‘We were outsiders,’ says one of the women behind the Good Friday Agreement | CBC Radio

When the Good Friday Agreement was signed 25 years ago, on April 10, 1998, in Belfast, Monica McWilliams was one of just a handful of women at the table. But she says they were — by and large — not welcome.

The agreement, which was approved in two referendums — one in Northern Ireland and one in Ireland — one month later, largely brought an end to three decades of violent hostilities, known as the Troubles, between loyalists who wanted to remain part of Britain, and nationalists who wanted a united Ireland.

McWilliams was the co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, a group created to ensure women were part of that historic peace process.

This year, the work of McWilliams and other women peacemakers is being highlighted in a United Nations exhibition called Peace Heroines.

McWilliams — a former member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a professor emeritus at Ulster University’s Transitional Justice Institute — spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal on Monday. Here is part of their conversation.

What does this agreement mean to you 25 years on?

I’m very glad that we have the opportunity to celebrate it. Because when you make an agreement, you don’t actually get that moment, because it takes some time for it to sink in. And because everyone had told us it was an intractable problem that couldn’t be solved.

It was with some relief that I got up from the table exactly around this time 25 years ago. And I went home very tired to my children, who I hadn’t seen for three days and three nights.

Actually, it was my children who gave me some sense of reality. My son, the oldest one, was only 10. And he said, “Is it true?”

And I said, “Yes, son, it is.”

And he said, “Does that mean all the killings will stop? And will the riots stop?”

And I said, “Well, probably not. We’re going to have to work hard to make this agreement work.

And he said, as children do. “Well, what did you sign today?”

That’s really when I sat down and thought, “Yeah, now I’ve got to explain to the people and get them to say ‘yes’ in six weeks’ time about what we’re really saying today.”

You’ve also had, for all of these years, to watch — in large part — men get and take the credit for the Good Friday Agreement. What has that been like?

I am really shocked at how much attention, finally, that the small party like the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition are now getting. That wasn’t the case 25 years ago. Nor did we want it or expect it, because that’s what women kind of get used to. They get on and do the practical work of building the peace and making it work. And we weren’t looking for accolades.

But it’s nice these days now to hear that we did play a role at the table, and a very important role, and that there were clauses in that agreement around integrated education and resources for young people, community development and a civic forum that would not have been in the agreement. Most important of all was the issue of … restitution for victims. 

They said: ‘The only table you should be at should be the table you’re going to polish.’​​​​​​– Monica McWilliams, co-founder of Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition

If you take us back in time, you know, when you’re sitting at that table, when you form this coalition, what kinds of things were you up against? 

We were outsiders who had got inside, and they made us feel — some of them, not all of them — that we didn’t belong. They said: “The only table you should be at should be the table you’re going to polish.”

That was [one of] the nice things I can repeat. The other things I probably can’t repeat because it was so insulting and so derogatory.

But we started an “Insult of the Week” noticeboard. We put the name on it. We put the insult on it. And then we called it out — long before the #MeToo movement — 25 years ago. And we used good humour, because some of it was just ridiculous. And we decided to focus on the bigger stake of making peace.

What brought you all together in the first place?

A number of us were very proud to be feminists and wanted to see more women in public decision-making.

And many of us also have been bereaved. Myself, as a student, had lost a very good friend who was murdered when he was 20 years old. And so we were determined that if this process was going to be inclusive, that there should be women at the table. 

But, also, it was a process that we wanted to see working. And we had our own issues. We broadened the agenda, and we put those issues on the table. And we were very proud signatories when we saw the clauses that we had inserted.

And today, 25 years later, we’re still enforcing those. We’re still implementing them. That’s what women do. And we’ve never given up.

WATCH | People in Northern Ireland alive today thanks to peace deal, says Gerry Adams: 

Former Sinn Fein leader remembers the Good Friday Agreement 25 years later

Gerry Adams says there are people who are alive today because of the historic peace deal that ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

You hinted at this at the start of our conversation, how precarious these negotiations were. You know, they’ve been in place now for all of these years, but at that time, it was still very dicey. Can you give us a sense of what was happening?

Even until the last week, we didn’t know if we were going to get a deal. 

It was like a yo-yo that week. And the emotions also were going up and down as fast as the agreement was coming in one minute, going out the window the next.

But finally, on the afternoon of this day, exactly 25 years ago, around this time … I put up my hand as one of the parties around the table and declared: “I am in favour.”

My hair stood on end and as you just said…. I wonder, you know, what you think the rest of the world can learn from what you and the other women involved were able to achieve?

We were very proud of the fact [that] … two years later, on the back of what we did in Northern Ireland, there was a UN Security Council resolution … known as UN Security Council Resolution 1325: Women, Peace and Security. And it mandates governments and parties in other political conflicted situations to include women in their negotiating teams.

So perhaps that’s our legacy. And to me, from the local to the global, I think that’s a really good thing to be connected with.