Paul Nolan, Director of the WEA in Northern Ireland, chaired the Yes Campaign in the referendum on the Northern Ireland peace agreement. Here he describes its significance.

There is a famous maxim - usually attributed to the British politician, Enoch Powell, - which says that all political careers end in failure. Ours didn’t. It came to a sudden, but wonderfully successful conclusion on May 23rd last year. That’s the day the votes were counted in the Northern Ireland referendum, called to decide on the Good Friday agreement. This agreement was a peace accord hammered out by the politicians which set forward new governmental structures to reconcile the competing claims of Irish nationalism (which seeks a unitary Irish state) and Ulster unionism (which seeks to preserve Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom). The Agreement enjoyed the full support of both the Irish and British governments, qualified support from most political parties, and full-blooded opposition from those on the extreme ends of the political spectrum, particularly those associated with Reverend Ian Paisley’s fire-breathing brand of unionism. It was up to the people to decide whether the Agreement stood or fell. The Yes Campaign set out to mobilise support, knowing that a simple 51% majority would not suffice. In order to have credibility the Agreement needed a strong vote of confidence, which most political commentators put at 68%. The atmosphere in the King’s Hall, Belfast where the votes were counted was electric, and the Returning Officer could barely make himself heard above the tumult as he began the formalities of the announcement. Finally, he stood back from the microphone and simply bellowed the result. Seventy-one point two in favour of Yes! The roof almost lifted. At last hope was being given a chance in Northern Ireland.

Progress of this sort does not come out of nowhere. The thirty year history of the ‘Troubles’, as they are usually described, had produced only one clear conclusion: no-one could win. The leadership of the IRA had come to realise that the unionist community and the British government were not going to give in; the British Army, for its part, had reached a parallel understanding that the IRA could not be militarily defeated. Like those great battles in the First World War, where one side might notch up a small advance one month, only to concede the same territory the next month, the military conflict had fought to a standstill. It was time to talk. John Hume and David Trimble were the two individuals given the Nobel Prize for having the vision and the tenacity to work out the nature of the Agreement; the truth - as they would readily concede - is that many, many people worked to create the bridge of peace.

Not all of them were politicians. In fact, it was civil society which over the years had worked to create the political space for accommodation and which has introduced the concepts of cultural diversity and interdependence which worked their way through to the vocabulary of the deal-makers. The voluntary organisations, the trade unions, the women’s groups and cultural associations all played their part. Supporting them at all times was the WEA. The Association has a ninety year history in Northern Ireland and has always worked on both sides of the sectarian divide, acting as a resource to all those wising to use education to help build better communities. There are many such people in Northern Ireland, and their activities have provided the invisible stitching that has held the society together through thirty years of armed conflict. The Yes Campaign was the moment when all those progressive forces were able to unite in one single effort for change. And, yes, we got the result.

It would be nice to finish there, but history does not allow for simple happy endings. The renewed political squabbling has prevented the agreed governmental structures being put in place. We must expect setbacks of this kind. Peace processes go through phases: there are sudden breakthroughs and then further retrenchment. The Yes Campaign was a breakthrough. Civil society must keep on building the bridges that will allow the next movement forward.