Good Friday Agreement: Impact of Brexit

Debate between Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and Baroness Manzoor

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Dubs, who has a lifetime of commitment and work around peacebuilding and civil rights in Northern Ireland. He is good counsel for people like me who are on the EU Committee and have been working on this issue quite a lot in the last year.

The Good Friday agreement was the result of careful negotiations, and involved of course the building of trust among people who really were not very fond of each other. No peace process is ever delivered just by signing a document. I learned in government that, day in and day out, attention had to be paid to developing that trust, building relationships, building clarity and a level of trust that enabled people to move to the next stage.

When government changed in 2010, too many people took the Good Friday agreement for granted. Actually, bits of the Good Friday agreement had not yet been delivered, and there were certainly aspects that needed a lot of work. Now, partly because of that lack of attention in a day-by-day way which I know went on throughout the Government that I was a member of, there are too many siren voices who seem to suggest that the Good Friday agreement is now out of date and that we do not need to worry about it in relation to Brexit. I wish I had their confidence. As I say, the Good Friday agreement was a very precious and difficult negotiation and is still not totally there.

We need to remember that the DUP did not support the Good Friday agreement, and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, took a bit of flak from the people to one side of him—I will not say whether from the left or right—who supported the DUP. Unfortunately, it looks as if now they still do not think and work on the detail in the way they need to in order to support that agreement.

Any peace agreement is hard-won, and this one followed 50 years of troubles, which were all part of centuries of difference and struggle on the island of Ireland. As one of those who were centrally involved in the peace process said to me, “Ireland had led to three UK Governments falling, and we never forgot that when we were negotiating”. I hope that this Government do not forget that and that they recognise the dangerous waters they are swimming in.

During the EU Select Committee’s last visit to Ireland and Northern Ireland, the committee met companies and public services operating across the border. The damage that Brexit inflicts on the Good Friday agreement goes beyond any border, and I do not want to talk in detail about those issues today. However, as my noble friend said, it strikes at the heart of people’s identity. We can see across the world that, in many cases, how people identify themselves has become the main driver of politics. In recent years, this has led to increased conflict and violence around the world for many countries.

However, for 20 years in the north of Ireland, identity politics was again, as a friend of mine who was involved in the negotiations said, sort of fudged. The agreement recognises the right of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and to be accepted as Irish, as British or as both, whatever they may choose. Some people therefore do identify as Irish. Others identify only as British. Many who want to move forward identify as both, and that has also led to a huge increase in applications for Irish citizenship because they also want to be seen as European. Each person’s identity is not under threat because their neighbour sees their identity as different, and that was a very important psychological outcome of the Good Friday agreement.

In a sense, identity was relaxed in the Good Friday agreement, and that created a relaxation in how the economy worked. When we were there with the EU Committee, it was difficult to see how breaking any of that ease and relaxation would have anything other than a detrimental effect on the economy. Now that identity has become interlinked with the possible re-establishment of the border—if a border of any sort comes back—by choosing your identity you could become a threat to your neighbour. Nobody is saying that that will happen overnight, but we are saying that there are straws in the wind that simply push people to make choices where the Good Friday agreement allowed them not to make choices. We must understand the seriousness of that.

Brexit has polarised opinion not only in Northern Ireland but in the Republic, and in the relations between the two Governments, at a time when the changing demographics are spooking unionists and reviving the siege mentality. The two Governments in the short term have to act quickly to visibly demonstrate that, whatever tensions there are over Brexit, there is a recognition of the shared interests, history and economics of the people of the north and south.

In the medium term, people have to think long and hard about how unionism can accommodate and show its respect for nationalism and vice versa, no matter what happens on the border. At the moment, that thinking may be well-intentioned, but it is vague and ill-defined. How would unionists reconcile a majority nationalist community to stay in the union? How would nationalists reconcile unionists to a united Ireland? In fact, we have to start and talk openly about such measures and issues, long before any point of decision comes. That thinking needs to be done in the north, in the south, in Dublin and in this House.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, I kindly remind the House that when the clock strikes seven minutes, time is up.