Northern Ireland after the troubles: A society in transition

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Introduction

Colin Coulter and Michael Murray

While the recent turbulent political history of Northern Ireland has produced countless moments that will be difficult to forget, most of those that remain longest in the memory do so for the most harrowing of reasons. The particular day in question here, however, marks a stunning exception to that miserable general rule. Even the invariably doleful Northern Irish weather appeared to have read the script. At midday on 31 August 1994, as the region basked in glorious sunshine, the Provisional IRA declared that from midnight it would embark upon a ‘complete cessation of military operations’. Within six weeks, this seemingly historic move would be echoed in a cease-fire called by the principal paramilitary organisations on the loyalist side. The biggest-selling local newspaper sought to capture the sense of relief and perhaps even euphoria that many – though not, of course, all – felt that sumptuous late summer day when republicans committed themselves to laying down their arms. In its evening edition the banner headline of the Belfast Telegraph declared simply and boldly, ‘It’s over!’

It was always entirely predictable of course that the rhetorical optimism that greeted the republican cease-fire – in some quarters, at least – would transpire to be rather ill judged. The era of the troubles had produced a few false dawns, and hard experience had counselled that there would be many twists in the plot before the conflict could genuinely be said to be over. It was widely expected, therefore, that the path to political reconciliation would be a long and arduous one. There were few who would have anticipated, however, that the peace process would be beset by quite so many reversals. As the crises have accumulated the optimism once harboured by many ordinary people in the region has been largely displaced by disillusionment at – and even uninterest in – the prospect of real political progress. While the unlikely and possibly historic developments that unfolded in the spring and early summer of 2007 would seem to herald a genuinely progressive turn in the political life of the six counties, it is entirely likely that there will be further twists to come in this complex narrative. More than a dozen years on from those heady days signalled by the original paramilitary cease-fires, it still remains less than entirely clear what precisely will be the fate of Northern Ireland after the troubles.

The Good Friday Agreement

The era of the peace process has witnessed an at times bewildering sequence of political initiatives. The most significant political development of the period has of course been the agreement that eventually emerged from the tortuous negotiations that began in the autumn of 1997 in the wake of the decision of republicans to reinstall their ceasefire. On Good Friday 10 April 1998 the various parties to the talks announced that, against all odds, they had finally come to an agreement on the political future of Northern Ireland. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, it appeared for a while that the political fortunes of the region might just have taken a turn for the better.

The document that emerged from the multi-party negotiations at Stormont inevitably was detailed, multi-faceted and wide-ranging. The Belfast Agreement seeks to address and resolve a series of relationships – those between people living either side of the Irish border and either side of the Irish sea – that are understood to be at the heart of the ‘Northern Ireland problem’. The principal concern of the document is inevitably, however, to mend the often troubled relations between unionists and nationalists living in the region. In essence, the deal struck at Stormont represents an attempt to reach an honourable compromise between the ambitions and identities that often appear to divide the ‘two communities’ in Northern Ireland. The text of the document seeks to allay the enduring fears of the unionist community that they might be forced or duped into a united Ireland. It is stated quite categorically that ‘Northern Ireland in its entirety remains part of the United Kingdom’.¹ Furthermore, the text affirms that any change to the constitutional status of the region can happen only with the concurrent electoral consent of people living in both jurisdictions on the island. While the agreement clearly seeks to accord with unionists’ ambition to remain citizens of the United Kingdom, it also sets out to accommodate nationalists’ aspiration that they might in the future become citizens of a united Ireland. The text clearly acknowledges as legitimate both the political objectives and the cultural practices that are associated with the tradition of Irish nationalism. In addition, it is stated that if in the future a majority of people living either side of the border give their simultaneous support to the unification of Ireland, it would be a ‘binding obligation’ upon both the British and Irish governments to ensure that this came to pass.

While the Belfast Agreement clearly envisages that nationalists will remain de facto British citizens for some time to come, it also seeks to assure that they will do so on rather more favourable terms than has often been the case in the past. The historical experience of the minority community in the region has been marred by discrimination and disenfranchisement. The text agreed in the multi-party talks marks an attempt to resolve these historical grievances through the implementation of a sweeping programme of political and institutional reform. The 108 seat Assembly devised under the deal is obliged to operate in a manner that empowers both communities more or less equally. Those matters that come before the legislature that are deemed to be ‘key’ can be endorsed only on a cross-community basis. Furthermore, the two most senior positions in the proposed Executive – the First and Deputy First Ministers – have to attract the support of both nationalist and unionist Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs). The remainder of those holding Ministerial posts are to be assigned on the basis of party strengths and according to the d’Hondt system, which in effect means that the positions of executive power are in the hands of equal numbers of nationalist and unionist politicians.

