Reddit mentions of Making Peace: The Inside Story of the Good Friday Agreement

Another person that doesn't understand the GFA.

I will repost an excellent summary by u/TerrorBanjo of why a hard border must be avoided.


"The GFA stipulates the "normalisation" of security arrangements in N.I.

1/ The participants note that the development of a peaceful environment on the basis of this agreement can and should mean a normalisation of security arrangements and practices. The British Government will make progress towards the objective of as early a return as possible to normal security arrangements in Northern Ireland
Security heading, section 1, subparagraph (ii) states:

> (ii) the removal of security installations;

Now people with limited memory, or perhaps too young to remember, perhaps forget that a major part of this agreement, right up until 2007, was removing military and police checkpoints at the border.

The entire purpose of this was to resume normalisation of the country, and since both EU members, have an open border like what would have happened if the troubles didn't begin. This would satisfy the nationalist community both sides of the border, as they could go about their business and would be like a de-facto united Ireland, with the only major difference being currency. The removal of military installations combined with the North/South ministerial council would assure both nations would be aligned in such away that the differences would eventually appear artificial.

This was one of the two major issues that was left over in that time period (early 2000s). The IRA said they wouldn't decommission until the British removed the installations at the border, and the British Government said wouldn't remove the installations until the IRA had decommissioned. There was also the complications that none of the Loyalist paramilitaries had decommissioned and refused to do so until the IRA did (some still have not). The IRA refusing to do so until the British removed the border installations, and the British refusing to remove the border installations until the IRA decommissioned. This literally went on for years, nearly a decade, until the IRA decided to show good faith, announced all members to dump all arms in the presence of the IMC watch dogs, and started to decommission in July 2005. The British noting the good faith, started to slowly dismantle installations around cities, but kept the border installations relatively intact. Then when the IMC confirmed decommissioning in 2006, the British removed the rest of the outposts and completed their end of the bargain by 2007.

2007! Yet in every thread about this in /r/ukpolitics people seem to have collective amnesia like it was decades ago. Acting like the border is no big deal, like it never was. "Not technically written down in plain English in the GFA, so no biggie right?" It was the biggest hurdle to peace. We thought we all came a long way with the GFA."

And u/AngloAlbannach since you are wilfully misunderstand this stuff now I highly recommend reading around the GFA, specifically the travaux preparatoires, I'd start with Bews authoritative account and Mitchell's (who chaired the negotiations) personal account.