Interests and Identity in the Construction of the Belfast Agreement

1 Signed on 10 April 1998 at Stormont Castle, Belfast, by the British and Irish governments and the leaders of all the nationalist and unionist political parties except the dissenting unionist Democratic Unionist Party and United Kingdom Unionist Party.

2 For the whole island, the percentage vote in support of the Agreement was 85%, with 15% against. Among traditional unionist supporters in Northern Ireland, however, it is calculated that only a slight majority voted in favour. See Richard Sinnott, `The Belfast Agreement Referendums', The Irish Times, 25 May 1998.

3 `Identity' has only one entry in International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1968) and that is about psychosocial identity, by Erik Erikson. See Eric Hobsbawm, `Identity politics and the Left', New Left Review, 1996, pp. 38-47

4 `The Protestant people will not be bribed into a united Ireland', as the fundamentalist Ian Paisley likes to put it - forgetting that the Protestantism he defends was in its origins and in its Northern Irish form as much a creature of interests as it was a product of theological reflection.

5 Fintan O'Toole in The Irish Times, 13 April 1998.

6 Report of the New Ireland Forum, Government Publications, Dublin, 1984.

7 On the US-Northern Ireland connection, see John Dumbrell, `The US & the Northern Ireland Conflict 1969-94: From Indifference to Intervention', Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 6, 1995, pp. 107-125; Adrian Guelke, `The United States, Irish Americans & the Northern Ireland Peace Process', International Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3, 1996, pp. 521-536.

8 Immediately following the Downing Street Declaration, Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds announced the convening of a successor to the New Ireland Forum under the title of Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. This official examination of the political and religious culture demanded by the peace process differs from its 1983 predecessor in inviting submissions from Sinn Féin and the unionist paramilitaries.

9 Today it cannot threaten the comfortable majority of the Blair government in Westminster, but its deputy leader, Peter Robinson, has announced that it will use its influence and resources to undermine unionist candidates who support the peace process in the forthcoming elections to the Assembly. See The Irish Times, 24 May 1998.

10 An account of the role of theology in the Northern Ireland conflict is given in Bill McSweeney, `The Religious Dimension of the Troubles in Northern Ireland', in Paul Badham (ed.), Religion, State and Society in Modern Britain (London: Mellen Press, 1988), pp. 85-98.

11 Frederick Boal, David Livingstone, Margaret Keane, Them and Us?, Northern Ireland Office Central Community Relations Unit, 1996.

12 The crisis following Maastricht in 1992, however, revealed the extent to which continued support for European integration depends on public allegiance (identity), not just that of the bureaucratic and business elites who served as the principal point of reference for the calculation and upgrading of interests.

13 See reports in The Guardian and The Irish Times, 13 May 1998.

14 See the report by Patrick Smyth, The Irish Times, 14 April 1998.

15 The potential of this type of corporate investment is considerable, though it is also most vulnerable to any breakdown in the peace process. A total of 14,000 employees in 51 US companies operate in Northern Ireland, compared with 60,000 in 430 companies in the Republic of Ireland. See Roger MacGinty, `American Influences on the Northern Ireland Peace Process', Journal of Conflict Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, 1997, pp. 31-50, on p. 43. In fact the International Fund for Ireland established with the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 was a somewhat crude precursor of this linkage between political change and material interest. Unlike its successor instruments, it was not structured into a specific process of realigning popular attitudes and allegiances.

16 There is nothing inevitable in the `social engineering' underlying the Belfast Agreement. Prior to the two referenda north and south of the border, it was far from certain whether the voting on the day would herald the intended transformation of Northern Ireland or its return to sectarianism.

17 First announced by Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Peter Brooke, on 9 November 1990 and formally repeated in the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993, a joint Anglo-Irish statement widely considered to have opened the door to the IRA ceasefire the following August.

18 Bill McSweeney, `Security, Identity and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland', Security Dialogue, vol. 27, no. 2, 1996, pp. 167-178.

19 Sources: The 1992 British Election Study, ESRC Data Archive, University of Essex; Gallup Political Index 1979-1994, cited in Bernadette Hayes & Ian McAllister, `British and Irish Public Opinion Towards the Northern Ireland Problem', unpublished paper, IPSA conference, Drogheda, October 1995.

20 `Ireland Shines', Special Report, The Economist, 17 May 1997.