Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Chapter 20 opens Part 3, “A Reckoning.” The chapter outlines the end of the Troubles and the transition into the peace process that followed. The IRA abandoned the initial cease-fire by detonating a bomb in London in 1996, demanding that the British government negotiate with Sinn Féin as a legitimate political entity without the provision that the IRA must decommission all weapons. However, political leaders negotiated a second, enduring cease-fire in 1997, and the following year, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other British, Irish, and American negotiators issued the Good Friday Agreement. This agreement held that “Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom, but with its own devolved assembly and close links to the Republic of Ireland” (224). The agreement also outlined a provision for future change: if a referendum vote in Northern Ireland ever indicated a majority’s desire to separate from the United Kingdom, officials on both sides of the Irish Sea would facilitate another transition. While this result did not represent an IRA victory, Sinn Féin agreed to active representation in Northern Ireland’s new assembly, and many people in the streets of previously war-torn cities welcomed the prospect of peace.