by Blair, Tony
The talks began in September without David Trimble. Republican dissidents set off a bomb on the second day. On the third day, the Unionist parties other than the DUP, Paisley’s party, entered the talks.
There were further talks the next month and then I went over on 13 October to have my first meeting with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Up to then, no British prime minister had met either of them. It was a big moment. A crucial question was whether or not I shook hands with them (no Unionist leader did until 2007). I decided just to do the thing naturally. So they walked in, we shook hands.
When asked about it afterwards, I said I treated them like any other human being, but later the same day I got a taste of Unionist sentiment. I was invited by Peter Robinson, the DUP deputy leader, to visit a shopping centre in his constituency. I was never sure whether he set me up or not. I’ll assume not.
The place was full of the most respectable elderly grannies doing the shopping. Like something out of a bad dream, however, they suddenly morphed into very angry protesting grannies, shouting, swearing, calling me a traitor and waving rubber gloves in my face. I was perfectly happy to listen to them, but the RUC – with what I thought was a trifle too much eagerness – turned it into a major security incident and physically carried me into a room for my own safety.
Amusingly, I didn’t get what the rubber gloves were about at all. I thought they had just finished doing the washing-up or something. When I told Jonathan, he roared with laughter and said, ‘No, it’s because you should have worn rubber gloves when shaking hands with Gerry Adams.’
The next few months were a complicated trek through a very dense and dangerous jungle, as we tried to get to the uplands where we could see our way to a negotiated deal. Our path was constantly, though fortunately temporarily, barred by unhelpful events. One Loyalist group reinstated their ceasefire. Good. Then another Loyalist group broke theirs and had to be excluded from the talks. Bad. In February 1998 there was a real crisis when the IRA killed two people in Belfast. Sinn Fein were excluded for seventeen days. Then the dissident Republican group the Irish National Liberation Army killed Billy Wright, the Loyalist Volunteer Force leader, inside the Maze prison. More upheaval.
Throughout I was never off the phone to David Trimble and Unionist leaders, desperately holding them in while, not entirely unreasonably, they regarded the continual outbreaks of sporadic violence as somewhat inconsistent with the Mitchell principles.
To assuage Nationalist opinion and under pressure from the Irish, I also ordered an inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings in 1972, when British troops had opened fire on protesters in Belfast, killing a number of people. Nationalists claimed they were peaceful protesters. An inquiry at the time by Lord Widgery, the then Lord Chief Justice, was widely condemned as a whitewash and we agreed to meet the twenty-five-year demand to have another inquiry. It certainly assuaged opinion at the time. It also turned out to be a long-running saga, however, lasting twelve years at a cost of nearly £200 million. Until it reported in 2010, I considered it a classic example of why you should never conduct inquiries into anything unless utterly impossible to resist, or in the most truly exceptional circumstances. They rarely achieve their aim. However, the report when published proved me wrong. It had been worth it: an exhaustive and fair account of what happened.
Somehow or other we staggered into early April when we had decided to try to broker agreement around the three strands that had been the basis of the talks under John Major. We fixed a date for the meeting. The fascinating thing about the Good Friday Agreement is that the way it came about was far more by accident than design. I was due to stay a day to give an agreed deal my endorsement, the detailed work having been done by officials. I ended up staying for four days and nights and engaging intimately in the detail of one of the most extraordinary peace negotiations ever undertaken. At critical points throughout those days the deal was lost; but in the end, and by the squeakiest of squeaks, we got it through. I can truthfully say I have never been involved in anything quite like it. And it did make history.
Talking of ‘history’, there was a hilarious moment when I first arrived. I had heard from David Trimble on the phone the night before that although an immense amount of detailed work by officials had indeed been done, not only was none of it actually agreed, it also looked as if it was very unlikely to be agreed. I decided to be in practical, workmanlike, non-rhetorical mode when I addressed the press outside Hillsborough, the stately home that is the perquisite of the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. ‘Today is not a day for sound bites,’ I began eagerly, oozing impatience to get down to work and irritation with anything flowery or contrived. Then – and heaven only knows where it came from, it just popped into my head – I said, ‘But I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder’, which of course was about as large a bite of sound as you could contemplate. In the corner of my eye I could see Jonathan and Alastair cracking up. I decided to say no more and quickly went back into the building before being taken to the negotiations, held at Castle Buildings at Stormont.
Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland government in the years following partition until the whole system collapsed, is typical of the extraordinary buildings with which Britain told the rest of the world of its own importance. Built in the early twentieth century, it is an imposing edifice with grounds to match and a grandeur that is impressive, stately and strong. Some lunatic, however, had decided that Castle Buildings – the modest annexe – should be where we met. There should be a warrant out for the person who designed it. There were next to no facilities, it was ugly, cramped and, worst of all, had no soul. I am rather sensitive to my surroundings. I love good design, find energy in beauty, particularly of architecture, and I like to work in an environment that pleases the eye and refreshes the soul. Castle Buildings was the antithesis.
