23 February 2023 Edition
Marking the Good Friday Agreement

23 February 2023
We always knew that the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement would merit a special issue of An Phoblacht where we would have many of ‘the people in the room’ making a series of contributions about the years leading to the agreement, the negotiations themselves, and the aftermath. Free article
Remembering Good Friday 1998
23 February 2023

Former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams takes us inside Stormont’s Castle Buildings and into the heart of the Sinn Féin team for the last hours of the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement Free article
The ultimate triumph of peace is unity
23 February 2023

Twenty five years ago, an agreement was signed in Belfast that transcended the past and changed the future. The Good Friday Agreement brought an end to three decades of terrible conflict in Ireland. To this day, it stands as an historic, international success story in peace-making - a blueprint for the resolution of even the most intractable of conflicts. The agreement is a testament to what can be achieved when people come together in the spirit of hope to build a better tomorrow. Free article
A shared and better future
23 February 2023

I was 20 years old and a young mother when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. I remember vividly the sense of hope and optimism that a brighter, more peaceful future was on the horizon. Free article
The challenging steps to the Good Friday Agreement
23 February 2023

An Phoblacht selects some of the key moments and events that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Free article
'We always knew it would be a battle a day'
23 February 2023

Reflecting over the quarter of a century since those momentous days of April 1998 and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Peadar Whelan, then An Phoblacht’s Northern Editor, wonders at the enormity of what was achieved. Free article
Making the impossible possible
23 February 2023

Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson charts her journey from prison cell to Stormont office as part of the first Sinn Féin Assembly team in 1999. Free article
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The last steps to the Good Friday Agreement
23 February 2023

Former Sinn Féin vice president Pat Doherty was part of the Sinn Féin negotiating team that concluded the Good Friday Agreement. Here he takes us from the first meetings in Castle Buildings to the long Good Friday that culminated in the historic agreement. Free article
British media must face realities of the Good Friday Agreement
23 February 2023

Should anyone doubt that the ‘independent’ British press is willing and able to act on behalf of the British state, then its collective enthusiasm for the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) should surely quieten the doubters. Free article
We have lived in the Good Friday Agreement era
23 February 2023

Mícheál Mac Donncha argues that despite the challenges to the Good Friday Agreement over 25 years, it has opened the potential for a path way to a United Ireland. Free article
The extraordinary men and women who built the peace
23 February 2023

In 2005, former republican prisoner Séanna Walsh’s reading of the IRA leadership statement announcing the end of their military campaign was broadcast around the world. Séanna recounts the key steps to that historic day. Free article
Sinn Féin Building an Irish peace process
23 February 2023

In 1998, Mitchel McLaughlin was Sinn Féin’s National Chairperson. Here he outlines the road map to the Good Friday Agreement Free article
History in the Making
23 February 2023

Pádraic Wilson was the Officer Commanding Republican Prisoners in the H-Blocks from 1996 to 1999. Here he writes of the key events within the prisons in the months before and after the Good Friday Agreement. Free article