The consociational mode of government envisaged by those who framed the Belfast Agreement proves to be emblematic of a broader concern to build an equitable and inclusive social order in Northern Ireland. In effect, the agreement reached at Stormont represents a new deal for nationalists living in the region. One of the most alienating aspects of the nationalist experience in Northern Ireland was dealing with a police force that was drawn almost exclusively from the unionist community and that often conducted itself in a discriminatory and draconian manner. The Belfast Agreement seeks to redress the grievances of nationalists by promising a ‘new beginning to policing’ in the region. The text of the deal provides for the creation of an independent commission charged with beginning the arduous task of creating a police force that both reflects the composition and enjoys the trust of Northern Irish society as a whole. The commitment to a programme of reform is expressed further in the provisions for a review of the criminal justice system and for the establishment of a Human Rights Commission as well as an Equality Commission. Finally, the terms of the agreement seek to underline the need for greater respect for cultural and linguistic diversity. While Ulster-Scots is mentioned in passing, it is of some significance perhaps that it is the Irish language that is discussed at greater length as a cultural practice that deserves attention and funding.

Moving on?

In the early days after the deal was struck, it seemed that the Belfast Agreement might just be that hitherto elusive settlement that might mark a new and more progressive phase in the political life of Northern Ireland. The document that had emerged from months of painstaking negotiation was both comprehensive and clever – a little too clever, some critics would say, but more of that later. The accord enjoyed the backing of the British, Irish and US administrations as well as of all the mainstream local parties, with the ominous exception of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). More important, perhaps, the agreement had gained favour among the ranks of those paramilitary groupings on both sides of the divide whose opposition would have made it untenable. While the deal negotiated at Stormont had the blessing of most of the political classes, its broader popular appeal would be tested in the dual referenda scheduled for 22 May 1998. In the Irish Republic the Belfast Agreement had evidently struck a chord, with 95 per cent of the votes cast being in favour. On the other side of the border, predictably, the outcome of the ballot was rather less clear-cut. In the Northern Irish poll some 71 per cent of the electorate that exercised their right to vote said ‘yes’ to the Belfast Agreement. In most electoral circumstances, of course, such a proportion would be considered a ringing endorsement. A closer examination of voting patterns, however, revealed a marked and potentially dangerous trend. While the overwhelming majority of the nationalist community had cast their votes in favour of the proposed deal, only a very slim majority of unionists had also voted ‘yes’.² What were the reasons for the very different responses that the agreement elicited within the ‘two communities’?

In a sense, it was always fairly inevitable that most nationalists would find the Belfast Agreement to their liking. The influence of certain nationalist thinkers was, after all, clearly apparent in the terms of the deal.³ The notion of the three strands of relationships, the emphasis upon power sharing and the conviction that the problems of Northern Ireland could be resolved only through political arrangements that both acknowledge and, more importantly, transcend that particular territorial space, all bear the hallmark of the SDLP. The popularity of the Belfast Agreement among constitutional nationalists was always, therefore, more or less guaranteed. In principle, however, the response of republicans to the deal should perhaps have been rather different.

Over the preceding three decades the republican movement had waged a brutal military campaign designed to take Northern Ireland out of the Union. The Belfast Agreement, however, quite clearly recognises and guarantees the constitutional status of the region as part of the United Kingdom. While a minority expressed their opposition to the deal, the republican movement en masse chose to endorse it. In so doing, republicans would seem to have violated the most central and cherished ideal of their political tradition.⁴ Quite conscious perhaps of the betrayal entailed in accepting the Belfast Agreement, the upper echelons of Sinn Féin have sought to shift attention away from the constitutional provisions of the accord. The leadership of Sinn Féin has sought consistently to cast the agreement as a process rather than an outcome. It is argued that the new political arrangements – and in particular the North/South bodies established under the deal – have a latent ‘dynamic’ that will gradually and inevitably nudge the six counties into a united Ireland.⁵ While this ‘inevitability thesis’ is on balance a matter of pure political fantasy, that has not prevented it from becoming a comforting mantra regularly rehearsed by the Sinn Féin leadership.

