peace had been
impossible or unattainable, suddenly, due to various explanations, becomes feasible and
realized. ‘The tipping point’ that sustained a viable opportunity for the 1998 Agreement’s
success can be reduced to an explanation that accentuates the combined dual experiences of
popular war-weariness that fumigated a parallel and dissenting opinion of Northern Irish
political and social leaders from previously proclaimed party dogma, with the unique and
immense pressure of an internationalist, interventionist foreign policy of the United States of
America. While neither of these theories can be singularly responsible for explaining the
success of 1998, taken together they offer a defendable and likely hypothesis.
Analyzed first is the phenomenon of war-weariness and popular demand in the Northern
Irish citizenry for peace and cooperation between the extreme, rather unrepresentative factions
of the Unionists and Nationalists. Secondly, an examination in the unique role of international
actors and bodies, and their contribution to tipping ‘the tipping point,’ will, together, provide a
helpful suggestion for why relative success was achieved in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement,
when previously failure was systemically and continually induced.
It was Time: The Public and their Tenacity
I am afraid.
Afraid of the land that I live in,
That I was born in.
The ground I tread each day
Resounds with shots,
With screams;
It is saturated with tears,
Tears that have never ceased flowing.
I have never known peace.
-Karyn Woods, No Hope for Tomorrow 22
Although it is futile to analyze the accuracy of blame for past deeds in the hope of
finding justification for history’s freedom fighters and terrorists, there are three general contexts
that can readily be agreed upon that warrant a label of genesis for the beginning of the Troubles.
Without divulging into theological dissenting opinions, the chaotic nature of the Trouble years
found political leverage from official political publications on both sides of the conflict. Firstly,
though not necessarily at fault, the beginning cracks between North and South, which first
21 “Good Friday Agreement (Part 1/2).” 12 September 2012. Video clip. Accessed 29 April 2013.
Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt0tXF3Zj6g.
22 Excerpted from a poem entitled ‘No hope for tomorrow,’ written during the Troubles by Karyn Woods
of Northern Ireland when she was fourteen years old.

7. O’Halloran 7
defined and drew characteristic definitions of the South from North, bubbled to official
recognition with the signing of the Fourth Home Rule Bill in 1920.23 Technically, by the
legislation of 1920, there were two independent, but still submissively sovereign territories to
the British government in Ireland, the North and the South. The political landscape drawn by the
1920 legislation only lasted so long as for the complete singing of the terminating treaty of the
Irish Civil War in 1922, where the Free State of Ireland, that southern separatist, rebellious
territory, became largely anonymous from Britain and fully independent from the United
Kingdom. In the span of half a decade, Ireland freed itself from the governance of Great Britain,
though it left behind a large northern chunk still happily under the umbrella of the London
government.
Tensions were aggravated further by the chauvinistic iteration of the Irish Constitution’s
penmanship two years later. Whether intentional or forgetfully delusional, the interpretation of
the Free State of Ireland’s Constitution, first officially penned in 1922, suggested that rather
than follow the territorial lines drawn by the 1920 Home Rule Bill, the War of Independence
would be taken on behalf of the entire isle of Ireland and, being representative of all members of
the isle of Ireland, be declared independent from Britain.24 The Northern Irish, however, as they
are known today, did not want to be independent of Britain and wanted to remain fully part of
the United Kingdom. David Trimble, former First Minister of Northern Ireland and previous
political epitome of the Ulster Unionist Party, has described his party and region’s beliefs “that
Ireland, especially now Northern Ireland, should remain within the domain of the United
Kingdom… since 1177 we have identified ourselves as British, and we do not want to see that
separation happen against our will.”25 Logically, then, a protest would erupt along Nationalists
and Unionists should the Southern Irish Nationalists, with their newly expounded and embodied
Constitution, dare to wholesale grind an instituted end to their imagined decrees. Already
bloodied by the War of Independence, the ethnocentric ‘British’ Irish and the xenophobic ‘Irish’
Irish, felt a creeping sensation of an uneasy, foreboding atmosphere begin to delineate the colors
of opposing sides once more.
