The part played by George Mitchell ’54, H’83 in keeping the Northern Ireland peace process going during the mid-’90s was a masterclass in diplomatic skill and patience, said Peter McLoughlin.
McLoughlin is a contemporary political historian at Queen’s University Belfast, where his academic focus is Northern Ireland, particularly the period known as the Troubles and the peace process that ended them.
He was invited to ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ to explain Northern Ireland’s troubled history to students and the key role played by US Senator and peace envoy George Mitchell in bringing about the 1998 peace agreement, which ended thirty years of conflict in the province.
Before McLoughlin spoke, the assembled students heard from Mitchell himself, who delivered his message via video. The greatest heroes of the peace process, he said, were the people of Northern Ireland and their political leaders. “They did what was right, and history will judge them favorably,” he said. “Northern Ireland,” he added, “can be an example of what is possible even in… seemingly intractable conflicts.”
A good example of the challenges facing Mitchell, said McLoughlin, is the fact that, even after the peace deal had been struck, the two sides disagreed over what to call it. Many know it as the “Good Friday Agreement,” said McLoughlin, but it is also known as the “Belfast Agreement” by many on the loyalist/Protestant side, who didn’t like the potentially Catholic connotations of the other name.
A History Lesson
McLoughlin delivered a useful primer to students, helping them understand the historical background that led to hundreds of years of English and British rule in Ireland. This, he explained, brought about the partition of Ireland in 1921, after which the northeastern province of Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, while the rest of Ireland became independent.
The Troubles, which erupted in 1968, arose from the tension between the province’s two main communities: the Protestant/unionist community, which wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the Catholic/nationalist population, who favored unification with the rest of Ireland. The spark that ignited the Troubles, explained McLoughlin, was the discontent of the Catholics, who, not without justification, felt they were being treated as second-class citizens. Civil unrest soon morphed into a political struggle, and the British government sent troops to the province to try to quell the increasing violence involving armed groups on both sides, including the nationalist Irish Republican Army (IRA) and government security forces.
Some 3,500 people were killed during the Troubles and around 50,000 were injured, many of them horrifically, said McLoughlin, noting that, for Northern Ireland (population around 1.5 million), those are significant numbers.
The Slow Steps Toward Peace
During his years of involvement with the province, George Mitchell served as peace envoy and independent chair of the multiparty peace talks. He was initially appointed by US president Bill Clinton to be economic advisor to Northern Ireland in late 1994, as his term as US Senate majority leader was drawing to a close. With the IRA having declared a ceasefire earlier that year, said McLoughlin, the plan was to encourage more investment Northern Ireland, particularly from America’s sizeable Irish population.
The faltering peace process—then in its early stages—made this a challenging task, he explained, and the main problem was to persuade the IRA, by far the biggest and best armed of the paramilitary groups, to disarm. “Mitchell recognized there was no way the IRA was going to give up its weapons in advance of a peace deal, but equally the unionists would not sit down and speak to Sinn Fein [the IRA’s political wing] until they give up their weapons.”
As negotiators struggled with this seemingly intractable problem, the former US senator from Maine helped guide them toward the so-called Mitchell principles, under which the various participants in the negotiations committed themselves to finding a nonviolent, political solution to the conflict. “It was a bit of a fudge and a bit ambiguous,” said McLoughlin, “and not everyone agreed with it, but it worked.” The key thing, he stressed, was to get Sinn Fein and the unionists to sit down in the same room.
Mitchell was able to keep the shaky peace process alive, even when the IRA ceasefire collapsed for seventeen months in 1996–1997. Mitchell showed incredible patience, diplomacy, and political brilliance during this time, said McLoughlin, as he endured months of unproductive talks, wrangling, and history lectures from both sides.
When the ceasefire was restored, Sinn Fein would not talk directly with the unionists, using Mitchell as a go-between. Meanwhile, the issue of decommissioning—how to get the paramilitary groups not only to stop using their weapons but also to get rid of them—proved one of the thorniest challenges faced by Mitchell and his colleagues.
Nevertheless, a peace deal was finally reached in April 1998, effectively bringing the Troubles to a close and ending decades of violence. The major parties on both sides agreed to power-sharing, disarmament, and other reforms, while the UK government began to scale down the British Army’s operational presence in the province, with troops finally off the streets by 2007.
Peter McLoughlin’s trip to campus was sponsored by the Department of Government and Legal Studies and the Office of Off-Campus Study. His visit also included a “lunch and learn” information session for first-year students interested in studying abroad for a semester at Queen’s University Belfast, in Northern Ireland.
