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YOUNGSTOWN -- More than 30 years of political and religious strife and violence in Ireland took a significant hit when a landmark agreement was reached, one of those who signed the accord says.
"He was wonderful for us, absolutely wonderful," former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said.
Ahern was referring to former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, who then President Bill Clinton had appointed to broker peace in war-torn Northern Ireland. Mitchell also was a prime architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that quelled decades of violence between Irish Catholics and Protestants.
The agreement was a chief topic on which Ahern spoke during a program Friday at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry & Labor, 151 W. Wood St., which Youngstown State University and the Ancient Order of Hibernians hosted.
Acting as moderator was YSU history and humanities professor David Simonelli.
Ahern, 72, served nearly 35 years in the country's parliament, where he first was elected in 1977. Specifically, he spent four years as minister of labour before being first elected as prime minister in June 1997, reelected in June 2002 and again in May 2007.
For years, Northern Ireland was made up largely of pro-Irish and nationalist Catholics who wanted that region to unite with the Republic of Ireland, as well as Protestants who mainly identified as British and unionists who opposed leaving the United Kingdom.
Minority Catholics, however, often faced housing, job and other types of discrimination, leading to them forming a civil rights movement in the 1960s that was met with fierce backlash from the government and police.
Ahern discussed with about 70 YSU students and others the efforts preceding the agreement to bring together several factions, such as the Northern Ireland Act of 1974 of the United Kingdom that made provisions for the Northern Ireland government. It also established a constitutional convention that was dissolved two years later after having failed to reach consensus on new constitutional arrangements.
He also talked about the 1985 Northern Ireland treaty that sought to help end the troubles in Northern Ireland via giving the Irish government an advisory role regarding the government of Northern Ireland. Signing that agreement were former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then-Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald.
During his interview with Simonelli for Friday's program, Ahern elaborated on other movements that served as preludes for the Good Friday Agreement, such as the Aug. 31, 1994, ceasefire that the Irish Republican Army called to consider a negotiated peace.
"That gave us renewed hope that we would go somewhere," Ahern said.
Nevertheless, the ceasefire broke down a short time later, though Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein's president, helped get that effort "back on track," he continued.
The Good Friday Agreement, for which talks nearly broke down on several occasions was the result of countless meetings. In addition, it faced competing factions such as the IRA, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, he explained.
After the agreement was signed and ratified, it restored self-government to Northern Ireland while recognizing the region's many identities, made a greater commitment to civil and political rights, established a legislature and government in Northern Ireland with shared power between unionists and nationalists and caused the British military to dismantle its bases and border checkpoints.
In addition, because of the agreement, militants agreed to disarm and parliamentary prisoners were released, Ahern noted.
"Now, (Northern Ireland) has turned around to be a very peaceful society. It reversed a very bad situation into a not perfect, but much better situation," he continued.
Ahern also denounced the Brexit movement in which Britain withdrew in January 2020 from the European Union, the only sovereign country to have done so.
Before the former prime minister spoke, Simonelli provided a brief history of Ireland, noting that England first occupied the small island country in 1171. Later, violence and wars between the two countries occurred as the British sought to maintain control of Ireland, he explained.
Rebellions in the 17th and 18th centuries also took place as Catholics rose up against Protestants and failed laws were enacted by Protestants to deprive Catholics of their land as well as political and economic power, Simonelli added.