In an attempt to satisfy the fearful and increasingly skittish Northern Irish, after the
exploding aftermath of the Troubles settled, the government of the Republic of Ireland, as it was
now known as, and Great Britain reaffirmed their commitments to democratic principles and
procedures in regards to the exacerbated Northern Irish ‘problem.’ They agreed that both
governments would not act in a manner contrary to the general, “sufficient consensus” of the
people.26 The resulting legislation was the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA). What had not been
foreseen, however, and directly propagated as a result of the AIA was the violation of the
natural rights of Nationalists and Catholics when political and social power was necessarily
buttressed in favor of the Unionist and Protestant majority. The British Guarantee, as it was later
fondly and ironically referred to by Social Democratic and Labor Party leader, John Hume,
“proved to be a guarantee of permanent exclusive power to one side, the Unionists… Its
existence undermined any hope of political negotiation between the two sides in Northern
23 Gavan Reilly, “Explainer: The Third Home Rule Bill is 100 years old today.What did it do?” The
Journal,published 4 November 2011, accessed 23 April 2013, http://jrnl.ie/414508.
24 Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (London,UK: Brandon Book Publishers Ltd.,
1996), 277.
25 “Good Friday Agreement (Part 1/2)."
26 John Darby and Roger MacGinty, “Coming Out of Violence: A Comparative Study of Peace Processes,”
Researching the Troubles: Social Science Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Conflict, ed. Owen Hargie and
David Dickson (Edinburgh, UK: Mainstream Publishing, 2003), 286.

8. O’Halloran 8
Ireland.”27 Trimble and his follower’s fear of having ‘their will’ ignored instead resulted in a
violation of Catholic and Nationalist’s rights, and the intentional and rather forceful silencing of
‘their will.’ Hume points out the contradiction, saying, “While this guarantee exists, there is no
incentive for Unionists to enter into genuine dialogue with those with whom they share the
island of Ireland.”28 The democratic protection that satiated the Northern Irish Unionist’s fears
of betrayal and being outnumbered by their Catholic, Nationalist and Southern brethren, led to
the Nationalist’s subjugated minority hoisting the Unionist’s status as a majority.
Ever since the Fourth Home Rule Bill, the cycle of accusation, heightened anxiety, and
democratic disregard has conserved an eternalizing list of humanitarian and political violations
that neither side would be willing to exonerate. A blossoming distrust between the two sides
raked a garden of bloodthirsty revenge and credential veneration; a culture of segregation and an
ethnocentric pride sprouted from the fertile soil of Belfast, Londonderry, and the countryside,
watered with a demonizing perspective and the preemptive blood of a competitive violence for
self-defense with all citizens equally responsible in its eventual and continual fruition.
Cooperation or even the suggestion of forgiveness was premature in the people’s minds. It was
too soon, too quick since the divorce; there had not yet been enough blood spilt for people to
relax off their revengeful pique. Hate, coupled against the reaped garden of legitimate heartache
and anguish that is the natural product of war, fueled the public’s urge for systematic violence
for “the phenomenon of ‘whatboutery’ is pervasive for victims of violence (where when one
side raises an issue relating to its suffering, this is met with the ‘what about…’ response in
relation to an equal and opposite atrocity).”29 Contrary to its perhaps noble and deterministic
intentions, the Fourth Home Rule Bill, the Free State of Ireland’s Constitution and the British
Guarantee (arising from the legislature of AIA) only served to pit the already polar divisions of
public opinion in Northern Ireland into the cast of a sectarian crusade.
