245. Inside The Good Friday Agreement with Alastair Campbell

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0:28Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William de Rumpel. As you know, in the last four episodes, we have been talking about the Troubles, and we have a very, very special guest on today. I mean, you might have heard of him. Alistair Campbell, our pod buddy on Goalhanger. Hello, Alistair. Welcome. Hello. Nice to see you both. Very lovely to see you, but you're here in your capacity because you were the man on the spot during the Good Friday Agreement. And if you're listening to this as it is released today, it is exactly 27 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Just first off, did you ever think it would happen?

1:07Or right until the last minute, did you think, oh God, something's going to go wrong here? There's a long history of British attempts to try and pull something like this off, which have gone spectacularly wrong for 120 years. That's a very good question, because no is the short answer. No, I don't think we did. And I think sometimes people think that we did, because Tony Blair did one of his most famous quotes, soundbites, close quotes, not long after we arrived in Belfast, a few days before what became the Good Friday Agreement, when he did, this is not a time for soundbites, but I feel the hand of history upon my shoulder.

1:44I really do. And of course, because he said that and because it became memorable, it only became memorable because of what happened, not because of anything special about that moment. And I think people looking back think, oh, well, they must have known something was coming. I don't think we did. I don't think we'd have been at all surprised if it had just been one more, in this Willie says, the long list of noble attempts that never quite came off. When you were saying, the reason I paused a bit is when you said about the feeling of the thing and where optimism and pessimism clash, even to this day, trying to explain how it all fell into place at the last moment as it did, I find it very, very hard to explain.

2:31Really hard to explain because I can tell you where we were and what we were doing and what Tony Blair was doing and who he was seeing and what have you. but you only have a sense of all the other bits of the jigsaw and whether they're getting closer or more distant from where you're trying to get them to be so it was an incredible moment and you we definitely had a sense of it being incredible but also the reason why I'm probably still even now being hesitant is because even though it felt like this is a moment we also were aware that this was only a moment. It was a big moment, but it was the beginning of something rather than the conclusion of something.

3:15Well, I mean, I appreciate the hesitation, and we're going to go into that background to the agreement and what was going on and the characters, because I mean, you have a unique insight into the people who did come to the table and did sign the document. But just before that, I mean, this is a yes or no question. Did Did you write the hand of history quote for Tony Blair? No. Because it was a good one. Well, was it? The reason I say no, and it's true that so often these things, we do sort of discuss them in advance. That one we didn't really. It was we've arrived in Belfast. I think David Trimble was coming to Hillsborough Castle for dinner and the media were just sort of hanging around.

3:57It was just a question of we've arrived. Let's say something. Let's give them something. they'll go away and Tony just went out and said it and what was really interesting Jonathan Powell who was Tony's chief of staff and became sort of our main negotiator on Northern Ireland and he and I was standing I'll never forget this because the entrance to Hillsborough Castle there's a there's this kind of black and white diamond floor and Tony we set up the camera we had a pool camera set it up Jonathan and I sort of pulled back so we were out of shot and we're just in this doorway. And as Tony sort of did his, you know, and I feel the hand of history.

4:33This is not a time for soundbites, but I feel the hand of history upon my shoulder. I really do. We both sort of looked at each other and went, what the fuck is that? And it was like, because it was so corny. And Tony, by the way, Tony would be the first to admit he's a great communicator, but that's not the same thing as being a great soundbite merchant. he is ultimately but he's a communicator and suddenly we said to him after what was that about hand of history so i don't know just you know but just came into my head so no the short answer anita is no i did not come up with that alistair let's go back and introduce some of the characters involved in this peace agreement because they're very familiar to you and and to anita and i because we grew up with this very much in the news but a lot of people listening particularly broad will not know any of these characters at all so let's first of all you mentioned Trimble but let's start with the people on the Catholic side of the divide.