The second, and rather more convincing, strategy that republicans have adopted to obscure their blatant betrayal of their own ideals is to focus upon the benefits that will arise from the programme of reform sketched out in the Belfast Agreement.⁶ The Sinn Féin leadership has sought to underline those elements of the deal that appear to promise nationalists fairness and equality within Northern Ireland.⁷ While this strategic shift of focus from the ‘national question’ to the ‘democratic question’ raises questions about the legitimacy and utility of the IRA campaign over the previous three decades, the emphasis that republicans have placed upon a reform agenda that seems to offer genuine cultural and material parity would appear to have struck a chord within an increasingly pragmatic but confident nationalist community.⁸

In principle, there were elements of the Belfast Agreement that had the potential to appeal greatly to most of the unionist community.⁹ After all, the signatories to the accord had agreed that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland was to be respected and could not change without the voluntary consent of the majority of people living there. In effect, therefore, the deal hammered out at Stormont explicitly endorsed the principal ideal and ambition of the unionist tradition. While the constitutional guarantees enshrined within the Belfast Agreement were attractive to a great many unionists, their appeal was somewhat diminished by two further considerations. Firstly, the fairly generalised sense of mistrust that defines and deforms their political imagination ensured that unionists were unwilling to take at their word a whole range of other political actors and in particular the British state.¹⁰ Quite simply, the unionist community was from the outset never entirely convinced that the constitutional guarantees within the Belfast Agreement were in fact worth the paper they were written on. Secondly, those aspects of the deal that were attractive to unionists were from the beginning finely balanced against other elements that they found deeply troubling. While the unionist community hoped that the Belfast Agreement might be a final settlement, they also feared that it would in fact prove to be a process that would undermine their interests and perhaps ultimately sweep them into a united Ireland.¹¹

Hence, when unionists went to the polls in May 1998, they were torn between an ambition to strike a deal that would finally signal an end to the troubles and an anxiety to avoid being duped into arrangements that would ultimately undermine their position. The ambivalence and tension that defined the response of the unionist community to the new political circumstances were all too apparent in the way they cast their votes. While more unionists voted for the Belfast Agreement than against, this was the product more of rational calculation than principled or emotional attachment to the deal itself.¹² There were clearly many within the unionist community who had severe misgivings about the agreement but who took a leap of faith in the hope that a ‘yes’ vote might finally bring peace and stability to the region. The precise balance of forces within unionism in the future would hinge largely upon how this particular group of pragmatists who supported the deal in principle would respond to the specific manner in which it was implemented in practice – whether they felt that it was fair, whether they considered that promises had been honoured, whether measures that might have appeared just about tolerable in prospect turned out to be entirely intolerable in reality, and so forth.¹³ It would soon become apparent, however, that many of the developments initiated under the auspices of the Belfast Agreement were deeply alienating even for those unionists who had made the pragmatic decision to give the deal a chance. The early release of paramilitary prisoners and the reform of the police were particularly crucial in nurturing a sense even among relatively liberal unionists that the new political dispensation was heavily loaded against them. As the terms of the Belfast Agreement were gradually implemented the widespread and growing alienation of the unionist community would become the most palpable cause and symptom of the crisis that would engulf the entire peace process.

Guns and government

The actual substance and prospective success of the Belfast Agreement often appeared to assume the existence of a crucial symmetry in the interests and experiences of unionists and nationalists respectively. The advocates of the new political dispensation were from the outset keen to insist that it made more or less equal demands upon, and offered more or less equal benefits to, both the principal ethnopolitical traditions in Northern Ireland. The new deal was held to signal an honourable and historic compromise that would in time usher in an era of peace and prosperity for all. It would soon become apparent, however, that the particular balance presumed by the proponents of the Belfast Agreement did not in fact exist. While the implementation of the deal would of course require compromise across the board, it would in practice make rather more onerous demands of one community than the other. The ramifications of this critical imbalance within the peace process would become readily apparent when it came time to initiate the principal institutions conceived under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

The centrepiece of the political arrangements agreed at the multi-party negotiations was of course a consociational mode of government for Northern Ireland in which unionists and nationalists would exercise authority more or less equally. While agreeing to share power necessarily required uncomfortable decisions on all sides, these would transpire to be rather more unpalatable for some than for others. The formation of an Executive required that politicians agree to co-operate with others whose views and actions in many cases they regarded as odious. The practice of power sharing demanded that nationalists accept that they will in part be subject to the decisions of unionist political figures, some of whom they considered to be indelibly sectarian. With the unedifying image of his victory jig along the lower stretches of the Garvaghy Road fresh in the mind, the prospect as the millennium turned of having David Trimble as First Minister cannot have been one that appealed greatly to the nationalist community. Crucially perhaps, however, the devolution of power to Northern Ireland did not actually require nationalists to enter government with individuals who had been directly involved in politically motivated violence against them.