On March 13, 1973, Republic of Ireland’s Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, announced a
powersharing deal with Britain and Northern Ireland had been reached, brokered primarily
between the Social Democratic and Labor Party, the Alliance Party, and the Northern Irish
Labor Party.30 The first initiative to almost succeed in resolving the Troubles in an amicable and
democratic manner, according to John Hume, was this deal, “the Sunningdale Agreement of
1973 between the British and Irish governments and the principal parties in Northern Ireland.”31
Outlined in the provision were the basic tenets, such as democratic populism and egalitarianism,
held by the respective governments (though neither their constituents nor their parties could be
held to the same standards) ever since the declaration of Irish independence; only now their
words were embodied in a formal governmental framework. As an attached provision, the
Sunningdale Agreement set up the Council of Ireland that “would provide a forum for north-
south cooperation as well as a means of expression for the Irish Nationalist aspiration, while
Northern Ireland would continue to be a part of the UK.”32 Designed for devolution from
27 John Hume, Personal Views: Politics, Peace and Reconciliation in Ireland (Dublin, Ireland: Roberts
Rinehart Publishers, 1996), 37.
28 Ibid., 38.
29 Hargie, “Putting it All Together: Central Themes from Researching the Troubles,” 291.
30 “Apr 1974 - Progress towards Ratification of Sunningdale Agreement. - Mr. Cosgrave's Statement on
Status of Northern Ireland. - Meetings between Mr. Cosgrave and U.K. and N.I. Ministers.” Keesing's Record of
World Events, volume xx (Dublin, IR: Keesing’s Worldwide, LLC, 1974), 26487.
31 From this point, the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 will be abbreviated to the initials SA; Hume,
Personal Views, 40.
32 Ibid., 39.

9. O’Halloran 9
London to Stormont, the SA “was seen by unionists as well as the right-wing of the British
establishment as a betrayal and the first step on the road to a United Ireland.”33 Their
justification and consequential outrage came with the speech of SDLP Assemblyman, Hugh
Logue, “in which he said that the Council of Ireland was ‘the vehicle that would trundle
Unionists into a united Ireland.’”34 On May 26th, 1974, American newspapers reported a
Unionist-wide strike to protest the signing of the Agreement: “Only one of the province’s power
plant was operating; electricity was available only three to six hours a day. Milk, bread and
gasoline supplies were maintained only precariously. Shipments of livestock feed were halted,
threatening thousands of animals with starvation.”35 After only a few months’ attempt at peace
and cooperation, the Council and its cross-party promises disintegrated in the face of thrown
accusations and sustained ‘whataboutery.’
It seemed that Northern Irish simply were not ready for wholesale unity. The
Ballylumford strike, as it was called, revealed a deep resentment and irrationality amongst the
Unionists that had yet to be quenched by the soothing reaffirmations of equity and minority
respect from any political party on either side. These parties failed to solidify their
constituencies and be so openly willing to blindly trust the other side without large and
presumptuous concessions. The barricade of ‘whataboutery’ prompted too high of an obstacle
for the Northern Irish to determinably demand actions to seek reconciliation from their
governments.
Allow twenty years of largely uncontrolled, chaotic civil war to unfold and pillage
countless lives, and the cry of public desolation begins to drown out the reverberations of
jingoistic chest thumping. In 1992, the infamous Hume-Adams Discussions became a public
controversy, with the agenda set for peace negotiations between all-parties, contingent on the
acceptance of simple principles such as paramilitary cease-fire and an evident willingness of the
populace demonstrably proven through referendum to assist parties on the path to peace. Called
the Mitchell Principles, the negotiations for peace became dependent upon the public to cool
their rhetoric and not rise to the inflammatory bait of Sinn Fein or Reverend Paisley’s sermons
from the pulpit of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. The brain child of the powerful
United States’ Senator, George Mitchell, along with an additional six essential democratic and
quintessential principles, the Mitchell Principles demanded respective political parties to reign
in their paramilitary champions if they wanted a seat at the negotiations. After awhile of
vacillating hesitancy, in 1993, British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert
Reynolds announced a party majority in favor of discussing a methodology to enable peace
negotiations, a communiqué that would later be called the Downing Street Declaration. It would
take another five years before the respective extremists had demonstrated sufficient trust by
destroying arms cache and declaring ceasefires to be allowed to take part in the multi-party
33 Tiernan, Joe. “Sunningdale pushed hardliners into fatal outrages in 1974.” The Independent. Published
16 May 1999. Accessed 23 April 2013. http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/sunningdale-pushed-hardliners-into-
fatal-outrages-in-1974-26259353.html.
