The archive project we are developing with The Open University in Ireland and the former BBC correspondent in Belfast Brian Rowan is a series of works designed to create a record of the most significant period in our recent history. Our design approach to this new book in the series leads with a brutalist cover that intentionally sets the tone for the content within. Content that travels the hard road from conflict to peace; mapping the long journey out of war and towards political agreement. Among the key signposts are the quiet dialogues that made the ceasefires of 1994 possible; and the learning that ceasefires are a beginning and not an end.
This is the focus of our 2024 publication - 'Impossible Peace', in which the layers of peacebuilding are explained in 20 contributor essays, including from the former Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, the one-time Clinton adviser Nancy Soderberg, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, who was Chief Constable of both the RUC and the PSNI, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, David Adams, who had a seat at the top table when the ceasefire of the Combined Loyalist Military Command was announced in October 1994, and Professor Joanne Murphy, who writes on leadership and the contribution of the Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume to the shaping of the process here. This work looks also at the contribution of the arts, and at the impact of social media as peacemaking develops.
Our most recent publication spans the years 2005-2010, arguably the most significant phase of the process. It includes the formal end to the IRA armed campaign, the move by the British Army to a peace time garrison, the process of decommissioning in which the IRA and loyalist organisations put arms beyond use, Sinn Fein's participation in new policing arrangements and the achievement of a once unthinkable government in which Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness had the lead roles. It is in this phase of the process that the wars are dismantled.
The building blocks in this project are the thousands of notes, diary entries, tape transcripts and reports in Rowan's archive; gathered and logged in decades-long contacts with the many sides to the conflict here. This is augmented by handwritten contributions from some of those who had key roles in headline moments of the process, including Seanna Walsh, who read the IRA statement and orders to camera on July 28th 2005, the veteran loyalist Jackie McDonald, on his role in decommissioning, and the former MP Lady Sylvia Hermon, who writes on leadership and on the role of another Nobel Peace Prize winner, David Trimble, in delivering the Good Friday Agreement.
The archive project is a work-in-progress with further chapters planned on the vexed question of legacy, the troubled politics of peace and the learning we can share with others.
View the project here - OpenLearn