Since the beginning of the troubles there has existed relatively little support or respect for paramilitarism within unionist communities. In the main, unionists have turned their backs on the unofficial violence of the loyalist paramilitaries and preferred the role of advocates and agents of the official violence of the British state. The poor esteem in which paramilitarism is held within the unionist community finds critical expression in electoral trends. Those parties that are associated with the loyalist paramilitaries have only a miniscule presence in the Assembly and stand no chance whatsoever of securing Ministerial positions. When the new executive was eventually formed for the first time in December 1999 nationalist politicians were, therefore, spared the anguish of having to sit across a table from people who had been closely associated with the campaign of violence against their community.

The same cannot of course be said of those unionist politicians who were selected for Ministerial positions. Over the period of the peace process the republican movement has made considerable ground at successive elections. Their growing electoral strength meant that, when the first ill starred power sharing executive was formed at Stormont, Sinn Féin secured the two key Ministries of Health and Education, thereby placing the party in charge of half the devolved governmental budget. The composition of the new cabinet inevitably alienated a great many unionists who were appalled at the prospect of crucial decisions concerning their lives being taken by individuals who had orchestrated and rationalised the campaign of violence they considered the IRA to have waged against their community. The outrage that many unionists felt at the advent of republicans in government was embodied in the figure appointed to the position of Minister of Education in the initial ill fated Executive. That Martin McGuinness – widely regarded at the time as a long-standing chief of staff of the IRA – would now be in charge of their children’s schooling struck many within an already sceptical unionist community as emblematic of the insidious and intolerable nature of the entire peace process.

In the referendum held to ratify the Belfast Agreement a majority – albeit a slim one – of unionists had of course voted to endorse a deal that they knew would inevitably lead to republicans holding positions of government. The decision of unionists to lend their support to the settlement was, however, a largely pragmatic one that assumed that the unpalatable inclusion of Sinn Féin within the Executive would be paired with the disarming and disbanding of the IRA. This issue of the ‘decommissioning’ of paramilitary weapons has of course represented the principal stumbling block that the peace process has faced from the very beginning. The enduring disputes surrounding the fate of the IRA’s arsenal and that of other groupings owe their origins to a particular trait of the Belfast Agreement that may be considered both its greatest strength and its principal weakness.

The potential success of any prospective political settlement in Northern Ireland would crucially hinge upon its ability to appear to be able to square the circle of what are in some cases the mutually exclusive demands of the nationalist and unionist communities respectively. Those who framed the Belfast Agreement sought to create such an impression through a ‘constructive ambiguity’ designed to create the impression that the deal signalled a ‘loserless’ conclusion to the troubles.¹⁴ Some of the provisions of the text are worded in a manner that both enables and encourages unionists and nationalists to interpret them differently. This characteristic is particularly, and possibly fatally, apparent in section 7, which deals with the issue of decommissioning.¹⁵ The relevant section of the Belfast Agreement¹⁶ states that all the participants to the talks:

reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations. They also confirm their intention to continue to work constructively and in good faith with the Independent Commission [the official body established to oversee the decommissioning process], and to use any influence they may have, to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years …

While the text that faced them was of course exactly the same, unionists and nationalists almost inevitably chose to read the provisions for decommissioning in ideologically convenient and, therefore, starkly different ways. In the eyes of the unionist community, the Belfast Agreement simply signalled that the IRA and other paramilitary organisations would disarm and disband during the two-year period in which their prisoners would be released. The reading to which the republican movement chose to adhere was predictably rather different. The view consistently offered by the Sinn Féin leadership was that decommissioning would be a long and arduous process that could work only within the context of the wider demilitarisation of Northern Irish society. While republicans acknowledged that the Belfast Agreement required them to use their influence to bring about disarmament, they did not appear to regard the deal as necessarily obliging them actually to bring about this particular outcome.