34 Melaugh, Martin. “The Sunningdale Agreement - Chronology of Main Events.” CAIN Web Service,
modified 15 January 2013, accessed 23 April 2013, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/sunningdale/chron.htm.
35 “Strikes in Ulster Weaken Accords of Sunningdale.” The Ledger. Published 26 May 1974. Accessed 23
April 2013. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1XNOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=dfoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=
6345,7590012&dq=sunningdale+agreement&hl=en.

10. O’Halloran 10
negotiations.36 Only eleven months after the 1997 Ceasefires, Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams,
shook the hand of Ulster Unionist Party’s David Trimble, who stood in the middle of Prime
Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, presenting a cordial front to the successful
negotiation to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Yet, according to the Mitchell Principles and every agreement previous, the Good Friday
Agreement could only go into effect pending a popular referendum of the individual
constituencies of the North and South states. With an overwhelming majority, the people of the
Republic of Ireland ratified the convention with a ninety-four percent approval rating;37
similarly, the people of Northern Ireland, voted to agree to the Good Friday Agreement with
seventy-one percent endorsing, and twenty-nine dissenting.38 Later the next year, “the British-
Irish Agreement took effect,”39 with a functioning and approved government, inclusive of
Nationalist, Catholic, Unionist, and Protestant communities.
The referendum is key to understanding the dissimilarity and variance between 1998 and
1973. Whereas in 1973, a public and widely supported strike from the Unionists choked out a
premature peace, in 1998, as evidenced by the referendum’s turnout, the public widely
supported any aspect to attaining a sustainable peace. While suspicions and hesitancy plagued
the process, a natural reaction to years of indiscriminate killings and bombings courtesy of both
side’s actors, the public’s call for peace galvanized moderate political parties to contradict their
historic patrimony and bequest their inheritance for an attempted pursuit of peace. Trimble
recollects in his memoirs how “people began to recognize that all citizens, even the Catholics,
had to be directly and necessarily involved in the political process, or else it will not work
otherwise. This is something that had not been accepted at Sunningdale, but this time the
Unionists worked, got behind the idea.”40 Writing later in his own memoirs, Sinn Fein’s Gerry
Adams describes his motivations to abandon his party’s much promulgated nationalist rhetoric:
“What I was arguing was that we must build a political practice to base our beliefs; and that it
must be open to dialogue, rather than utilizing demagoguery and conspiracy.”41 Public support
of peace carried to the party’s aplomb, where, “at that point, [the political parties] then decided
to negotiate,” says Dr. Richard Jackson. “It was this mutual recognition that violence will not
work that led to the negotiations.”42 The writers of the Good Friday Agreement were
visionaries; but they were also populist representatives of a base of support, an extension of the
wishes of the people. The attempts of 1973 were insufficient in extolled applaud; the Agreement
of 1998 was a direct causation to the public’s desire to realize peace in Northern Ireland.
36 David McKittrick, “Sinn Fein ready to accept Mitchell principles,” The Independent, published 21 May
1996, accessed 23 April 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sinn-fein-ready-to-accept-mitchell-principles-
1348380.html.
37 “Referendum results:1937-2012,” The Department for the Environment, Community, and Local
Government (Dublin, IR: Department for the Environemtn, Community, and Local Government, 2013),
http://www.environ.ie/en/LocalGovernment/Voting/Referenda/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,1894,en.pdf
38 Nicholas Whyte,“The 1998 Referendums, ” Ark, published 14 January 2001, last modified 17 February
2002, accessed 23 April 2013, http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/fref98.htm.
39 “New British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and Secretariat comes into effect,” British-Irish
Intergovernmental Secretariat, published 12 August 1999, accessed 23 April 2013,
http://www.foreignaffairs.gov.ie/home/index.aspx?id=26690.
40 “Good Friday Agreement (Part 1/2).”
41 Adams, Before the Dawn, 279.
42 “Good Friday Agreement (Part 1/2).”

