The Telegraph, 16 May 2022, Lord Trimble
Twenty five years ago next year, John Hume and I signed the historic Good Friday Agreement which, thank God, ended 40 years of a terrorist campaign that caused tens of thousands of injuries and deaths and billions of pounds of economic damage to Northern Ireland. The agreement was not perfect, it faced opposition from many, but I believed then and now that it would benefit the people of Northern Ireland.
Its central premise was that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom as long as the people of the province wished to do so. Importantly, it guaranteed that “it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of the majority of its people”.
The people of the province, nationalist and unionist, supported the Assembly because of the assurance that cross-community consent would be required when decisions on a controversial or significant issue were to be made. Everything rested on that central pillar of consent, essential for the working of government in a deeply divided society.
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