I joined BBC Northern Ireland in 2002, and so became a reporter of the aftermath. Conflict journalists counted the bodies; I would spend my career counting the cost. In those early years after the agreement there were times when it seemed as if the accumulated weight of history might prove too heavy for the gossamer threads of peace.
Sometimes, when covering yet another interface riot, or charting the rise of dissident republican organisations, or interminable political stand-offs, I would often be reminded of F Scott Fitzgerald’s famous phrase in The Great Gatsby; “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
In the end, though, we came through. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the last three decades wasn’t the idealism of the Good Friday Agreement, but the mundane and often frustrating pragmatism of the years that followed.
Blue Lights, the TV drama that I write these days has that dichotomy at its heart. The show is in some sense a testimony to those countless quotidian decisions, mostly made far away from the halls of power; to take the higher path.
To do the right thing.
Perhaps we all wish we might have travelled farther in those decades; but the fact that we remain on the path, for all its bumps and obstacles, is an everyday kind of miracle.
Impossible Peace 2: Explore the collection
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28 July 2005: 4 o'clock and all is well
Read now to access more details of 28 July 2005: 4 o'clock and all is wellThe archive follows the next phase of the Northern Ireland peace process through the years 2005-2010 and what happened after the IRA decision to end its armed campaign at 4pm on Thursday, July 28th 2005.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: Introduction
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: IntroductionThis publication builds on our previous work -‘Impossible Peace’. Our focus now is the period 2005/10, and what happened after the IRA decision to end its armed campaign at 4pm on Thursday, July 28th 2005.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: Tea for two
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: Tea for twoThe old receipt takes me back twenty years to a Saturday morning - July 23rd 2005. I was in one of those meetings of words and silences; sitting with Richard McAuley a senior aide to then Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: Thrown to the political wolves
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: Thrown to the political wolvesA seismic shift. A rapid sequence of events. What were the sentiments around the decision to demilitarise?
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: "The taigs are getting everything"
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: "The taigs are getting everything"Tense conversations. Lists of grievances. A day of rage.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: On a wing and a prayer
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: On a wing and a prayer"The job is done. It can't be done twice." What were the doubts and narratives around IRA decommissioning?
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: The bunker in the peace
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: The bunker in the peaceNew steps and ideas after 2006: "How do you build new policing on that battlefield?"
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: Bullets in their socks
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: Bullets in their socksBrian Rowan reflects on trying to make the pieces of the peace process narratives fit together.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: The murders at Massereene
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: The murders at MassereeneMarch 7th 2009: another murder scene painted onto the canvas of an imperfect, troubled, tortuous peace.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: The missing legacy voices
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: The missing legacy voicesBrian Rowan reflects on the voices and stories of those no longer with us.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: Where have all the leaders gone?
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: Where have all the leaders gone?The peacebuilding project took leadership - where are the leaders today?
Level: 1 Introductory
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Impossible Peace 2: Much more than an archive
Read now to access more details of Impossible Peace 2: Much more than an archiveThis project, under its heading Impossible Peace, is intended to do more than log detail and analysis. It is about taking all of that information into a wide conversation to discuss moments of history and learning and the different perspectives.
Level: 1 Introductory
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Ceasefire anniversary in Northern Ireland: 30 years of an impossible peace
Read now to access more details of Ceasefire anniversary in Northern Ireland: 30 years of an impossible peaceA story of change, drawing on the thoughts of some of those who made the ceasefires and the political agreement in Northern Ireland possible.
Level: 1 Introductory
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