11. O’Halloran 11
The Americans are coming, the Americans are coming!: A Look at the Increase of
International Intervention in Northern Ireland
There will always be disagreements in democratic societies. We are experts in
that in the United States ... but violence is never an acceptable response to this.
-Clinton speaking to First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson43
On the 20th of August, 1969, with much deliberation and the resounding hesitation
markedly pocketed throughout the negotiations of Sunningdale and the general chronology of
the Troubles, Irish Taoiseach Jack Lynch ordered the Republic of Ireland United Nation’s
delegation to stand before an emergency session of the UN Security Council and present a plea
for international mediation in the coming months of North-South negotiations that would result
in 1973’s Sunningdale Agreement.44 With an official United Nation’s intercession, the vested
moral and acclaimed political authority of a bipartisan and largely unbiased peace-seeking organ
had the speculated ability to soothe the particular leery cynicism held at the core of each side’s
distrust of the other. Conformity from Unionists and Nationalists supposedly would be
expected, since any publication by the United Nations would wield higher moral licenses, and
subsequent failure of any party to follow through would receive an infinite public backlash to
their creditability. Stability, it was argued,45 could never be produced from the continually
corrupted and failing ‘peace talks,’ but reconciliation delivered from the careful and attentive
neutrality of the United Nations could relieve both sides of the political and social pressure of
‘whataboutery’ in the interest of a fair and balanced approach to civic law and governmental
order that is embedded in the United Nations’ founding Charter.
Their argument presented before the Security Council portrayed the Northern Irish
Republican cause in a light of a liberation front. Painted with the tones of imperialistic
hegemony persisted from the centuries of British colonization, “in the context of Northern
Ireland, it is clear that Republicans and their sympathizers view the continued presence of
British troops in Northern Ireland as a species of ‘colonialism’ and the reunification of Ireland
as an expression of self-determination.”46 “Such a view,” especially one with the potential to
embarrass Great Britain, found “considerable sympathy… amongst Third World and Soviet
Bloc states.”47 Such a view, also, had reasonable groundings in the United Nations Charter, “in
particular where issues of human rights or self-determination may be said to be involved” with
the issue. A peacekeeping force, said the letter addressed to the UN Security Council, “was
needed for an impartial judge, inasmuch as the use of British troops constituted a basic factor in
the perpetuation of partition.”48 The United Nations had a fundamental mission to maintain and
43 Laura Smith-Spark and Peter Taggart, “Clinton urges calm amid tensions in Northern Ireland,” CNN,
published 8 December 2012, accessed 23 April 2013. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/07/world/europe/northern-
ireland-clinton-tensions.
44 United Nations Security Council, “Situation in Northern Ireland,” 1503rd session,published 20 August
1969, accessed 23 April 2013, http://www.un.org/en/sc/repertoire/69-71/Chapter%208/69-71_08-7-
Situation%20in%20Northern%20Ireland.pdf.
45Istvan Pogany, “Could the UN Keep the Peace in Northern Ireland?” The World Today (Essex, UK:
Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1981), vol. 37, no.7, accessed 26th April 2013,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40395493, 293.
46 Ibid., 294.
47 Ibid.
48 United Nations Security Council, 1503rd session,“Situation in Northern Ireland.”

12. O’Halloran 12
fund peace endeavors wherever they may arise, the Irish delegation argued with their last
minutes, and the Northern Irish, they claimed, wanted that peace.
Deliberations amongst the members of the Security Council took only a matter of a few
hours before there was an announced verdict. With the special veto rights imbued in the five
permanent members of the Security Council, one of which the United Kingdom holds from their
reminiscent days as a global superpower, “the United Kingdom representative argued that the
Council should reject the [Republic of Ireland’s] Provisional Agenda.”49 While the verdict came
with little surprise, the delegations of the Republic of Ireland and United States of America
made clear their displeasure when the alternative to a veto could have been a viable push for
sustainable peace. The United Kingdom loftily buried any attempt at a United Nation’s
influence on Northern Ireland with the legal defense found in “Article 2(7) of the United
Nations Charter, precluded from intervening in ‘matters which are essentially within the
domestic jurisdiction of any State.’”50 In essence, the British delegation pointed out, while peace
was an aspiring goal for the United Nations to justify an intervention, first and foremost came
the sovereign protection of domestic policies and resolutions of member states, including even
the previous lackluster attempts at healing the bloodied divisions in Northern Ireland. The
Troubles began in Northern Ireland, between British Unionists and Irish Nationalists, and there
it would be resolved, without any supranational adjudication.
