Belfast Agreement requires neither a backstop, nor a bill of rights
By Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Abuse and misrepresentation of the Belfast Agreement is nothing new. Long before politicians from the EU and the Republic of Ireland used the peace accord to try to annex Northern Ireland and derail Brexit, a collection of left-wing academics and nationalist lawyers (or vice versa) claimed falsely that the document required a Bill of Rights, that would enshrine many of their socio-economic and political aspirations in law.
These tactics were disrupted ten years ago, when the Labour government dismissed the recommendations of various lobby groups and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC). The Brexit debate has, however, roused a new anti-British fervour and, alongside other assaults on UK sovereignty in Northern Ireland, the claim that a bill of rights is ‘unfinished business’ has been revived.
At the weekend, Belfast’s Waterfront Hall hosted an event called ‘Beyond Brexit’ hosted by a group called ‘Ireland’s Future’, connected to key Sinn Fein activists. This organisation first came to prominence when it wrote a letter to the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, purportedly on behalf of ‘civic nationalists’. It’s a strange type of civic nationalism that links itself to a movement that pursued a campaign of sectarian murder against neighbours who considered themselves British.
In Northern Ireland, the line between political activism and academic work, which was already blurred, has become even less distinct thanks to Brexit. Queen’s University Belfast has used its QPol, or Queen’s Policy Engagement, unit to host a stream of pro-EU speakers, overwhelmingly articulating a nationalist view of the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
Recently, in conjunction with the University of Ulster, its law school published a report called, ‘Where next for a Bill of Rights in Northern Ireland?’, co-authored by Professor Colin Harvey and Dr Anne Smith.
Dr Smith lectures at the Transitional Justice Institute, which has provided academic cover for the campaign to deal with the legacy of the Troubles by focussing on state killings rather than terrorist murders. Professor Harvey, who previously addressed Sinn Fein’s annual conference with support for its idiosyncratic take on human rights, spoke at the ‘Ireland’s Future’ event, telling the audience, “we will not be seeking permission from anyone to talk about the unity of this country.”
In the coded language of their report, one of the recommendations notes, “we agree with those who argue that there is a rights and equality crisis in Northern Ireland.” For which you can fairly read, “we agree with republicans’ claims that they have been denied rights and equality.” The Queen’s / UU paper highlights concerns about “equivalence of rights on the island of Ireland”, for example.
Sinn Fein has long used this type of language to attack any outward manifestation of Northern Ireland’s Britishness, on the premise that the institutions, laws and emblems of a nationalist Irish state deserve ‘parity of esteem’ with their UK equivalents. This manoeuvre is designed to side-step the ‘principle of consent’, that underpins the Belfast Agreement and currently preserves the province’s place in the United Kingdom.
There was never any truth to the assertion that the Belfast Agreement required a Bill of Rights. The Northern Ireland Act of 1998, which implemented the accord, set up the NIHRC “to consult and advise on the scope for defining… rights supplementary to those in the ECHR, to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland.” When the commission produced its final report more than ten years later, the government found that many of “the rights proposed… are equally as relevant to the people of England, Scotland and Wales.”
Even Shaun Woodward, a Secretary of State whose chief adviser, Kevin Meagher, has since devoted himself to building a case for an all-Ireland state, admitted that the NIHRC’s advice was of limited use, because it went “well beyond” the remit established in the Good Friday accord.
That didn’t stop an industry of lobbyists and publicly funded organisations from spending a decade claiming that the lack of a bill of rights breached the Belfast Agreement. Usually, like the organisers of the explicitly republican ‘Beyond Brexit’ event, which pointedly refused to invite representatives of ‘political unionism’, these people had an agenda that the language of human rights was intended to put beyond discussion.
That’s the beauty of the term, which is now too rarely used to describe the type of universal entitlements to life, liberty and a fair trial that it was invented to protect. Almost any political aim or socio-economic demand can be framed as a ‘human right’, to make those who are accused of denying it seem inhumane and unreasonable.
The idea that Northern Ireland required a Bill of Rights was always a conjuring trick. Now the same people who used it previously are deploying the same tactics when it comes to the Irish Brexit backstop. The Good Friday Agreement requires neither.
