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A (short) thread on the Good Friday Agreement.
A lot of people have a lot of opinions, not many of them have read it. It’s not very long, I’d recommend it.
As it: continually being quoting in reference to brexit it is worth remembering the context of its creation.
A lot of people have a lot of opinions, not many of them have read it. It’s not very long, I’d recommend it.
As it: continually being quoting in reference to brexit it is worth remembering the context of its creation.
The GFA was signed after agreement with all the major parties in NI (excepting DUP) and the British and Irish govts in 1998. This was followed by two referenda (NI and RoI) to endorse.
1998 was five years after the EU single market was founded and so the border was not an issue.
1998 was five years after the EU single market was founded and so the border was not an issue.
The GFA is not a legal document in the same way as a contract so we can look beyond what is written in it.
Key aspects of it have been adopted into UK and Irish law, including changes to the Irish constitution. So the emphasis by the pedants on explicit contents is misleading.
Key aspects of it have been adopted into UK and Irish law, including changes to the Irish constitution. So the emphasis by the pedants on explicit contents is misleading.
The argument that it doesn’t mention borders (they were not an active issue until Brexit) ignores that the GFA was written in the context of a ‘borderless’ Europe that no one foresaw changing.
It was intended to use this sense of borderlessness to facilitate multiple identities.
It was intended to use this sense of borderlessness to facilitate multiple identities.
The idea that it has no connection to EU law is also a fallacy. The GFA is based on principles of EU law, including committing the UK govt to enshrine the European Convention in Human Rights into law and provide NI people access to European Court of Human Rights.
Anyone who has read the GFA will know it is a sleigh of hand that as a document focused on a brighter potential future rather than the nitty gritty of the present. It almost entirely avoids the past (the word ‘heritage’ appears only one and ‘History’ is also nearly absent).
The GFA was based on the context of 1998 - the ‘borderless’ Europe - that allowed for self-determination of identity and facilitated greater E-W and N-S power sharing. It used the lack of border to allow the people of NI to imagine a future where one identity wasn’t supreme.
The writers of the GFA assumed that the difficult nitty gritty, outside of the actual text, would be sorted out in time. In some contexts it was, but there are a lot of unfulfilled promises of peace that resulted from such a flexible agreement.
What was not foreseen - and is completely incompatible with the nature of the agreement - was the removal of one of those states from the EU. For the border to become an issue again. Whatever ‘solution’ is formulated it will impact on the understandings of the GFA.
By its very nature Brexit threatens the GFA by reactivating the idea of a border - whether on land or in the sea - and breaking the illusion that NI ppl can be both British and Irish.
The debates about the constitutional status of NI is a direct result and they won’t go away.
The debates about the constitutional status of NI is a direct result and they won’t go away.
