A united Ireland by the 50th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement? No chance!

Here we are a quarter of a century on from the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and the post-conflict peace process has barely moved beyond its starting point. The stop-start Northern Assembly and Executive went into cold storage after just two years. It only really got going in 2007, complete with the Paisley-McGuinness “chuckle brothers”, a functioning North-South Ministerial Council and Queen Elizabeth’s ground-breaking historic visits.

By 2012 then it was all guns blazing for cementing the peace, was it not? No.

Soon, another collapsed Northern Assembly, non-functioning North-South Ministerial Council and stand-off stalemate meant renewed US help and Dublin-London guidance with a long list of unhealed disagreements over victims, the 100-plus “temporary” “peace walls” and much more. By 2014 we had a wearied new “fresh start” deal.

Today, cutting through more Executive walkouts, collapsed Assembly, Brexit and Protocol, we have another New Dawn... the Windsor Framework of 2023!

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Could you put a timescale on when? No. First, get back to the starting blocks. Get the Assembly, Executive and North-South Ministerial Council up, running and doing the business

Again, this new edifice wasn’t built by local agreement in Belfast. It required much supporting scaffolding in Brussels and Washington.

So now, a full 25 years on. What chance a Border poll being button-pressed by the Northern Ireland secretary, as required by the Belfast Agreement? As demanded by Sinn Féin? None. Could you put a timescale on when? No. First, get back to the starting blocks. Get the Assembly, Executive and North-South Ministerial Council up, running and doing the business.

Ah, but the Border poll? Not a chance.

No surprise

None of this should surprise us. Just look at the time it takes to make change happen. Back in 1921, the new six-county Northern Ireland was two-thirds Protestant or unionist and one third Catholic or nationalist. In the new Stormont parliament, that translated as 40 pro-union MPs and 12 anti-union MPs. For the following 50 years, unionist leaders could say to nationalists: “We have the numbers. Tough.”

Resisting change, unionist leaders gerrymandered council electoral wards, and condoned the crushing of Civil Rights marchers off the streets plus savage loyalist mob attacks on Belfast Catholic homes. Finally, in 1972, a wearied British government abolished the Stormont parliament. But it took until Good Friday 1998 for a unionist majority to formally back powersharing and structured cross-Border co-operation.

From the start of partition, that’s 77 years.

Sinn Féin, the group now demanding “urgent plans” for a Border poll, knows about timescales. Its republican movement partners, the Provisional IRA, began an armed street defensive campaign, with some justification, in December 1969. Then Sinn Féin and the IRA turned it into a long-war strategy for “Brits Out” and a “Democratic Socialist Republic”. Claiming legitimacy rooted in the 1919 all-Ireland election, they rejected powersharing and any separate sovereignty rights for Northern Ireland. Along the way, the IRA killed more than 1,700 people the great majority being Northern Ireland residents, including more than 600 civilians.

Mind you, Sinn Féin/IRA weren’t alone in rejecting that Sunningdale model. Opponents included booming swathes of unionists and menacing masked loyalists. And also Fianna Fáil

When the great volt face came in the 1990s – a permanent IRA cessation, Sinn Féin’s acceptance of powersharing and a separate Border poll for Northern Ireland – their combined journey to the Good Friday Agreement had taken about 80 years.

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All this despite the fact that successive British Governments, for all their flaws, had offered powersharing, all-island bodies and Northern Ireland’s right to a United Ireland by majority consent, since the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973.

Mind you, Sinn Féin/IRA weren’t alone in rejecting that Sunningdale model. Opponents included booming swathes of unionists and menacing masked loyalists. And also Fianna Fáil. Yes, “the Republican Party” stood firmly by its 1937 constitutional “territorial claim” to the whole 32 counties as one sovereign unit. It took until the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 – 56 years – for a Fianna Fáil leader, the pragmatic Albert Reynolds, to sign up to the principal of a separate right to Irish unity for the people of Northern Ireland. By doing so, Reynolds opened up the pathway to the peace process enshrined in the Belfast Agreement.

And what about that other great historical division on this island still being healed, the Civil War of 1922-24? New research puts the number of Civil War dead at about 1,600 plus a further 350 killed in the “Border War”. Emotive graveside visits still take place. It was almost a full century before the two Civil War parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, agreed to govern together.

Political Armalites

Why should it be any different in Northern Ireland after its recent 30-year conflict? Those lonely graves, dug into northern earth, from Belfast to Derry, Armagh and Down to Tyrone, Antrim and Fermanagh. When will the tears stop flowing? Will those IRA and loyalist killings ever be forgotten? Justice for the Bloody Sunday and Ballymurphy dead at the hands of British military should mean justice for the forgotten. Shouldn’t it?

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For many on the unionist side, demands for a Border poll on Irish Unity are like political Armalites. Yes, it is a provocation being played up by the DUP to erect a unionist fortress. But a provocation it is. Add in Sinn Féin’s insistence that a 50 per cent plus 1 poll victory would be enough, even if, en bloc, unionists trenchantly opposed unity.

Bertie Ahern recently warned against premature demands for a Border Poll, writing that ‘the last thing this island needs is another sectarian headcount’

Warning voices have been raised. Moderate pro-agreement unionist former strategist Alex Kane wrote about growing militancy among ordinary young unionists, loyalist paramilitaries having already withdrawn their support for the agreement.

Bertie Ahern recently warned against premature demands for a Border Poll, writing that “the last thing this island needs is another sectarian headcount”.

Then there’s the late Rev Alec Reid, heroic, quiet peacemaker at Belfast’s Clonard Monastery. Highly regarded by hardcore loyalists, he worked for many years with Gerry Adams developing a democratic alternative route for the IRA. Reid trenchantly argued that the unionist identity was real and different and “in the spirit of justice” their identity must be fully embraced within the peace process.

That requires time, space and generosity from nationalist Ireland.

How about a nationalist Concordat for Reconciliation, starting with all Dáil political parties agreeing to leave aside the Border Poll for half a generation? Say, 25 years. Release those moderate unionists to engage with change. Allow the DUP to rejoin the Assembly in a spirit of generosity. Let bad memories settle and new fruits grow.

Three-generation process

After all, the Belfast Agreement is primarily a format for reconciliation.

It’s a three-generation process. That’s the evidence.

No, there won’t be a United Ireland by the agreement’s 50th Anniversary. But if things are done right, this wee island could be on the way to a healthy, happy, unified future.

Brendan O’Brien is a former RTÉ current affairs journalist.