Ben Lowry: For all the serious flaws in how the Belfast Agreement has panned out, I still recall the 1998 period with fondness

​The essays will run until late this month, and will include a range of perspectives on that momentous 1998 deal. Robert McCartney, who wrote last week, was anti the agreement, David Kerr pro. Coming contributors played a key part in the negotiations: Reg Empey, John Alderdice, Bertie Ahern. Our columnists including Ruth Dudley Edwards, a friend of David Trimble, will share their memories. David Kerr, now aged 49, is like me of an age-group to which I referred last week: born in the early 1970s and at the vanguard of the normalisation generation. We do not recall the height of the Troubles unlike the 1998 negotiators – who did, and who were determined that Northern Ireland would not return to such times.

At the time of the deal I was living in London and early in my journalism career. I returned to NI to see the referendum vote. I supported the Belfast Agreement without hesitation. This was not because I thought it was perfect but because it was clearly preferable to the dispensation that followed the Anglo Irish Agreement (AIA) of 1985. Many supporters of the 1998 deal see the AIA as having been a crucial stepping stone towards it. I take a different view. The AIA was the seminal disaster for unionism, giving a formal say in the running of Northern Ireland to a state which had done so little to stop IRA terrorism, continuing its stubborn extradition refusals. From 1973 to 1997 the UK made at least 110 requests for extraditions from the Republic, and only eight were extradited. Many people lie in graves as a result of that refusal that persisted after 1985.

It was atrocious for the UK to reward such Irish ambivalence towards the IRA campaign in 1985. London foolishly thought that Ireland would toughen its response to terror when it signed the AIA. I will also never be able to shake off the view that it was signed by Margaret Thatcher in a moment of nervous exhaustion in the aftermath of fighting political battles on every front, including the year-long miner’s strike. In particular I wonder about the impact of the IRA Brighton bomb in the middle of that bitter industrial dispute. Even strong and great leaders can have fragile moments where they succumb to intimidation.

Unionists were not blameless in the run-up to 1985. James Molyneaux, while a war hero and a deservedly admired politician, was not best suited to lead unionism at such a challenging time. London concluded that it needed to deal over his head. The Belfast Agreement of 1998, therefore, seemed to me to be only a partial recovery from 1985, but nonetheless a remarkable one. Sinn Fein was accepting Stormont, the Irish government was removing its territorial claim on Northern Ireland, and every shade of Irish nationalism, on both sides of the Atlantic, was accepting that NI was not only in the UK, but might remain so forever. David Trimble would never have pulled off such a deal if he had not been seen by unionists as a tough advocate of their cause, not only because of his prominent role in the Drumcree dispute but in his earlier days with the Ulster Vanguard movement.

From a unionist perspective, I do not think early prisoner releases were the biggest downside to the 1998 deal (and were not as problematic as the way in which the IRA has since been allowed easily to win the narrative on the past). I think two constitutional problems have emerged from the deal, the significance of which many of us did not foresee.

The first was the way in which the UK essentially gave up its control over the future of Northern Ireland. It said that the island of Ireland would decide the future of NI, with no say for the rest of the UK, except insofar as a secretary of state can decline a border poll if he or she does not see signs of support for an all Ireland. A republican challenge to the refusal of secretaries of state to call such a poll will come before the courts within a small number of years.

And note also the role of opinion polls, which are everywhere now. How many times have you heard that, in reality, unionists don’t in fact much care about the Irish Sea border? Polls have already had constitutional impact. Theresa May, who was the first UK prime minister to give nationalists what they wanted on the Irish land border, is said to have been spooked by a poll showing high support for NI leaving the UK. When a border poll is called there will be one thereafter every seven years. The Belfast Agreement does not require such, it says there can be a border poll no more than every seven years, but this was a stupid provision. Unless support for the UK is 60% plus republicans will agitate for a poll every seven years. Seven years flies by. Even if that was pushed out to a minimum gap of 12 years and if just such a border poll had first been held in 1998, we might already have had three of them.

But perhaps the biggest problem with the Belfast Agreement is that is greatly bolstered Sinn Fein, and helped sanitise IRA terror (which 70% of nationalists now think was necessary). That meant that SF became the biggest nationalist party and always have to be in power. Not only do they want the end of Northern Ireland, they benefit from a fundamental imbalance in the system. Unionists want NI to work and so their politicians are generally keen to get back to Stormont, SF have an almost military deference to the wider republican project. This inevitably means that in talks unionists are more inclined to make concessions of substance to nationalists.

For all these flaws I still remember 1998 with fondness, and admire most of its key players.

Ben Lowry @BenLowry2 is News Letter editor

David Kerr: Unionism needs to better understand Good Friday 1998