5:32Talk about John Hume and Gerry Adams first of all. Give us a quick sort of sketch of them and where they were at that moment. Well John Hume who was the leader of the Social Democrat Labour Party so essentially the closest that you'd get in Northern Irish politics at that time to a Labour politician identifiable as, you know, a Neil Kinnock, a Tony Blair, whatever. The thing I would say about John Hume is the, whatever was happening, he had a sense of optimism. Now, sometimes that could be infuriating because even, you know, in the darkest moments, he would like, you know, I remember John Holmes, who was one of the civil servants, was very, very important part of the team at the good friday agreement and i remember he sometimes used to say oh god here comes john hughan we'll have another plan it's all going fine and you know the shinners are coming on board and it's all but in fact that sense of positivity and optimism became very very uh important jerry adams what was he like well i mean i guess jerry adams was the one who had the highest profile within the UK political scene.

6:48Such a sort of homespun character when you see him on the TV. He wears those woolly jerseys and he looks like a folk singer from the Chieftains or something. And yet all the indications are that he was involved in a lot of the nastiest IRA atrocities. To meet, is he the folk singer or is he the villain from IRA bombs? Well, of course, it's possible to be more than one thing. And I think that one of the most important moments, I think, in the whole process came when Tony Blair just made the judgment that he actually felt that Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, and it's hard to separate them because, not just because physically they were always, we tended to see them together, but also because they were, in a sense, they operated very much as a team.

7:36Martin McGuinness was much, I think he was much more open and avowed about his past. Yes, he said quite openly that he was an IRA member, which, as we all know, Gerry Adams has to this day denied. His own denied, exactly. Yeah. And Martin McGuinness may be more straightforward, more blunt, often more brutal in his language quite often. Jerry Adams very much portraying a sense of himself as being a bit of a thinker, which he was, by the way, is, and also being something of a strategist. You always had a sense of him that he genuinely was thinking a few moves ahead, and we had to weigh that into our thinking as well.

8:22But I think the point is that you have to be realistic. you know on both on all sides that you're dealing with people who've done some pretty bad stuff but the fact is and you know and fair play to John Major and what he'd done before Tony Blair became prime minister because he'd kind of crossed that Rubicon and then Tony genuinely reached a point I think where and this is a combination of reading history but it's also political instinct, he had a sense that these guys were serious about trying to do things differently. And he never, ever lost the sense that they were doing that at some considerable political and personal risk.

9:03You know, because it was possible to get very frustrated when the blinding logic of what needed to be done that was so clear to us. And yet, whether on the unionist side or on the nationalist side, them putting up the obstacles to get in the way. and I'll never forget Tony once saying about Adams and about McGuinness he's listen you've got to remember with these guys they're walking around with the not inconsiderable risk that somebody's about to put a bullet in the back of their heads and someone had tried to assassinate Jerry Adams just a couple of years before this absolutely the car next door to him and taking a shot absolutely and then I'm sure that some of your listeners in hearing that will think yeah well that's the world they lived in that's the world they were part of that's so what but from our perspective, with all of these different characters, and this is the other thing I think when I sometimes talk about the magic of the Good Friday Agreement, if you put all the different characters together, and not just the people who are well known, but also lots of the smaller characters as well, it becomes this amazing mosaic.

10:04And you sort of say, well, without any of them, we all know we're all replaceable on one level. But had it not been Adams and McGuinness, had it not been Trimble, had it not been eventually Ian Paisley who came into the fold, had it not been Clinton who was president of America, had it not been Bertie Hearn and the relationship he had with Tony, and on and on and on we go. So their personalities and their characters and what the unique things that they all brought to the process was part of the success. We've talked about Hume and Adams. Give us a quick sketch of David Trimble, because obviously he was a crucial character too in this.

10:38Well, David Trimble, very complicated, very mercurial. I always felt with David Trimble that it was like he felt that he wasn't a politician. Now, the fact is, very, very, very few politicians have as part of their legacy what he and John Hume were given the Nobel Peace Prize for. so he clearly had unbelievable political skills on one level but I guess what I'm saying is he he didn't he wasn't the conventional politician he was very very traditional unionist on one level and that might say to some people so you kind of keep your emotions in check and you're very small c conservative as well as large c conservative as it were but he could be very very emotional and very mercurial.

11:26He was hard to read. He was hard to read sometimes. And I think that what, again, to go back to the characters and the personalities though, Tony's strength was that he was able to absorb and explain the positions of everybody. So that sometimes David Trimble would be his own worst communicator in terms of trying to get something out of the other side. Whereas what Tony would do would be able to package up what David Trimble actually was asking for, but without all the barriers and the resentments that then would make the other side push back against him. The baggage. Not just the baggage, but also the styles were so different.

