“NORTHERN IRELAND: THE POST-AGREEMENT INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE” THE MacDERMOTT LECTURE
“NORTHERN IRELAND: THE POST-AGREEMENT INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE” THE MacDERMOTT LECTURE, QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY BELFAST
Good evening ladies, gentlemen and thank you for that welcome and welcome to each of you to the MacDermott lecture. I thank Professor Colin Harvey for the invitation which brings me back to familiar territory and evokes many memories. John Clarke MacDermott was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland when I started my law studies at this University in that fateful year of 1969 when the episodic politico/sectarian which had been endemic on this island for centuries erupted in a new phase which would dominate the narrative of Northern Ireland for the following forty years. It was a convulsive and claustrophobic time in which many lives were lost or damaged through violence. Lord Justice MacDermott himself, as an octogenarian, was injured when he was the target of bombers while delivering a lecture at the University of Ulster in 1977. The absence of peace was pervasive and at times petrifying. The mess of underlying tensions, divisions, ancient quarrels, hostile ambitions and divergent identities had festered for generations and from time to time efforts, mostly unsuccessful, had been made to resolve them. And then there came a new generation, educated, confident, inspired by the radical partnership between old enemies that we call the European Union and sickened by the human degradation of continuing violence, it brought fresh thinking to bear on the complex of problems that a true and sustained peace process would need to address if it was to be succeed where others had failed.
Over 2,000 years ago, Cicero wrote that "the good of the people is the chief law". We could paraphrase that to explain the basic philosophy behind the radical legal architecture which underpins the peace we enjoy and continue to build today – for the Good Friday Agreement which is the chief law of the peace process, is based on the good of all the people and a consensus of all the people. Instead of managing difference according to the old custom and practice of winners and losers, where the winner takes all and the loser nurses grievance, the Agreement offered a mutually respectful space to all the protagonists and a chance for all to be winners on the basis that with a degree of compromise on all sides ninety percent of something was considerably better than one hundred percent of nothing.
The Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements, though undoubtedly correctly lauded as the triumph of politics, are also correctly seen as the triumph of law. Back in 1957 during a series of Hamlyn lectures given here at Queen’s, Lord MacDermott said that “the ordinary citizen must become better versed in the purpose and development of the law that rules him……. And… his efforts will avail him little if he neglects the problem of the control of power.”
The process of ratifying the Good Friday Agreement by referendum ensured that this seminal document that is both a local foundational law and an international treaty, would have a widespread public ownership and sense of control that would ensure its success. The political creativity needed to bring it about was matched by the freshness of the legal imagination needed to draft it. But to make it do its work and act as a leaven and as a sure friend to the people of these islands, its words and structures, its values and its mechanisms need to be worked day in and day out, in the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, in the North/South institutions and British/Irish institutions which are all part of an interlocking infrastructure designed with great care to nurture the plant of peace safely so that it can grow robust in the generations ahead.
It is a form of scaffolding. It is also a road map and it has guided all of us out of chaos, out of the chains of the past and into an era that already surpassed all others that have preceded it. It has taken the competing ambitions of nationalists and unionists, republicans and loyalists and placed them safely in the mutually agreed context of the principles of consent and self-determination so that Northern Ireland’s status within the United Kingdom is accepted but will be changed if the people of Northern Ireland by future referendum opt instead for an All-Ireland political structure. The Agreement has given Northern Ireland devolved institutions which are working remarkably well and which have not only brought power and accountability closer to its people but have showcased the positive power that can be generated when very divergent political parties work together in the common interest.
There are laws and agencies to protect and vindicate human rights and equality; there is a police force which enjoys public support across the boards. There are statute-based cross border bodies and fora for regular engagement between the governments in Dublin, Belfast and London as well as Edinburgh and Cardiff.
The outworking of these structures has produced a new dynamic of good neighbourliness and the beginnings of a new era of trust. It has resulted in the endgame for the old, embedded culture of paramilitarism and it has given the generation coming to Queen’s to study law today, among others, a social and political context that is considerably more-hopefilled and humanly decent than that faced by your predecessors.
Thanks to the work of countless peacemakers, society in Northern Ireland has been transformed since my student days here. As the beneficiaries of peace, we have cause to be thankful for what has been achieved. But we are much more than mere passive beneficiaries. We are custodians of this peace and we are, each of us, drivers of this peace. Without maintaining steady, forward momentum, there is always a lurking danger of reversion to those painful days of division and mistrust, those easy bitter options of sectarianism and skepticism. That is why the full implementation of the Good Friday and St. Andrews Agreements remains a priority for the Irish and British Governments, along with the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly.
The creation of an Assembly and an Executive based on power-sharing between the elected representatives of the unionist and nationalist traditions whose relationships had for so long been characterized by intense animosity, was a conspicuous disconnect with the past to put it mildly and the idea had its share of doubters. Yet here we are only weeks away from the completion of the first full Assembly term of continuous power-sharing, thanks to the courage, the risk-taking capacity, the determination and the dedication of Northern Ireland’s elected representatives. It is thanks too to the public whose commitment to the Good Friday Agreement has distilled into a formidable solidarity in favour of the peace process which transcends political and denominational differences and allows the two traditions to stand four square together in the face of violence perpetrated by the remnants of the old, diseased and dying culture of conflict.
