Macalla na mB��n: A quarter of a century of the GFA:

 

Rita O'Hare

Macalla na mB��n. 

Thisweek���s column is dedicated to women. It includes a guest piece by Bairbre deBr��n, former MLA and Minister.

Wednesdaywas International Women���s Day. It is a day set aside to celebrate the advancesof women and their contribution to society and to draw attention to theinequalities and injustices still experienced by them. In the last week threewoman friends of mine died.

Theywere Rita O Hare, Bridie Crowe and Marie McBride. I extend my sympathy andsolidarity to their clans.

Ritais well known as a republican activist here and in North America. For manyyears she was one of our leaders. For most of her adult life she was arepublican activist. Her story is a remarkable account of courage and tenacityand guts. As an IRA volunteer she confronted the British Army. She wasgrievously shot, imprisoned in Armagh Prison, got bail, went on the run, wasimprisoned in the South and beat extradition. She was a campaigning journalist,editor of An Phoblacht, part of our national leadership, a core member of ournegotiating team and for over two decades the Sinn F��in representative in theUSA and Canada.

Inthat time she built up very effective personal and diplomatic relationship withPresidents, Congress members, Senators, their staffers, and IrishAmerica. 

Bride Crowe

LikeRita, Bridie Crowe is an old comrade although I have not seen her for sometime. She lived in the Whiterock and she and her husband Alex were part of thegreat popular uprising of the late 1960s. Bridie was a volunteer with Cumann namBan. She was kind, down to earth, generous and funny. She was one of thoseindomitable working class women who faced down the British Army when they camewith their tanks and guns into West Belfast.

Bridiereared a young family and spent years and years visiting Alex in Long Kesh. Sheand Colette and Anne Marie and Dorothy Maguire and wee Maureen and Anne Maguirewere great friends along with the other risen women from that era.

Marie McBride

MarieMcBride is a younger woman from a different generation. From Springhill.  The youngest of Paddy and Ann McBride���sdaughters and the mother of two young children Elise and Cullan. A teacher andan avid reader of books. A young woman who was yet to realise her full potential.Rita and Bridie were both mothers and grandmothers.  They lived longfull lives. Marie���s life was tragically cut short.

Ritaand Bridie have long understood the connection between Irish freedom andequality and women���s rights. They knew there can be no real freedom withoutwomen���s freedom. Bairbre knows that also. So did Marie.

Weburied Bridie on Monday. On Tuesday it was Rita���s turn. We buried Marie onWednesday- International Women���s Day.

 

Macalla na mBan

Streachailt na mbBan

Caoineadh na mBan

Fulaingt na mBan

Neart na mBan

Foighne na mBan

Fearg na mBan

D��chas na mBan

Ceol na mBan

Cro�� na mBan

Craic na mBan

G��ire na mBan

Cairdeas na mBan

��thas na mBan

Gr�� na mBan

Todhcha�� na mBan

Saoirse na mBan

 

A quarter of a century of the GFA

The GoodFriday Agreement will be 25 years old next month. It is probably the mostimportant political agreement of our time in Ireland. It is also an agreementthat was overwhelmingly endorsed in referendum North and South by the people ofIreland.

Since then ithas witnessed many ups and downs, including at this time when the institutionsare not in place due to the intransigence of the DUP and the machinations ofsuccessive Tory governments. However, despite these difficulties the Agreementhas succeeded in bringing about significant political and economic change notleast in the almost complete absence of conflict. It is also seen as an exampleof hope by many people internationally who are looking for ways in which toresolve other deep rooted conflicts.

The GoodFriday Agreement isn���t a perfect agreement. It was after all a compromisebetween conflicting political positions after decades of violence andgenerations of division. It is also a fact that crucial elements of the Agreementhave still not been implemented by the British and Irish governments, includinga Bill of Rights for the North; the Civic Forum; and a Charter ofRights for the island of Ireland.

Over the nextfew weeks as the debate around the anniversary of the Agreement increases Ithought I would provide an opportunity for some of my comrades, who were partof our team which negotiated the Agreement, to reflect on their memories ofthat time.

I begin thisweek with Bairbre de Br��n: 

���Thelate 1990s included moments of great hope and pride.  It also included real lows such as hearingabout the Omagh bomb and the tragic loss of life that day.  There is always the danger that naming oneevent can appear to diminish others, but that was not the case.   We were always aware throughout that periodof the real suffering people were going through and the determination to leadeveryone to a better place. 

Iwent from being a local activist and Ard Chomhairle member who travelled abroadto promote the peace process, to being a teacher in an Irish medium school whotook a year out to join Martin McGuinness on the Business Committee of thenegotiations, to joining Martin in the Executive that was set up after the GoodFriday Agreement as the first Sinn F��in Ministers in the North and, in my case,one of the first ever female Ministers from any local party.   I still pinch myself when I think of sharingthese experiences with Martin, Gerry, and other giants of that period ofhistory. 

Wewent to South Africa and met with Nelson Mandela, as ANC members shared theirexperiences of negotiations with us, and here at home we saw local democracy inaction as community halls were packed with community activists pushing toinclude their needs and their demands on the negotiations agenda, and womenmarched to secure women���s place in what came out of the negotiations.

Whenthe talks began, Sinn Fein was excluded.  There were a lot of protests as people were angry they were being denieda voice at the table because their representatives were not at the table. Talkingto someone from the ANC,  I remarkedabout ���when Sinn Fein gets into the negotiations���.   He laughed.  ���You are already in the negotiations���, he said.  ���Make no mistake about that.  You may not be formally at the table rightnow, but you are very much part of the negotiations.

Peopleopened their homes to us so that we could discuss negotiating strategy withsome measure of privacy.   We had a broadnegotiations team that carried out the painstaking work of preparing and refiningpapers and positions for our main negotiators on the range of issues thateventually became the Good Friday Agreement. I have fond and proud memories of meeting and working with those in ourcommunities who had expertise on that range of issues to tease out with themthe possibilities and limitations of what we could hope to achieve.

Ournegotiating position on the constitutional issue was a United Ireland.  If we���d had more political strength at thattime, we���d have got what we sought immediately.   Had we had less political strength wewouldn���t have got the peaceful way forward which we did achieve.  

AnMLA told me recently that he grew up visiting the prisons and could never haveimagined that that would ever change, yet suddenly it did.  That gives him, and us hope that barriersthat may seem overwhelming can be temporary and can be overcome.  We should never lose sight of what ispossible.���