12:06We talked about the kind of jeopardy that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness had on their shoulders, but also David Trimble too. He's representing a body of people who themselves were very, very divided and very unsure about this whole entire process. And, you know, sort of people on his own side sort of getting up and walking out sometimes when they didn't agree with what came out of his mouth. I mean, just the pressures on him. Can you describe that a little bit to us? The thing about, and again, there was a difference. Whenever you were in the room with Adams, McGuinness, and the collection of people that they used to bring to meetings, and Adams and McGuinness would be doing most of the talking, but you had a sense of this is a solid team.

12:47Now, we know from all sorts of things, and not least from some of the history books that have been written since, that there were divisions going on, but they projected and presented as solid. Whereas, back to John Holmes, I remember John Holmes once saying, think about poor old David, he has to bring the argument in with him. What often would happen is he would come in, and John D. Taylor and Ken McGuinness and Reg Empy, and these guys would be there. And they sometimes would have the argument in front of him. And John D. Taylor or David would say, David, I'd be very careful. I'd be very careful there.

13:26And so you knew there was just a little. And again, that would sort of, you could see David bristle at some of this stuff. So it was a sense of one team projecting absolute unity and the other team projecting, not disunity, but living their disagreements in public. And then, of course, don't forget, outside the talks, and at one point, I mean, if ever this is made into a feature film, this would definitely be a scene. At one point, as one of our several deadlines passed, I think it was a midnight deadline that passed, and who should we get a message from the police has appeared at the gates of Stormont, you know, with a crowd of people, but Ian Paisley, you know, shaking the gates.

14:09I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So he's got all those pressures. Before we go into the negotiations and the ups and downs, shall we just paint also, sketch a picture of Northern Ireland in the late 1980s, the final phase of the Troubles? What's been going on before this? Because the IRA has been armed very successfully by Libya at this point. It's not like it's necessarily something that's winding down and leading to a happy conclusion. There's been a whole enormous crate of arms delivered to Northern Ireland. Gaddafi has provided material for the tragic Ennis Killen killings of 1987, where 11 Protestants are killed.

14:49Only five years earlier, there'd been the Harrods bomb and the famous Grand Hotel at Brighton, where Mrs. Thatcher famously emerged from the wreckage like some sort of Valkyrie out of the rubble. And so there was no sense in which, or was there a sense, that this was something ready for resolution. I think there had been this progress of sorts under John Major. I don't think you could, it was necessarily shaping public opinion in a different way, because part of the progress was the fact that John Major, to his credit, was doing something that had it been known publicly at the time would have added to his already very considerable political difficulties.

15:26In other words, he was, in a sense, he was starting a dialogue with the IRA, even though they had not committed to giving up the armed struggle. But I think you're right that those, when you go through those milestones, the fact that you're mentioning the Brighton bombs, you have to go back quite a few years for that. The fact that you're mentioning Enniskillen, the fact that you're mentioning, I mean, the Libyan thing, you're right, there'd been a big arms shipment within that period, but actually the Libyan relationship went back a fair bit too. I think what there was was a sense of general fatigue about the whole thing.

16:02And that was what gave something of an opportunity. Allied too, and this is something I remember Gerry Adams once said, is that actually the change of government in the UK and Tony Blair as prime minister, they bought into this idea that there's a lot of change going on here. How do we tap into that? You have so many constituencies to represent and think about when you're in a negotiation like this. So, I mean, fatigue, yes, on their side, because, yeah, my God, they've been going through it for so long and they have lost so much. But also your own constituency, because it was the Manchester bombing was only in 1996, you know, just a year before.

16:38One of the largest detonations of explosives since World War Two. And just to remind people, I mean, again, you know, those of you who are listening overseas may not know this, but there was a van that was parked on a street near a shopping centre. So, you know, high civilian casualties possible. and some 1 ,500 kilograms of explosives were detonated, 200 people injured. Now, that's only 12 months before. So were you worried about your own constituents? You've got a change of government. This is still so fresh in the minds of the grieving families, those who were wounded. That was all so present.

