A Good Friday agreement that has run out of steam

Those four days in April 1998 were seen as the culmination of an impossible goal: reconciliation between the Catholic Nationalist and Protestant Loyalist communities in Northern Ireland, whose war that began in 1921 had drifted into a confrontation of terrorist actions that ravaged Ulster for three decades and projected its shockwave across the United Kingdom.  

The whirlwind of violence even reached the United States, where the powerful and deep-rooted Irish community relentlessly raised funds, while facilitating clandestine shipments of arms and executioners to Green Erin "to free her from the hated English yoke". Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's particularly harsh treatment of Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoners, both by fabricating suspect evidence of guilt and by allowing those who had undertaken "hunger strikes to death" in Britain's gruelling prisons to starve to death, led much of international public opinion to show increasing sympathy, especially in the United States, for those "Irish patriots who fought with the weapons at their disposal for the liberation of their homeland".  

Thatcher was ousted from power by her own Conservative Party, which appointed John Major, who, without completely overturning the entrenched Ulster conflict, began to turn the Tories' traditional inflexibility towards the need to seek a negotiated settlement. Things were made easier by the triumph of Labour Party leader Tony Blair, who was aware that, if not reconciliation, then at least peace could only be signed by a progressive government that was not excessively tainted by the abuses committed in Ireland by British troops.  

Blair was able to count on the determined collaboration of the then US President Bill Clinton, who had placed the experienced Senator George Mitchell as chairman of the negotiating table, where the fine print of an agreement that the occupant of the White House hoped would not be delayed beyond Easter 1998 was being worked out. Alternatively, David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), and the two visible heads of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, threatened to walk out of the talks, held in an annexe to the Stormont Parliament. The Reverend Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the very embodiment of Protestant intolerance towards Irish Catholics, whom he regarded as subjects of the devil, incarnated in his view by the Pope of Rome himself, also put his foot down.  

By Thursday evening, 9 April, the point of no return had been reached. The United Kingdom had given assurances to Irish Unionists that it would not leave them to their fate, and would not accept a future reunification of Ireland without the express consent of the Irish people. Conversely, Sinn Fein stood as the mouthpiece of the Dublin government and held firm to its claim to sovereignty over the Ulster counties.  

Both Clinton and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, had to work hard to prevent the collapse of the negotiations through lengthy telephone conversations with both the Protestant and Catholic sides. The telephone marathon lasted until the twilight of Good Friday, when Senator Mitchell was able to certify the willingness of all parties to sign the Good Friday Agreement, with Sinn Fein renouncing "unquestioned sovereignty" over the counties of Ulster and replacing it with "a firm desire to unite the whole population of the island". The Protestant side in turn accepted the clear majority will of the population for the future reunification of Ireland.  

There was only one who refused to sign: Gerry Adams, who it was never clear whether he was hierarchically above or below Martin McGuinness. In his view, the compromises as drafted by Senator Mitchell were unacceptable.  

No matter, events moved quickly, the wave of optimism swept over even the most reluctant, and even in 2008, and in line with the agreements, two such antagonistic types as Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness shared a government as chief minister and deputy chief minister respectively.  

A quarter of a century later it has not been possible to form a corresponding coalition government after Sinn Fein's election victory; outbreaks and outbursts of violence have resurfaced, forcing the gates separating Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods to be closed again. Nor has the Brexit puzzle and its corresponding customs division been definitively resolved, and what is worse, there is no sense that this conflict, ironically called "The Troubles" (there are as many as 27 meanings to choose from) by the British, is leading to true reconciliation.