The custom of political deadlock remained in the unwitting shadow of the London and
Dublin governments in the ensuing years. Attempts at dialogue and powersharing ended in
failure, as seen in Sunningdale and the AIA, without the primal motivation of self-defense and
hesitation against a known enemy being assuaged or overcome. From the 1969 UN debacle till
the 1992 declaration of the reinstatement of party ‘peace talks,’ the Northern Irish Troubles
remained under the exclusive and inept attention of the London government. More and more,
however, the London government had to dodge awkward questions regarding their attempts to
reach peace and stability in Northern Ireland. There was a growing rise of attention from other
nations focused on a resolution in Northern Ireland, uncomfortable with the endless cycle of
bombings and humanitarian crises.
Preoccupied with the Cold War, the United States of America had little time to devote to
the tiny little blimp of a territory known as Northern Ireland. They had reassurances from
Britain that Northern Ireland would not pose as a threat to the international stability as it had to
their domestic securities. Scarce were the resources or patience to devote to the Irish Troubles in
the US government’s mind. Focus had to be devoted elsewhere, the popular McCartney-like
hype demanded from the Washington establishment, like along the expanding fronts on the
battle against communism. That is, until the Cold War came to an end and a sudden release of
purpose and resources flooded the American mindset. Born of a proactive and interventionist
foreign policy in the Cold War, the feral snout of the US State Department followed a new trail,
one laced with past blood of sectarianism, terrorism, and humanitarian atrocities. With perked
ears listening to the cries of its own constituency, attention on the Irish Troubles came under the
intense scrutiny of the US media corporations and the insane pressure of the world’s largest
hegemon.
Often, the source of the concerned American constituency mistakenly is attributed to a
deep, mystical reference to the pride of Ireland as imbued in the descendants of some forty
million Irish Americans. Much of the public rhetoric and media portrayal suggests there was a
49 Pogany, “Could the UN Keep the Peace in Northern Ireland?”, 293.
50 Ibid.

13. O’Halloran 13
blind patriotism to Ireland “stretching back into the roots of the potato famine and the age-old
enemy”51 that was Her Majesty’s Empire. A connection that ran all the way back to their ancient
homeland and people, three or four generations back, but still had the influence to excite within
them a demand on their new government for assistance to the Irish cause. More so, many
audiences at the time, including and especially the Ulster Unionists, misunderstood the
American involvement in Ireland as rooting singularly for the side of Northern Ireland’s
Catholics: as Representative Edward P. Boland (Ma. Dem.) declared in 1969, “the US
Government has made its keen displeasure known at the oppression of people in South Africa,
Rhodesia, Nigeria and here at home. It seems only just… that this Nation should use its
immense prestige and moral authority in an effort to help achieve justice for Northern Ireland’s
Catholics.”52 Understandably, such a statement from a US Representative would incite
trepidation in the Unionists for fear that the ‘immense prestige and moral authority’ of the
United States would be used “to generate cross-border institutions and, eventually, a united
Ireland in which Northern Ireland Protestants would be abandoned.”53 These fears resonated a
terrible fury with the British Foreign Service that frayed tensions between the closest allies of
the 20th century.
