Bríd Smith on Good Friday Agreement: calls for border poll
Bríd Smith read tracts from a People Before Profit pamphlet marking the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, arguing the agreement's legacy is mixed and urging a border poll and radical constitutional change. She criticised institutionalised sectarianism, highlighted grassroots pressure for peace, and condemned the economic outcomes since 1998.
Anniversary assessment
The speaker argued the Good Friday Agreement ended the worst of the armed conflict but left an incomplete peace. She said many people now feel safer and young people mix more, yet sectarian structures remain embedded in the Northern State and have been magnified by institutional arrangements.
Grassroots pressure for peace
The speech emphasised that the demand for an end to violence was driven from below by organised labour and mass mobilisations. She cited rallies and walkouts in the early 1990s - including a 1992 Belfast Trades Council rally, a 1993 Irish Congress of Trade Unions demonstration of 7,000 people outside Belfast City Hall, a 5,000-strong gathering in Derry and a 1994 walkout by 2,000 workers from Harland and Wolfe - as key pressure points on paramilitaries.
Sectarian politics and the DUP
The speaker criticised the ongoing sectarian axis of politics, saying Sinn Féin and the DUP have consolidated support while other parties have declined. She accused the DUP of using a communal veto to block the formation of a Stormont executive, manufacturing a cause around the protocol, and acting to shore up its political base while the Tories have pandered to them.
Economic and social consequences
The address highlighted adverse economic trends since 1998, noting that more people have died by suicide since the agreement than were killed in the conflict and that there are now more peace walls than before. Workers in the North were said to earn on average 10% less than counterparts in Britain, real wages in 2023 had not returned to pre-2008 levels, welfare reform had driven down living standards, and a 40% rise in millionaires since 2010 had not benefited the majority.
Call for a border poll and socialist reforms
The speaker concluded that a border poll is urgently required so people can choose whether to continue living in what she described as a failed state. She said a successful referendum should lead to a constituent assembly to design a different country, and People Before Profit would advance a socialist programme to end tax haven status, reduce church control of schools and hospitals and create a secular Ireland where workers share gains.
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Deputy Breed Smith, four and a half minutes, followed by Deputy McBarry, two minutes. Deputy McBarry, People Before Profit have produced a short pamphlet on the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, and for the purposes of this debate I am going to read some tracts of it. The 25th anniversary of the agreement has been marked by praise for the negotiators who pieced the text together, but when the historical record is examined it will appear that the architects of peace were not just the politicians. The demand for an end to all violence came from mobilisations from organised labour. In 1992, thousands joined a rally in Belfast organised by the Belfast Trades Council after the murder of five people in a bookie shop on the Ormo Road. In 1993, 7,000 people gathered outside Belfast City Hall for a rally called by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to express opposition to the Shankill Road bombing and a massacre in Greysteel. In Derry, another 5,000 people gathered, and in 1994, 2,000 workers from Harland and Wolfe walked out of their jobs after a 50-year-old Catholic welder was murdered by the UVF. The demand for peace came from below and acted as a pressure point on paramilitaries. Ownership of that peace, therefore, cannot be appropriated to any one group of elite politicians. The hope in 1998 was that, with consensus having supposedly been reached on how to handle issues arising from sectarianism, communities would come together through working in harmony on practical day-to-day matters. The underlying assumption was that there were two irreconcilable cultures and identities in the north which have equal validity and must be represented at governmental level. So Sinn Féin and the DUP have been able to consolidate their support at the expense of the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists. The guns may have gone relatively quiet, but the sectarian axis of politics remains. The sectarianism at the heart of the Northern State means that the DUP are using their communal veto to prevent the emergence of a Stormont executive. They have manufactured a cause by focusing on the protocol, with no shame about being in a minority when it came to the referendum. They are engaged in obstructionist policies that have one motive, to shore up their political base against their rivals like the TUV. All this manoeuvring reveals that the DUP are so sectarian that they will not serve as a Deputy First Minister to a Sinn Féin Minister. Although the titles are purely symbolic, the institutionalisation of sectarianism has been magnified as a key issue, and the Tories have pandered to the DUP every step of the way. All of this exposes the underlying problem with the Belfast Agreement. The Good Friday Agreement ended the worst of the armed conflict. Most people now report that they feel safe in their communities and there is a lot more mixing of young people without any regard to which community they come from. On the other hand, more people have died by suicide since 1998 than were killed in the entire conflict. There are now more peace walls than before the agreement. People have seen a peace built not on increasing prosperity for the majority, but on the promise of cheap labour to multinationals. Workers in the North today earn on average 10% less than their counterparts in Britain and less again than workers in the South. Certainly some in the North have found prosperity since the agreement came into force. There was a 40% rise in the number of millionaires in Northern Ireland between 2010 and the present, but the majority have not shared in this supposed bonanza. Real wages in 2023 have not returned to their pre-2008 levels and welfare reform has ensured that wages have fallen considerably and living standards have fallen considerably. We therefore say that a border poll is urgently required so that people can have the option of whether they wish to continue to live in a failed state and that such a referendum should be held across the whole Ireland and, if it is successful, should lead to a constituent assembly to develop proposals for a very different country where sectarianism will be confined to the dustbin of history. People before profit will advance a clear socialist position for an end to tax haven status that currently dominates this state, for an end to the domination of church in the control of our schools and hospitals and the creation of a secular Ireland where all workers make gains.
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