John Hume’s death triggered memories of the Good Friday Agreement and its impact on Northern Ireland

I remember very clearly the first time I drove into Belfast International Airport without passing a security checkpoint. It was terrifying.

I asked my father, who had driven me to the airport, as he always did, “are we there yet?”

I did not mean had we arrived at the crowded drop-off point, where we would hurry out of his Corsa alongside all the other people who did not want to have to pay for short-term parking.

I meant was Northern Ireland there yet? I meant, essentially, was it safe?

The change had not come suddenly.

This was after the Good Friday Agreement. And yet it was new. And unsettling. The question stayed with me until I got on my flight. But, slowly, over time, I began to stop thinking about it. It’s funny what progress looks like. I have been thinking a lot about that moment this week, following the death of John Hume.

Over the years I’ve found it hard to express to people the difference that peace made. How the Troubles had seeped into everything, the tiniest of everyday decisions, the things many other people took for granted. And how, unlike my father, who was in his early twenties when the Troubles started, for my generation it was all we had ever known.

I did not know John Hume. I never met him. I was not one of the thousands of teenagers at the U2 gig when Bono brought him and David Trimble onstage. I can’t tell you the kind of stories I write about in my current job, about politicians and their backroom talks and negotiations. About the breakthroughs and the disappointments.

I just lived there. I lived there before. And I lived there after. And eventually, thanks to his work and the work of countless others, I was lucky enough to get the chance to go into an airport feeling unsettled, not because there were checkpoints outside, but because there weren’t.

Yours,

Kate Devlin

Whitehall Editor