Who voted for peace? Public support for the 1998 Northern Ireland Agreement

Over the past 30 years of communal conflict, Northern Ireland has seen many attempts to reach a lasting political settlement.2 The April 1998 Northern Ireland (‘Good Friday’) Agreement appears to represent the most promising of these. Previous attempts at a settlement had excluded the main paramilitary organisations, but when militant republicanism began to reassess the effectiveness of its military campaign, the preconditions emerged to include them in negotiations. Although the Agreement was formally ratified by 71 per cent of voters in the referendum held on 22 May 1998, only a narrow majority of Protestants voted to support it. Moreover, in the period since the vote, there have been major doubts about the commitment of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Féin to constitutional politics and to the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, casting a further shadow over the long-term viability of the political institutions created by the Agreement.