The American reach back into its Irish history, bubbling a supporting constituency in
favor of American assistance to Ireland, is a mistaken view, however, perpetuated and sustained
by public fancy and the aura of folklore ancestry. Attention given to Ireland had a deep-seated
air of fantasy and recollection in the US, due to the wide inheritance of an Irish ancestry in the
American genetic pool, but, “for many, interest in Irish nationalism had never recovered from
Eamon da Valera’s espousal of Irish neutrality in World War II.”54 Where Britain had firmly
been by the United States’ side throughout the wars and ideological campaigns against
communism, becoming each other’s largest trading partners and military associates, Ireland had
abandoned the Allied cause at apex demand. Disinterest, to the intensity of an almost faded
ignorance, surfaced on any matter involving Irish nationalism in the United States. Similarly,
there came an equal tone of accusation for both sides of the conflict, with the American public
“recoiling at both IRA bombing atrocities following the ‘Bloody Friday’ bombings of July
1972” and in horror of the British internment prisons.55 Rather, perhaps as an innate tenet of
American origins in justified rebellion and democratic legitimacy, “US-born Irish-Americans
have found constitutional nationalism an alternative more acceptable than the tradition of
1916.”56 President Jimmy Carter embodied this public interest in a 1977 statement on the
Northern Ireland, “in which he held out the prospect of increased investment in the event of a
peaceful settlement,” in the hopes of economically incentivizing the pursuit to peace and
collaboration for the Northern Irish.57
Although President Carter published the first American declaration of intervening
support to push Northern Ireland to talks, the pivotal 1998 breakthroughs happened under
President Clinton. President Carter’s repeating references to an encompassing humanitarian duty
51 John Dumbrell, “The United States and the Northern Irish Conflict 1969-94: From Indifference to
Intervention,” Irish Studiesin International Affairs, vol.6, pp.107-125 (Dublin, IR: Royal Irish Academy, 1995),
accessed 26th April 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30001841, 109.
52 Congressional Record, 23 April 1969, 10149.
53 Dumbrell, “The United States and the Northern Irish Conflict,” 124.
54 Ibid., 109.
55 Ibid., 111.
56 Ibid., 110.
57 Ibid., 120.

14. O’Halloran 14
spread by the light of democracy, especially the vibrancy of the specific strand of American
democracy, passed on through to the Clinton administration, and illuminated by such an
acclaimed advocacy, the Clinton administration began a systematic and continual application of
public pressure and persuasion to the primary actors of the Troubles to seek a new resolution for
peace. The beginnings of this intervention were essential to producing later talks between Hume
and Adams because the Clinton delegations were “particularly helpful in massaging the sticking
points in the infant stages.”58 Without the ability to apply direct physical coercion and lacking
sufficient economic incentives due to blocks by the US Congress, “the Clinton administration
may also have made specific undertakings to both unionist and republic sides.”59 Meeting the
leaders of both the Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein in 1996, Clinton managed to produce the
first layer of fertilizer to drain the remaining doubts and misgivings in order to allow trust
enough for negotiations to take place by promising the Unionists “that the US would not seek to
impose any unwanted settlement on Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority,” in accordance with
the provisions of the Anglo-Irish Agreement nearly twenty years previously; in return, the
Clinton administration succeeded in “producing promises of transferring republican prisoners
from Northern Irish gaols.”60 The beginnings of the platform had been built; distrust and an
intense dislike of each other were rampant in hampering the continuing talks, but with these
seeds of dialogue delivered, at least a direction towards attempting another trial of tempering the
Northern Irish into peace was now available.
American involvement in the Northern Irish peace process is often underrepresented in
official recognition. Although the Clinton administration “never became guarantors of any
political deal reached between the two nations… it certainly was the intention to be an enabler,
encouraging compromise and exerting pressure at the same time.”61 US Senator George
Mitchell, Special Envoy to Northern Ireland and chairperson of the negotiated Good Friday
Agreement, remarks in his memoirs “the importance attached to American involvement [in the
peace talks] was monumental. Although my role was viewed as minor, there was extensive
media coverage of every meeting; my discussions with the community groups were carried live
on the radio.”62 A slight international increase on domestic pressure, with the added spice of
only a minor invasive intervention in preparing the talks and their invited members for
negotiations, presented enough of a maxim for both sides, who had been warring for the past
eighty years plus some, to come together to find a satisfactory solution to their troubles. The
“American dimension,” as PM Tony Blair called it,63 rendered the services and influences
needed to temporarily bridge the two communities together before they alone could manufacture
enough glue to pose a credible, working relationship. It was the Americans, it seemed, that
provided the independent variable, the missing ingredient, for the singularity of the Good Friday
Agreement to come to fruition. Senator Mitchell describes the signing of the Agreement in the
opening pages of his memoir: “I had been involved in the peace process in Northern Ireland for
more than three years… Two governments and eight political parties were about to commit
themselves to peace, political stability, and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. I took a deep
breath and felt tears welling in my eyes- tears of exhaustion, tears of relief, tears of joy.”64
