Britain | A good Good Friday

Thanks to the Belfast Agreement, Northern Ireland is a better place

Twenty-five years on, its politics are rarely deadly. But they are depressingly dysfunctional

A 'peace wall', as they're now known, divides the Falls and Shankill neighborhoods in Belfast.The peace lines or peace walls are a series of separation barriers in Northern Ireland that separate predominantly Republican and Nationalist Catholic neighborhoods from predominantly Loyalist and Unionist Protestant neighborhoods.Credit: Timothy Fadek/Redux / eyevinePlease agree fees before use. SPECIAL RATES MAY APPLY.For further information please contact eyevinetel: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709e-mail: info@eyevine.comwww.eyevine.com — Image: Eyevine

Apr 5th 2023|BELFAST

ON THE COLD April day in 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was struck, George Mitchell told Northern Ireland’s leaders that he had a dream. The former American senator had missed most of the first six months of his son’s life in cajoling unionists and nationalists to reach a settlement. One day, he said, he wanted to sit with the boy in the public gallery of the Stormont Assembly, watching former enemies govern together. Fourteen years later he did just that. The ministerial statement they sat through was “dry as dust”, he said. “But it was music to my ears, and I thought it wonderful to hear.”

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “A good Good Friday”