However, never mind the damn building, it was clear that we had badly misjudged Unionist readiness to deal. Of course David Trimble was under perpetual pressure from Ian Paisley, who turned up outside Castle Buildings to condemn the whole thing as a monstrous sell-out.
I had also taken the precaution of talking the evening before to John Alderdice, the leader of the cross-community Alliance Party. John was the thoroughly reasonable leader of a thoroughly reasonable party, which meant they stood no chance of winning. Nonetheless, they exercised some swing influence in the centre and John, especially, was a quality politician who knew the Unionist community well. He told me bluntly the thing was a non-starter for David Trimble.
I went up to the room on the fifth floor that was to become my living quarters, my cell, for the next few days. I beetled along the corridor to see George Mitchell, who was in jovial mood but somewhat unnerved me by telling me jauntily that he thought the deal was undoable.
I took the decision then and there to take complete charge of the negotiation. I spoke again to David Trimble, who was in favour of leaving things until after Easter. I started going through the detail of what he needed. The previous night I had familiarised myself with the complexities of the different strands of negotiation. It was like being back at the Bar reading up the next day’s brief. I am lucky in being able to digest a large amount of information quickly, an invaluable training which the law really provides.
One myth about me is that I prefer the broad brush to the detail. In truth, it’s impossible as prime minister to be across the detail of everything, and in addition, too much detail creates an immediate wood/trees problem. But sometimes – at moments of crisis or negotiations like this, or some of those back-breaking European treaties or Budget agreements – the detail is absolutely of first importance. At such times, I would immerse myself in detail.
I did so now, and just as well. David had pages of amendments, and, naturally, one side’s improvement to the text would be the other side’s loss. With not much genuine basis for so doing, I promised David I would deliver what he needed.
I next got hold of Bertie, who had just
arrived. Bertie is one of my favourite political leaders. Over time he became a true friend. He was heroic throughout the whole process, smart, cunning in the best sense, strong and, above all, free of the shackles of history. That is not to say he had no sense of history; on the contrary, his family had fought the British, had been part of the Easter Uprising, were Republicans through and through; but he had that elemental quality that defines great politicians: he was a student of history, not its prisoner.
His mother – to whom he was close – had just died, and the previous night he had watched over her body. It was good of him to come at all. Now he had to contend with me telling him that the North–South part – i.e. the all-Ireland part, so dear to his constituents – would have to be rewritten. It was not the news he wanted, but here’s where Bertie showed his mettle and his character.
On 7 April 1998 – and many times later in the years to come – he could have put the traditional past perspective of his country before a living, evolving vision of its future. Instead, he chose repeatedly to put the future first. His support and his ingenuity were recurring mainstays of the progress in the search for peace. His officials were really capable, and they took their cue from him. His presence and mine, his personality and mine, in a way symbolised the new, modern realities which were extinguishing old attitudes. In a sense we personified the opportunity to escape our history, British and Irish, and move on. Nonetheless, he left me in no doubt that rewriting the North–South pact would be a blow to the Nationalist side.
The next thing was to see David Trimble with his full team. Here was a strange phenomenon about the difference between the two sides. When you saw the Republicans, you saw unity in motion. They had a line; they took it; they held it. If it appeared to modify in the course of a meeting, it was an illusion – the modification had been pre-built into the line, and the line was sustained. Gerry Adams was the leader. You would no more have had one of the delegation raising eyebrows during his remarks, let alone uttering words of dissent, than you would have had Ian Paisley leading a rousing chorus of ‘Danny Boy’. Per contra, the UUP had the most alarming way of conducting meetings. You would think you had them all jolly and sorted and then one of them, usually not the leader, would make a depressing or downbeat comment and helter-skelter they would all follow in leaping off the cliff. Even more alarmingly, it could happen on the most apparently minor issue. As for supporting their leader, they didn’t regard that as their job. At all. Not merely eyebrows, whole hairlines would be raised in mock bemusement as their leader spoke, generally insinuating that whatever he might be saying, don’t let that kid you for a moment they were going down that path.
They also had an innate and powerful tendency to think they were being had. It wasn’t always without justification, but that wasn’t the point. That’s just how they were. David Trimble would go back and explain what he thought was a reasonable outcome, only to be clattered around the head with innumerable objections, qualifications, additional points, amendments, requests for clarification and so forth. Whenever I used to think leading the Labour Party was hard, I would think of David and feel grateful.
Having conceded a lot to David, I thought we might get a smooth enough ride with him and his colleagues in delegation. I was quickly disabused of such a fond notion. Ken McGuinness, a big, hale, hearty and actually rather decent man, who was in charge of security for them, had a whole new raft of changes. Disconcerted, I tried to accommodate them. Then Reg Empey, David’s deputy, began the helter-skelter by saying: Why not take the whole thing off the table and start all over again? The room swayed. I sent Jonathan off to talk to Ken about security, and pretended Reg hadn’t said what he had said (which was hard since he kept repeating it). I was throwing concessions around like confetti, since I knew the danger was they would just march out. Putting off until tomorrow what you didn’t want to do today had served Unionists well for decades, if not centuries. I knew delay was fatal.
