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Good Friday Agreement: no prosperity and an imperfect peace [1]

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Date: 2023-04

I was 18 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed 25 years ago this week, finally bringing imperfect peace to the place I call home.

This makes me part of the last ‘transitional generation’. We didn’t go through what older people in Northern Ireland did, but our childhoods were marked by sectarianism, division and violent conflict between paramilitaries and the state. We yearned for a better future.

Back then, the abnormal was normal. Soldiers with machine guns walked the streets and there were areas you weren’t allowed to go to, security barriers, checkpoints, shootings and bombings. You had to have your bag checked to go into shops, and be careful about what you said and where you said it.

When I was 12, my family was held at gunpoint by paramilitaries in an armed robbery at home. I thought they were going to murder us. People and homes in my middle-class Catholic and mixed-marriages neighbourhood were frequently targeted in deadly attacks.

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One of my first ‘Troubles memories’ was the father of a family living just a few streets away being shot dead in front of his wife and children. The man was solicitor Pat Finucane. Thirty-four years later, his family, including his son John, now the Sinn Féin MP for Belfast North, continue to fight for a public inquiry into his death.

We became so used to the army’s ‘Johnny 5’ bomb disposal robot being in my neighbour’s driveway that we stopped leaving the house when it arrived, just pulling the blinds and moving to the kitchen at the back.

I remember being appalled at the number of reports on the news of people being shot dead, and I wept at the Shankill Road bombing, the Greysteel massacre and the rest. It all seemed so barbaric, cruel and futile. I hate violence and always have.

A family in Northern Ireland is lucky if their lives haven’t been touched by the conflict in one way or another. The impact of my stepfather’s father being shot dead during his childhood is the kind of incident that ripples through from the direct victims to their loved ones and those who enter their lives for generations to come.

As peace was being pulled together in my teens, I knew it heralded a new era of positivity. That life would change if we were brave enough to grasp the opportunity with both hands. There was a mood of optimism, excitement and hope among young people that life could be some kind of actual normal – a modest desire when you think about it.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/good-friday-agreement-anniversary-northern-ireland-stormont-failure/

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