This day - Thursday, December 2nd, 1999 - will feature prominently in the future history books of Ireland and Britain. It will be remembered as the day the conflict ended. A conflict which has lasted for almost a millennium has finally been settled, with the main participants learning to live and work together in peace, understanding and trust. Everyone involved in the process which has led to the implementation of the Good Friday agreement will have a different perspective on the crucial elements which contributed to its ultimate success. For me the most important factor was the establishment of trust between all parties, including both governments.
W.B. Yeats said that peace comes dropping slow. Trust comes even slower. Hundreds of years of conflict created a situation where the divided communities on this island had a deep-seated mistrust of one another. If they were ever to live together in peace they would have to learn to trust each other. The role of the two sovereign governments, acting as equals, would be to develop the conditions for trust, but first their own relationship needed to reflect this value. The two governments had worked for a quarter of a century on attempting to build a trusting relationship. The Anglo-Irish Agreement was an expression of a growing level of trust. But there was still some distance to travel.
Luck often plays a large role in politics, and I believe it did in this situation. I might not get on with everyone, but I did get on with John Major. I had known him since he had become Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1990. We had got on well together at EU meetings and there was a natural rapport between us when we were heads of government.
Unusually for a Conservative prime minister, John Major had no baggage when it came to the Northern Ireland issue and so approached the question with a refreshingly open mind. John Major committed himself at our very first meeting to the cause of peace and justice in Northern Ireland for his period in office, and he pledged himself to "giving the people of Northern Ireland the opportunity to build a new future for themselves". As leaders, John Major and I had many a disagreement and, to be honest, many a good row, but beneath it all there was mutual trust. In addition, President Clinton's role marked a fundamental realignment in the relationships between the governments in Dublin, London and Washington regarding Northern Ireland.
Before his election it would have been unthinkable that a US government could take the side of the Irish government against the British in relation to Northern Ireland, but that is what began to happen under President Clinton. The key achievement was that this occurred without the relationship between the US and Britain being fractured or the trust between the two governments undermined in any way. This could happen only because of mutual trust and shared vision. Between 1992 and 1994 a sea change occurred in Anglo-Irish relations. But that was just the beginning. The involvement of parties in Northern Ireland was also needed. John Hume's talks and discussions with Gerry Adams had resulted in confirmation that there was genuine support among the nationalist and republican communities for an alternative strategy to violence. The existence of this support and the growing level of trust between the governments eventually led to the Downing Street Declaration, the charter for peace in Ireland which laid out the principles by which all sides could go forward.
The fact that this was supported by the Ulster Unionist Party represented the first significant breakthrough in relationships between the two traditions on this island for literally hundreds of years. The qualified support it received from republicans meant that for the first time there was a common framework on which the two communities could build a future together. The Downing Street Declaration also led directly to the two ceasefires - August 1994 on behalf of the IRA and six weeks later by the loyalist paramilitaries - and it began the process with the Framework Document which led to the Good Friday agreement and, ultimately, to this week's formation of a power-sharing Executive. Building trust is a slow and difficult process, but it is essential if political progress is to be made. A key moment in the peace process occurred when the US government granted Gerry Adams a visa to enter the country.
The Irish Government urged President Clinton to grant the visa; the British government was completely opposed to it. That the Irish and British governments were able to disagree on this issue, yet not fall out over it, was a measure of the level of trust which had been built.
Another key milestone was the lifting of the ban on members of Sinn Fein from appearing on radio and television by the British and Irish governments. This allowed the politics of republicanism ultimately to speak louder than the guns and eventually led to the historic appearance of Gerry Adams at a photocall on the steps of Leinster House.
Republicans had been brought in from the cold and now had the responsibility to show the extent to which they could be trusted. Five years on and Sinn Fein has taken seats in a reconstituted Stormont government and the Ulster Unionist and Democratic Unionist parties are sharing power with it. This would never have come to pass had it not been that the British and Irish governments were essentially operating from the same side of the table, a position almost unthinkable a generation ago. This outcome represents the triumph of trust and democratic politics. The Good Friday agreement received an overwhelming democratic mandate from the people of Ireland, North and South. And if politics means anything it means that politicians will implement the will of the people.
The will of the people is for lasting peace on this island and a new beginning, a new freedom, a new future for all of us. With the establishment of the power-sharing Executive, the North-South bodies, the All-Ireland Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council, that is what they have got. The conflict is over. The vision has been realised.
Trust has triumphed and the men and women taking their places in the Northern Ireland Executive deserve the gratitude and admiration of everyone on this island.