I had a now-or-never sense. Truth be told, at that point I would have bet the house on ‘never’. Jonathan, though, was insanely upbeat and said it could be done. Bertie had had to return home for his mother’s funeral. When he got back, he just took the decision that he would agree to the North–South amendments. It was a big step. He simply took it. Progress!
We then got the Irish and UUP in the one room – my office – to talk it through. Bertie’s decision gave the Unionists heart. We decided overnight that they should come up with an agreed text.
Jonathan and I got a couple of hours’ sleep after meeting other parties (all of them had to be seen regardless of whether or not they could add anything, because otherwise backs were put up and feet might walk). When we returned, to our consternation the Irish and UUP had only talked around the issue and had not agreed anything. Frantic work ensued. I decided to let the UUP draft a text and the Irish amend it. By midday we had what I thought was an agreed text, and on the trickiest of issues.
Foolish thought. I said that the Republicans showed military discipline in presenting their case and supporting their leader. That is true, but they weren’t the only party on the Irish side. There were the Irish government and the SDLP, the moderate Nationalist party, and they would be locked in the same frenetic dance with each other as were the Unionists. The SDLP thought that they often got ignored because we were too busy dealing with Sinn Fein. ‘If we had weapons you’d treat us more seriously’ was their continual refrain. There was some truth in it. The big prize was plainly an end to violence, and they weren’t the authors of the violence. Their real problem was that strategically they decided they would never go into government with the Unionists unless Sinn Fein were at the table too. This was understandable, because in the past Sinn Fein had collapsed the show by claiming the SDLP were selling out. They therefore had somewhat of the same problem the UUP had with the DUP.
Nonetheless, it meant that they gave up their trump card. They used to attack me for ‘handing Sinn Fein the veto’, but actually they had, since without Sinn Fein there could be no government with the SDLP. But the point was this: they were always looking to stymie Sinn Fein if they could. When Bertie had told the Irish side – for these purposes the whole spectrum of Irish opinion – the concessions he’d made, they revolted.
The result was, in the afternoon, the thing fell apart. Again Bertie came to the rescue. I explained we could not now go back to the UUP with the old text. They would walk. Reluctantly he agreed they would negotiate on the basis of the UUP draft, and faced everyone else down.
Once that happened, on Strand One (the governing of Northern Ireland) the Unionists conceded to work off the SDLP proposals. Crucially – and this was David Trimble’s huge contribution – they agreed that there would be a system guaranteeing genuine power-sharing across Assembly voting and in the Executive. Up to then, Unionism had always said it should be a majority vote, ignoring that, practically speaking, this could mean supremacy of the majority, i.e. them, in Northern Ireland. Instead, now there would need to be cross-community support for things to happen and the government seats on the Executive would have to be shared out fairly.
The thing started to come together again. We breathed a sigh of relief. Again too soon. Sinn Fein had resented the way the SDLP got agreement with the UUP. They felt cut out, and issued a press release that there would be no agreement.
At this point, I should say something about the world beyond the negotiating madhouse which we were inhabiting. We were in a cocoon. We might as well have been in outer space. As the hours then the days passed, I had little sense of the fact that outside Castle Buildings had gathered an army, a convocation, a full-blown live happening of the world’s media. It was the start of 24-hour-a-day news, and they came in their droves, with a lot to say and nothing to say, if you get my meaning.
I didn’t really imbibe the full purport of this until after the event, which is just as well, since had I thought about it, I would have quailed at the political risk we were taking. As time went on, the s
takes became ever higher as it was clear I was putting my whole prime ministerial authority on the line for a deal. Failure was going to be not just bad, but potentially dangerous, with both streets – Unionist and Nationalist – inflamed, possibly literally.
Alastair and John Holmes, the other part of the team, were performing to the highest standard. Alastair was rather brilliantly trying to feed the media beast without a lot of meat in the sandwich, conscious that one word out of place could provoke some party or other to feel slighted. John was the perfect foil for Jonathan and me, working up the detail, providing ideas, being brilliantly creative and letting us take care of the politics. Mo Mowlam was glad-handing and looking after people, but a little removed from the negotiations.
The moment Sinn Fein told the waiting hordes of media there would be no agreement, collective hysteria broke out. The result, as no doubt Gerry and Martin intended, was that we had to scuttle off to them and try to bring them back. They were negative. Martin bluntly said he couldn’t recommend it. I suggested that they went away and came back with their amendments. I knew the Unionists would go nuts if they thought we were asking Sinn Fein for ideas on their document, but I couldn’t think of another option. Everyone had to be kept in play. The see-saw was in a state of constant imbalance, as first this side and then that felt cheated, or taken advantage of, or let down.
Here I discovered another piece of bizarre psychology about the whole thing: it was a zero-sum game to all of them, and not only in terms of negotiating detail – ‘You suggest this. We oppose. You like this. We don’t’, etc. Walking around the building they would spot the other’s expression. If one looked happy, the other looked for a reason