17:15Did you worry about that? Well, put it this way. Yes is a short answer, but a longer answer is this, that the change of government, and let's be frank, you know, we won on a very economic, public services, minimum wage, all the stuff that people know that we did after the 1997 election. Tony Blair did not go around the campaign trail talking about bringing peace to Northern Ireland. It had not formed a big part of the buildup. However, it had formed a big part of his thinking about what he wanted to do in his first term. And the point I'm making about Gerry Adams saying that he felt that change, the change of government was important and the identity of the prime minister was important.

17:57And those first meetings that we had, you could sense it was both sides basically working out, is there a possible relationship of trust here? And what I think Tony felt was that if it was possible to get to a place where the troubles could be brought to an that constituencies didn't really come into it. There was a bigger picture that people would understand we were trying to pursue. And don't forget, through the course of the whole process, remember the Parry family and from the Warrington bomb, I mean, how at various points they were really important in terms of that's a young boy gets killed and his parents and his dad in particular, Colin Parry, constantly trying to push for peace.

18:43And so there were moments where where I would argue things like the Manchester bomb almost became like an impetus to do more. When we get onto the Omar bombing, for example, which was a really bad moment, we thought the whole thing was falling apart. That, in a strange way, became one of the drivers of the process itself in a positive direction. Does that make sense? It does. It makes perfect sense. And Ennis Killen, too, which was only 1987, I think, was something which made the IRA pariahs often in their own community. Gerry Adams had to apologize. He said he'd hit the wrong target. There were 60 wounded, 11 civilians killed.

19:26These horrors empowered people like John Hume and took the wind out of the sails. Well, particularly Ian Paisley. I mean, Ian Paisley had carte blanche to say, I told you so. This is what you get. One person we haven't talked about, though, you know, change of government here in Britain, but also in Ireland. And Bertie Ahern is somebody you have an enormous amount of respect for. So he was the Taoiseach of Ireland. Also in 1997, he comes into power, same time as you do. What was the relationship before between Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern? And why was that so pivotal? And what was he like? Well, what was he like?

19:58What is he like? I think a very, very, very, very nice guy. Smart. Politically quite cunning. very proud of his working class roots and his his sense of being a an ordinary kind of guy and the relationship before was you know inevitably in opposition you do develop some relationships with leaders in different parts of the world but it would have been a very very brief I think they met maybe a couple times but it wasn't something that was profound I think they both understood this goes back to the point about change again is that they both understood there was a brief opportunity and that the fact of two new prime ministers coming in with a little bit of wind in the sails a little bit that that was a that was an opportunity so and that relationship worked really really well in terms of yeah the honesty between them the frankness between them i'd grown up as a journalist with Charlie Hockey as Irish Taoiseach and Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister.

21:02I mean, they did not get on. When I was a journalist going around European summits, the way I used to find out what was happening was not to bother with what the British were telling me, I'd just go and find the Irish because, you know, it was the best way to find out what they didn't like about Thatcher. But Tony and Bertie did get on personally. And these personal relationships matter because it's about how you can know when to press a certain button know when to put on an extra pressure know when to pull back and they just had a very very good sort of rapport between each other and ended up working well together alistair two final actors before we dive into negotiations one bill clinton and the americans and george mitchell and then more improbably but actually i think very important the church the church played quite a major role too didn't it father alec reed was one of the initial people bringing everyone to the table could you talk a bit about that he was so it's interesting how often um i mean as you know i don't do god and tony does but some of the um the more memorable discussions sometimes between some of these people were when they were talking about their different understandings of faith and the history of faith and the church so alec reed you're absolutely right by the way was was fundamental I think in relation to the the Americans again I would definitely put both Clinton and George Mitchell into that category I mentioned earlier where had it been a different sort of personality then would it have been as effective so you know Bill Clinton genuinely said wake me up anytime day or night if there's something you think I can do at a particular point, I'm there to do it.

22:43And knowing that was really quite important. And when Clinton did come in, it had an effect. And likewise, I think it being known within Northern Ireland that he really was engaged, really did care, really was trying to help bring this thing together was important. George Mitchell, just patience of a saint. I think he once said, We listened our way to peace. You know, he absorbed everything. He took all the heat. We interviewed him on our podcast, Maurice Stewart and I recently, and he talked about some of the early meetings with Ian Paisley and Ian Paisley making no bones about it. You should not be here.