As lawyers, you will all be keenly aware of the strong human rights and equality focus in the Agreement. The parties to the Agreement specifically dedicated themselves to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance and mutual trust, and to the protection and vindication of the human rights of all. “All” means what it says on the tin and because it does, the Agreement has been a catalyst for the undreamt-of progress achieved over the last twelve years. The Agreement is a friend, advocate and protector to each individual citizen and it is that platform of respect for the civil and human rights of the individual and the group that is allowing us to move comprehensively away from a troubled past towards a sophisticated and harmonious culture where respect for all traditions and beliefs is mainstreamed in each heart as well as in the laws and institutions.
The text of the Agreement underscores the primacy of dialogue over violence by containing an unequivocal undertaking that commits all parties to exclusively peaceful and democratic means to solve their differences. The parties to the Agreement did not need to abandon or compromise their deeply held beliefs but rather between them created a whole new space in which to progress their views through political dialogue and new types of intercommunal engagement.
An important element of the Agreement is that it explicitly recognises the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves as Irish or British or both as they freely choose. This last provision is particularly welcome for it has allowed us to explore the past differently – instead of ransacking it for evidence of the perniciousness of the “enemy” on our doorstep, we can now interrogate that history for all the long-overlooked and often deliberately over-looked shared memories which can help us to reconcile in the present. The stories of the Dublin Catholics and Belfast Protestants who fought side by side in the First World War are challenging our edited and dived histories. The peace is both challenging us and giving us the opportunity to be more generously interested in each other’s identity, history, culture and perspective. There is a palpable maturing and warming of relationships which happens when people who were once estranged get to know each other, work together and consciously build up their relationships on the basis of mutual respect.
Almost a year ago David Ford took office as the first Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive. Because of Northern Ireland’s past not all sides of the community had had equal confidence in the justice system and the devolution of policing and justice powers to the Assembly was among the more difficult and delayed steps along the path to peace. So the devolution of justice to the Northern Executive was a very significant moment and milestone in the peace process. It is one with a resonance for every citizen but in a special way it has a resonance for all who intend to make the law their life’s work or who are already doing so for the integrity of the law is in your hands, the fulfillment of the potential of this hard earned peace depends at least in part on how seriously you take your custodianship of the values and vision of the Good Friday Agreement.
Huge sacrifice and effort created the Police Service of Northern Ireland which now is representative of and enjoys the support of all sections of the community. It was and remains a critical building block of the peace process. The equality and human rights structure set out in the Good Friday Agreement is another crucial building block, the institutions jointly and severally are also crucial building blocks. But it is human beings who are the cement that binds all these things, that holds them steady, keeps them strong and able to withstand the inevitable storms that gather and threaten from time to time. This is a society in transition and undergoing transformation of huge proportions. While dealing with its own customised legacies of history it is also at the mercy of the global economic forces and the caprice of nature that make life unbearably unpredictable and at times cruel.
The Agreement was designed to be a bit like Noah’s Ark – able to bring its crew and passengers to safe harbour through whatever lies ahead. It doesn’t steer itself. You can choose to be passengers, crew, or the people who didn’t board. One way or another you have to choose. President John F Kennedy once said
‘For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.’
There have been many changes since I first stepped over the threshold of the Law faculty in University Square, but the biggest and best of them is undoubtedly the peace that is to quote Yeats “dropping slow” over Northern Ireland and over the island of Ireland. Although we are rightly very preoccupied by the economic crises which beset us both South and North and although many hearts are heavy with money and job worries, in truth when the history books are written it will be the triumph of peace and the triumph of good law which will be the distinguishing hallmark of this era. As it grows, sustains and solidifies, it will release new energies, synergies and opportunities that we cannot yet fathom because we are only at the start of a major benign culture shift.
In this peace process we see our capacity for innovation, for embracing change, for development, for intelligent, noble and generous compromise, for transcending selfish interests in order to promote the common good. No-one could ever fathom the sheer exhausting energy which has been sucked voraciously into building this peace just as no-one could ever fully yet fathom the good things it will deliver in the years and generations ahead, as it gathers momentum and full speed.
Already in the area of North-South cooperation, we are seeing huge dividends from the partnerships and collaborations in a range of sectors, tourism, green energy, agriculture, shared healthcare resources, inter-university research collaboration, joint trade delegations and a host of initiatives which are maximising the opportunities for all the people on this island.
There are humbling and shaming lessons to be learned from the past and no way we can change any of it except to the extent that we stop its toxic spores from contaminating the future by being transmitted in the present. The law set out in the Good Friday Agreement is intended to be a bulwark against that malign transmission, a watershed between past and future, a fresh start, an exciting adventure in building a shared future. But beware the shelf life of the toxic spores is very long.
In a graveyard at Ardcarne on the road from Carrick on Shannon to Sligo there is a headstone belonging to members of my father’s family by the name of McGreevy. Engraved on the headstone is the legend Lords of Moylurg. It was engraved in the 1960s. The McGreevys had not been Lords of Moylurg since the middle of the thirteenth century, when they were dispossessed by the MacDermott clan or in the words of one historian “subdued by the MacDermotts”. Websters Online Dictionary lists John Clarke MacDermott as the second of three common expressions of the use of the name MacDermott – the first is the name Cormac Mac Dermott King of Moylurg. The McGreeevys may have nursed their grievance for six hundred years in the time-honoured tradition but I feel blessed and privileged that in this century this descendant of the McGreevy clan speaks at a lecture in memory of a descendant of the MacDermott clan, in a University that was our common and loved alma mater, in a city that was home to us both, and in a time when law has triumphed and has become the engine of peace, justice and equality. I wish you who are the engine drivers great fulfillment and a truly good future.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.