The coincidence of unionist expectations that the IRA should disband quickly and verifiably and the refusal of republicans to do so repeatedly thwarted the development of the peace process in Northern Ireland.¹⁷ The various attempts to break the deadlock over decommissioning typically assumed the increasingly predictable form of the following cycle.¹⁸ In the hope of making progress, the then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader David Trimble would take a leap of faith and agree to go into government on the proviso that republicans would disarm during a specified period of time.¹⁹ During this window of opportunity the IRA would then either fail to dismantle its armoury or would do so in a manner that unionists found accountable and acceptable.²⁰ The resultant crisis in confidence would see the institutions of government suspended and the whole cycle of negotiation and recrimination would begin anew. The final performance of this particular farce came to a conclusion in October 2002 when allegations concerning continuing activity on the part of the IRA – in particular that republicans were gathering illicit information on their supposed partners in government – led to the Executive collapsing for a fourth time.²¹ In total, the power sharing government conceived within the Belfast Agreement had operated for a mere nineteen months and would remain in cold storage for a further four and a half years.

While the stalemate over decommissioning of itself represented a fundamental crisis of and for the Northern Irish peace process, it also unleashed forces that appeared to threaten further the prospect of genuine political progress in the region. The dispute over ‘guns and government’ inexorably served to harden and polarise political opinion in Northern Ireland.²² In the minds of many nationalists, the refusal of unionist politicians to engage in sustained co-operation with Sinn Féin represented a violation of their rights and bespoke an abiding sectarian aversion among unionists to actually share power with the nationalist community. This reading served to nurture an alienation that has seen a growing body of nationalists switch their allegiance to Sinn Féin, whom they regard as the party more willing and able to face unionists down and assert their interests. In the 2001 Westminster elections Sinn Féin overtook the SDLP for the first time, and the polls held since have merely confirmed and indeed amplified the status of the party as the principal voice of contemporary Northern Irish nationalism.

The hardening of nationalist opinion sparked largely by the issue of decommissioning has inevitably found its double within the unionist community. The seeming refusal of republicans to fulfil their presumed obligation to disarm inevitably alienated many within the unionist community. In the summer of 2005 the IRA would of course complete an independently verified process of decommissioning that signalled its apparent demise as an organisation. But by then, unfortunately, the damage to unionist confidence had already been done. The nagging conviction that republicans were not to be trusted, and that their decision to disarm was merely a pragmatic move designed to enable the pursuit of their goals through other means, hardened the outlook of the unionist community. This would find electoral expression in the emergence of the DUP as the strongest voice within unionism. In the Westminster elections of 2005 the party secured twice as many votes as the erstwhile preeminent UUP, which suffered the humiliation of being able to retain only a single seat, in affluent North Down.

The polarisation of political opinion that has unfolded during the present decade had the potential of course to fatally undermine the political settlement codified in the provisions of the Belfast Agreement. As opinion divided and hardened the prospect of the principal players in Northern Irish political life having the appetite or freedom to make real compromise and progress appeared to recede. If the relative moderates of the UUP and the SDLP had been unable to sustain a power sharing government, what then were the chances of the more fundamentalist voices of the DUP and Sinn Féin coming to agreement? While the widespread pessimism induced by the polarisation of political opinion in Northern Ireland was not of course entirely without reason, it failed to acknowledge at least one crucial, if admittedly perverse, facet of political reality, both here and elsewhere. While the fundamentalists in any political environment often appear to be the ones least willing or able to make compromises, they are also at certain times and under certain circumstances the best placed to do so. And so it would prove in the particular context of Northern Ireland.

In October 2006 yet another instalment in the seemingly endless series of talks designed to get the peace process back on track convened in the picturesque setting of St Andrews. After three days of intensive negotiations in the Scottish town it appeared that perhaps some progress had finally been made. With the now customary fanfare, the British and Irish governments unveiled a series of measures that they agreed would enable the political logjam to be resolved. The provisions of the ‘St Andrews Agreement’ made substantial demands upon all the principal players in the peace process. Sinn Féin would be required to recognise the legitimacy of the police, the DUP would be expected to enter into government with republicans and the British state would have to introduce measures to advance equality and human rights.