23:22I don't respect you, your position. And George just has to sit there and absorb it, but then think, well, yeah, maybe, but one day this guy's going to have to be brought into the fold. We started sort of with a quote from Tony Blair, which you hadn't written and you were quite surprised by, you know, the hand of hate on his shoulder. But I'll leave you with another one just before we go to the break. Because in May 1997, on the 16th of May, Tony Blair was in Belfast talking about the peace process. And he said, the settlement train is leaving. I want you on that train, but it's leaving anyway, and I will not allow it to wait for you.

23:55Join us after the break where we find out what exactly that meant.

24:06Hello, welcome back. So did you write that one, The Settlement Train? Not that I remember. You did. Look at your face. You absolutely did. No, honestly, let me tell you something about speech writing. Never, ever underestimate the importance of speeches as really big, important building blocks. and it's interesting that one of the first really big speeches that Tony made as prime minister was about Northern Ireland it was in Northern Ireland it was seminal and I'll tell you I'll tell you why because in a way if you read that speech the whole thing I know you've done the quotes the news out of that first visit to Northern Ireland first big speech to Northern Ireland the news was that we were actually going to be talking to the IRA that was kind of that That was the big sort of thing that he deliberately chose quite a unionist community audience.

25:01And the message was very much about reassurance to the unionist community about consent. There'll be no change to the status of Northern Ireland without consent. But then there also has to be equality, human rights, justice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the speech became almost like a strategic frame. and this is I think why Tony was so much the right guy in the right place at the right time because that was kind of how he thought about it thereafter. These are the kind of strategic pillars and everything else is just negotiation around them and once we've got people to agree yeah of course it's wrong that Catholics get treated really badly.

25:40Yeah of course people of Northern Ireland should decide their own future. Yeah of course it's bad that there's all these weapons kicking around and all the issues were actually quite straightforward. forward, everything else became negotiation. And I would say that the issues and the ups and downs, they followed, but the strategic frame was set in speeches. So I always say to politics students, you know, you can scoff at speeches and say, this speech is boring, that speech is boring. Why can't they get their message down to a 30 second clip? But actually, sometimes it's only through a big set speech that you can say what you want to.

26:16We're talking of frameworks. When it came to the Good Friday Agreement, three main strands that you needed to have everybody agree to, a new government structure for Northern Ireland, cross-border relations between the two parts of Ireland, and British-Irish relations. Which was the biggest headache to get people to agree to? Well, I think you couldn't have one without the other two. I mean, in practical, this is just my sense of it, in practical terms, the Anglo-Irish stuff became the most difficult, I would argue, for the Unionists for fairly obvious reasons. But so, for example, if you think about the Irish government, the Irish government changed their constitution.

26:56And that was quite a big thing to do. So that's, from their perspective, a big ask. The unionists were being asked to accept certain things on trust from people that they frankly do not trust and did not trust. So that was a very, very big thing to ask for. But the reason why I talked about it being a jigsaw, the three really had to go together. They all produced their own individual difficulties and challenges, but any one of them could have brought down the other two. Just some behind the scenes. I mean, we heard sometimes as lay people about the kind of tensions in the room. You talked about David Trimble having to, you know, sort of being undermined by those on his own team.

27:36But did that actually end up with people walking out just because they really disliked the trajectory? And at the point of a walkout, when you've got people walking out on that side of the table. How do you bring them back? Well, possibly by recognising that there's just been a flare up and it will calm down. I mean, are we talking shouty flare ups? Are we talking about people sort of, you know, we've never been privy to these. So, you know, they're not cameras. These are off camera. So you don't see them. How does it do? And you know, what happens to what's the atmosphere in the room? Do you see, oh my God, it's all turning to custard and it's coming or is it a surprise when it all flares up?

28:11And what do you do? Generally, what happens is that the The meeting might come to an end. And then you try and regroup. You try to say, well, has he got a point? Was there a specific thing there that was needling? Don't forget, a lot of these talks were happening when people were really tired as well, in this grotty building where the food was pretty awful. Yes, physically, where are we? I haven't got a picture of where this is going on. Well, that's a very good question, because when Anita started to ask about when things are going a bit tits up and people are shouting to each other, my mind immediately went to the building at Stormont where a lot of the talks were going on.