Speech by Former Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds

Sunday, May 30, 1999

Commencement Ceremony

University of San Diego

… May I extend my appreciation and thanks to President Hayes and the trustees of USD, which this year is celebrating its 50th anniversary

For those of you who may not have studied Irish history, for the last 800 years there has been an ongoing conflict, between two divided communities -- in fact in every decade of this century there has been armed uprising, insurrection against the colonial power that divided our nation in the 1920s. The vast majority of the Irish people have never accepted that situation and so it is that violent conflict has continued -- through every decade of this century.

Just before becoming Prime Minister in 1992, there was a horrific outbreak of tit for tat murder, savage murders between two communities. In my view it would have been a failure of leadership not to confront that deteriorating situation, and try to do something about it. Historically, the politics of Northern Ireland have always been the graveyard for Irish politicians and indeed for British politicians as well.

But I would rather have tried and failed, rather than not to have tried at all, and so it was that on the 11th of February when I became Prime Minister and leader of my country, I set out on a long journey for justice and a path to peace. I took up the issue with my colleague and personal friend who had become Prime Minister in London, John Major, and indeed encouraged by the talks indirectly going on behind the scenes with Irish Nobel peace prize winner John Hume and leader of the Republican and Nationalist movement Gerry Adams.

Successive policies of successive governments over 35 years had failed to halt the violence and so it fell to me to change that policy and choose a new direction, to try and understand the feeling and ideas that were in people's minds on both sides of the political divisions so that while understanding it in the first place, I might be able to do something about it and so I opened up communications and indirect communications to both sides in the conflict, because up to that point, both sides had been ignored and every policy of every government had called on them to lay down their arms and stop the fighting, but it fell on deaf ears, because nobody seemed to understand the root cause of the problem.

It was by understanding that, that I was able to bring indirectly in the first sense and directly later on leaders of that movement into separate discussions with myself and I relayed the fruits of those discussions with Prime Minister John Major in London.

About the same time President Clinton was elected in the great country of the United States. He, too, had voiced an interest in becoming somebody who could assist and support the realization of peace in Northern Ireland, so in other words, three people were in the right positions at the right time, and after 18 months of discussion behind the scenes with John Major and myself, we produced the Downing Street declaration published on 15 of December in 1993.

That document set out to lay down the principles on which everyone -both communities could go forward:

1. We acknowledged the sins of the past,
2. We acknowledged the mistakes of the past,
3. We acknowledged the injustices of the past,
4. We acknowledged the inequality of the past

and so this document set that set of principles that everyone could support and adhere to, and most of the parties did adhere to and did support it.

That to me was the charter for peace in Ireland and so we continued on our negotiations and discussions to produce the second stepping stone along the way, another historical document called the Frameworks Document. This document put flesh on the principles already laid down in the Downing Street Declaration. And so it was that the Frameworks Document, again getting broad acceptance across both communities, it eventually became the agenda for the all-party talks, which took so long to get together.

And it eventually led to what you may have heard of as the Good Friday Agreement, signed in Belfast between the two governments and all parties, this emanated from the Frameworks Document, again recognizing all the principles that I have enunciated for you, in other words giving a fair deal to everybody.

Now someone may say it has taken a long time, but as one great Irish writer, William Butler Yeats once wrote, "peace comes dropping slow. We in Ireland don’t mind how slow, as long as it comes."

There have been intermittent breakdowns along the way, but I think the greatest stepping stone of all time was the creation of a cease fire, a cease fire called by the Republican movement on the 31st of August in 1994, followed six weeks later by a cease fire declared by the Loyalist paramilitaries on behalf of the Unionist community.

This was the long awaited peace declaration that everybody waited for, and the job after that was to put in place political structures that would cross the border between the north of Ireland and the south of Ireland and that would create the condition of:

1. Equality of opportunity,
2. Equality of investment and indeed,
3. First-class citizenship for all our people and not 2nd class citizenship for some.

It was indeed that sense of injustice that had driven the minority, which were nationalist to open rebellion. It was indeed that sense of injustice that has caused similar problems throughout the world.

If the Irish model is to be successful in Ireland, it can be a role model for many of the troubled spots around the world. But first of all it must be a recognition of the mind set of the people that feel the injustice, of the mind set of the people that have set out to kill so many of their fellow countrymen-whatever religious aspects they have professed in their life.

This is the complicated divided community of Northern Ireland, which is on its way to finally resolving, after 800 years of conflict, that indeed people can learn to live together.

I believe from my experiences that greatest commitment and contribution that both communities have given to the realization of peace has been to sit down and talk to each other and, because of that, they have begun to find out that there is more that unites them than divides them and that they can all go forward in peace with justice. Because peace is no good unless it's accompanied by justice, and that is why I look forward to the creation of the Institute of Peace and Justice here at USD. (Philanthropist Joan B. Kroc has given USD $25 million to create the Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice. Groundbreaking is scheduled for this fall.)

Indeed I want to congratulate and say a very sincere word of appreciation to Joan Kroc for such a generous start to such a worthy institution, and so it now falls to you, the graduates and young people of this millennium to indeed put together the educational standards you have achieved here, to put together that together with the great tradition of freedom and to fight for freedom and indeed the custodians of freedom around the world and put that together for the betterment of the people of today and the children of tomorrow.

And you may wonder why I took the risk and why John Major and President Clinton took the risks for peace that every political leader has to take from time to time. We took it because we believe that peace is the greatest cause in any society and we also believe that there is no greater personal satisfaction for any politician than to be able to say that he or she has saved a human life.

I was driven forward in my quest for peace and justice by something Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote, that "politicians should do the things that politicians think they cannot do." I set out to be one such politician, realizing that our opportunity comes to pass, not to pause.

We continue to finish the job, but I would say, to all people involved in the process in Northern Ireland that the recent Hillsborough Declaration will not work, it has failed, it has to be left aside. Because the people themselves who are the supreme judges in any democracy have indeed overwhelmingly supported the Good Friday Agreement and I don't believe anybody has the political right to go away from it.

So we better get back on the road of the Good Friday Agreement and work out and jump the last hurdle that has to be jumped for peace and that I know you will share with us, the peace that after 800 years we will have achieved and that you, USD, will set out to do the same for so many troubled parts around the world.

Thank you very much.