Through this attempt at peace breakthroughs have been made. Leaders on both sides had pledged their support to this attempt at peace, including David Trimble. The Joint Framework document was a good attempt towards peace as it saw the two opposing sides working together. During any peace attempt support from both opposing sides must be needed otherwise the peace process won’t work. The significance of this attempt at peace, and others was that it was setting up the process for the Good Friday agreement.
But, problems still developed during this attempt at peace, the unionists were suspicious about the council of ministers as they thought that it seemed like a step towards a united Ireland, as the council was untied with north and south ministers. The decommissioning of the IRA’s weapons didn’t go to well either. Sinn Fein told the British government that they would not give up their weapons because they did not trust the British government. Some people believed that some members of paramilitary groups were to be let out early; this was something nationalists and unionists didn’t think to well of, as the victim’s families would feel upset because they haven’t served the whole time of their sentence.
Although both sides had pledged their support to this peace attempt some paramilitary groups, such as the IRA did not agree with the terms that they had to agree to, and this was one of the reasons that this attempt at peace was not as successful as it could have been.
Decommissioning and Elections in 1996 was another step towards to the Good Friday Agreement. The ‘Mitchell Principles’ were created by Senator Mitchell; it was a plan for achieving decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. Sinn Fein agreed to this but the IRA did not and did not give up their weapons.
Sinn Fein’s agreement to the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons was a step towards peace because of their link with the IRA but without the IRA’s actual agreement to this plan, it could not get vary far.
John Major called an election to see how much support the paramilitary groups had, nationalists however were outraged with this decision of John Majors as they believed it put a delay on the peace process and in their eyes, delayed the united Ireland that they are fighting for.
The IRA was very impatient at this moment and was setting off bombs in different places of Britain; a huge bomb was detonated in London’s Docklands and another in Manchester. But the Loyalist ceasefire held and the elections took place without any violent incidents.
As with any peace process, the two (or more) opposing sides must work together for the peace process to work. But the problem today with making successful peace processes is that there is a major lack of trust between nationalist and unionist political parties, the main two are, the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein. Ulster Unionists refuse to work alongside Sinn Fein, unless the IRA starts to disarm.
