The GFA: ‘Power devolved is power retained’ – Enoch Powell

national | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Sunday April 13, 2008 18:52 by G F Eh

éirígí analyses the Good Friday Agreement ten years on.

It is now ten years since the signing of the Belfast Agreement, or the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) as it is more commonly known. The political establishments in Ireland, Britain and further a field are busily lavishing praise on both those who negotiated it, and the political landscape created by it. It is difficult to find a mainstream news article or television piece, which goes beyond the rhetoric to expose the reality of the current situation.

All of this is, of course, to be expected at the denouement of a British counter-insurgency strategy initiated by General Frank Kitson in the mid 1970s and broadly adhered to by successive British political and military leaders ever since. The GFA and the institutions and context it created are simply complimentary additions to his original three-pronged strategy of ‘Ulsterisation’, ‘Criminalisation’ and ‘Normalisation’.