58 Darby, “Coming Out of Violence,” 278-279.
59 Dumbrell, “The United States and the Northern Irish Conflict,” 123.
60 Ibid.
61 Smith-Spark, “Clinton urges calm amid tensions in Northern Ireland.”
62 George J Mitchell, Making Peace (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 35.
63 S. Jenkins, “Centre point,” The Spectator,published 15 October 1994, accessed 23 April 2013, 29.
64 Mitchell, Making Peace, 20.

15. O’Halloran 15
Conclusion
You are so young yet you walk to the beat of Belfast’s drum,
There should be promise in your eyes but its replaced by history’s hate and
Despise,
You play your flute with prody pride, religion always by your side,
Your anger shows in your reflective stare each note a declaration of how much
You care,
Will no surrender be your life’s claim,
Will you kill and maim in Ulster’s name
What will take you to your peace, what will make this madness cease,
Our fight for our counties well in the past, but this hatred between us will always
Last,
Our flags now represents our unforgivable sins,
Belfast child, when will you see this is now a war that no one can win.
-Emma Wilson, Belfast Child
In this paper, there has been an endeavor to demonstrate two principle points. Taken
together, they offer a reasonable suggestion as to why, in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement
succeeded in achieving an understanding that the future for North Ireland lay in the search for
peace, rather than revenge or continual subjugation as it had for the past eight decades. More so,
they offer a contrast as to why, when the Good Friday Agreement succeeded, all other previous
attempts failed. Isolating the contextual traffic that clutters comparative studies such as this, the
two strands that propelled a viability for peace in 1998 are: the newfound willingness of the
general public to propitiate and sustain an attitude of differential respect or, to the least,
indifference to the ‘other,’ in order to reverse the decades-long culture of scorn and hauteur, so
that the cultivations of peace may finally be felt; also, although the urgings of their own
domestic constituencies remain of the utmost pivotal indication of party policy and support,
outside influence from an international interventionism propagated by foreign policy and
international concerned audiences, provided the remaining singular nudge to bring enough
pressure on Northern Irish actors to attempt to achieve peace through negotiation. Both reasons
were evident in 1998, although absent in previous attempts, leading to a suggestion that these
were the missing ‘ingredients,’ the needed prerequisite pressures or variables that lead to a
favorable result in 1998, and the lack of result antecedently. Of course, as with the chaotic and
fundamentally irrational nature of warfare, to identify two singular strands of causation in a field
of possible contextual variables would be nigh on far-fetched without a significant proportion of
credit given due to all other actions and reactions that led up to the 1998 Agreement. This paper
merely means to highlight these two strands as standing out in possibility for the increase of
favorability in 1998. With the achievement of relative stability in Northern Ireland, and its
genesis in the Agreement and the reasons behind the successful negotiation of the Agreement,
daresay that neither the people of Northern Ireland nor the new international paradigm for
humanitarianism and utilitarian democracy, nor for that matter the comparatively weak
intergovernmental network, will allow Northern Ireland to seep back into the decay of
sectarianism and civil war. Instability and popular perspectives discrediting the ‘other’ will

16. O’Halloran 16
cause lapses into the pre-Agreement mindset, but the entrusted strength of the intergovernmental
council and people’s willingness to live peaceably should be the motivating factor for political
parties to seek a new relationship with all the Northern Irish including their declared enemies. In
the rather foolish hope and dream that the people of Northern Ireland will continue to realize
that peace is an end worth not fighting for, the attempts at understanding and reconciliation, and
time itself, are the only agents now available to seam the rifts of the past for a future in the
equitable interest of all.

17. O’Halloran 17
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