While the St Andrews Agreement was heralded in official circles as a potentially historic breakthrough, previous harsh experience ensured that many people in Northern Ireland remained somewhat less than optimistic about the prospects of genuine political progress. For once, however, this scepticism would prove perhaps to be ill founded. While the early months of 2007 would feature more squabbles and histrionics, it would gradually become apparent that beneath the surface there had possibly been some fairly seismic shifts in the political landscape of Northern Ireland. Seemingly against all odds, the DUP and Sinn Féin had finally come to terms with the substantial compromises that were required if they were ever to hold and share power together. The fresh Assembly elections held in March 2007 offered both parties renewed and strengthened mandates to enter into government with one another. The prospect that the new version of power sharing might actually work this time round was enhanced not only by the status of the DUP and Sinn Féin as the most popular forces within unionism and nationalism respectively but also, and perhaps ultimately more crucially, by the fact that they represent the most radical mainstream voices within their different communities. The fundamentalist credentials of the two parties ensure that they will be able to make the compromises that power sharing demands without the constant pressure of influential and dissenting voices seeking to outflank them. It is unlikely, for instance, that there will be a repeat of the scenario in which David Trimble was hounded at every turn by more extreme voices within unionism appalled by what they considered as intolerable concessions to nationalists.

The newfound position of virtual hegemony that Sinn Féin and the DUP have come to enjoy within their communities served, therefore, to prepare the ground for an unlikely political deal between the two former implacable opponents. On 8 May 2007 the global media gathered at Stormont to witness the peculiar sight of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness sharing smiles and jokes as they were installed as the First Minister and Deputy First Minister respectively. It is of course rather too early to gauge the fortunes of these particularly unlikely bedfellows but the perilous course that political developments have taken in Northern Ireland over the last generation tends to counsel caution. While the complex narrative of the peace process may appear to have found a happy resolution, the various reversals that occurred along the way have inevitably taken their toll on ordinary people living in the region. With every initiative that transpired to be another dead end, and with every institution that collapsed acrimoniously, the faith and perhaps even interest of the general public in the peace process have been undermined.²³ While undoubtedly there is a great deal of relief that a deal has finally been done, there does not appear to be genuinely popular enthusiasm for this new political dispensation. It all feels a very long way indeed from the excitement of that glorious day in the late summer of 1994.

New dawn fades

When discussing the perilous course of the peace process in Northern Ireland we tend routinely to refer to the Belfast Agreement when perhaps we should in fact be talking in the plural. There are, depending on how you look at it, quite a few Belfast Agreements. When simultaneous referenda were held in May 1998, for instance, people living either side of the Irish border were asked for their opinions on texts whose contents were identical but which were, crucially, physically presented in rather different ways. In the Irish Republic, the version of the agreement that was made available to the electorate assumed the form of a rather drab A5 size legal script. The formal appearance of the text ensured that it made no recommendation one way or the other to its readers, who were in effect entrusted to make up their own minds on its contents. In light of the rather more substantial objections that the agreement had generated in Northern Ireland, however, those official agencies that sought to sell the deal in the region were rather less prepared to leave matters to take their own course.

The version of the Belfast Agreement that was widely distributed north of the border inevitably bore a close resemblance to those simulations of corporate portfolios through which New Labour routinely chooses to affect communication with those it governs.²⁴ The electorate in the region was greeted with a glossy A4 document that contained the same text as the southern Irish version but which prefaced it with a striking and comforting cover image. The photograph chosen to frame the script of the deal was the entirely predictable but nonetheless powerful one of the four members of a classic nuclear family, embracing one another and gazing across an idyllic bay towards the sumptuous vista on the horizon of what is in all likelihood a sunset but which presumably acts metaphorically here as a sunrise. While the text on the cover of the brochure declared in large font that the outcome of the forthcoming referendum was ‘your decision’, it was quite clearly intended to sway the minds of those less than entirely convinced by its contents. The bucolic image that greeted the Northern Irish electorate before they turned to consider the detail of the proposed deal evidently inferred that the Belfast Agreement offered an altogether sunnier political future for the region and that the only reasonable course of action was to vote ‘yes’.

The decision to package as something akin to a holiday brochure what was after all a legally binding document with enormous political ramifications was from the outset distinctly questionable. What made the practice more objectionable still, though, was that it would subsequently emerge that the particular image used on the cover of the agreement distributed to Northern Irish homes was in fact, in a certain sense at least, a fraud. One particularly sharp-eyed photographer noticed that in the relevant shot the sun appeared to be setting/rising on the opposite side of the sky to what one would expect in Northern Ireland. After some investigative research it was discovered that the photograph employed to imagine the political future of the region was taken not along the