In the months after the signing of the Belfast Agreement in April 1998, a letter arrived in the morning post at the homes of more than a few journalists in Ireland and Britain.
It was an unusual one. I was one of those to receive it – a personal note of thanks from former US senator George Mitchell, the man who had chaired the years of tortuous negotiations in Stormont.
In it, he said he deeply appreciated the role the press plays, particularly in a divided society. I was struck by his decision to pen letters to the same reporters who had questioned him, his motivations and his handling of the talks at every turn. This was so especially given that by then he was back home in New York with his wife and young son and could have been forgiven for never wanting to think about Northern Ireland, its people or its politicians ever again.
We were used to dealing with stuffy, aloof British government ministers sent to Belfast, often as a punishment. But Mitchell was cut from a different cloth, always approachable, open, interested.
READ MORE
When he and his wife, Heather, returned to Belfast in April 2023 for the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, he stole the show at an event at Queen’s University, even in the presence of Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and others.
His words that day were typical of the man from Maine. He celebrated the achievement of the historic accord, but he also implored everyone to do more, to continue to build on the peace, not to take it for granted.
I left Queen’s that day not only determined to document what he had achieved while in Belfast, but to also understand what it was from his background that made him such a successful negotiator.
When his son, Andrew, was born in October 1997 during one of the most fruitless chapters of the talks, one of his staff told him that 61 children had been born in Northern Ireland on the same day – children who deserved to grow up in peace. It was a thought that drove him often.
He should never have been in Northern Ireland. The senator from the state of Maine had passed up an opportunity to be President Clinton’s pick for the Supreme Court.
In January 1995, he became Clinton’s economic adviser on Northern Ireland. Having organised that year’s Washington economic conference on Northern Ireland, he drafted the Mitchell Principles to help bring Sinn Féin and the loyalist parties into the talks, if they accepted exclusively peaceful means.
Few were surprised when he was Dublin and London’s first choice to chair the talks, even if it provoked outrage from Ian Paisley in early 1996, who said the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) would quit if Mitchell arrived.
“This is about whether George Mitchell, a foreigner and a pro-Irish republican, should preside at talks that have the future destiny of Northern Ireland at hand,” the DUP leader charged.
Many others were simply amazed that such a senior US figure would dedicate his time to finding a solution to a conflict deemed unfixable, where so many other efforts had failed before.
That was his art, it was never about him. When we set out to make The Negotiator, it was with a desire to discover what had shaped him as a man, as a politician and as a skilled negotiator
He quietly went about gaining the trust of those who would occupy Castle Buildings on Stormont’s grounds for two years. Resolutions are not found in public. They are hidden in the cracks and crevices of differences.
Mitchell’s attention to granular detail and his ability to listen with intention allowed him to reach a deep understanding of the conflict that ultimately led to compromise and agreement.
I was one of the many journalists who gathered daily outside the gates of Castle Buildings on Stormont’s grounds, attempting to find something new to say.
Even though I was very junior, Mitchell and his team were always approachable and helpful as journalists sought to find where truth lay between the briefings and counter-briefings from the governments and the political parties.
Agreement did not come overnight. It took many painful months and years. But Mitchell stuck at it, keeping the negotiators at the table, despite the violence that continued on the streets.
He could have issued ultimatums and deadlines. Instead, he let everyone air their grievances, day after day. People had to be heard, and to feel that they had been heard. An agreement would be written by them, not dictated by him.
That was his art, it was never about him. When we set out to make The Negotiator, it was with a desire to discover what had shaped him as a man, as a politician and as a skilled negotiator.
In large part, the answer was found in his home state of Maine, where he honed his political skills as a young lawyer. His mother, who could not read or write, was from Bkassine in southern Lebanon.
His Boston-born father had been adopted by a Lebanese-American family. George and his four siblings had a humble childhood, living in a two-room shack by the side of the Kennebec river in Waterville.
Early on, he learned that listening to others was the key.
Later, as a US senator for Maine, he spent six years finding an agreement over Maine’s Acadia National Park’s boundaries – an issue that had caused bitter local division for 25 years: “Patience is a muscle,” he said.
Leaving Queen’s at the end of the 25th anniversary celebrations, I felt that we had failed properly to document his life, and the road that brought him to Belfast despite all of the time that he had spent in the city.
Before he left, I asked him whether he would take part in a documentary charting his life. Thankfully, he agreed. Over several days, we interviewed him at the Mitchells’ family home on Mount Desert Island, and also in New York.
[ George Mitchell says Belfast Agreement will always be a challengeOpens in new window ]
There was a lot of life to cram into one film. In Northern Ireland, he had achieved something that was widely accepted as impossible – a political settlement that brought an apparently intractable conflict to an end.
There are busts of him in Belfast. A Colin Davidson portrait celebrates him in New York. People still want to shake his head and tell him they had believed that he was doomed to fail, but were grateful that he had not.
Today, for all its flaws, the Belfast our daughters have grown up in was gifted by those who took risks for peace in an agreement hammered out in Castle Buildings on days when there was often little hope.
There were many peacemakers, but Mitchell was at the centre. His legacy stands as a beacon: conflicts can be solved if people learn to listen, to properly listen. Where patience is a muscle. The lesson, according to George Mitchell.
Journalist Trevor Birney’s projects have included producing the Kneecap film and writing a book and making a documentary about businessman Seán Quinn. His documentary The Negotiator was released this week.
