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Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process pp 149–181Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

An ‘Inconvenient Truth’: The Deception at the Heart of the Peace Process

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Abstract

The former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Chief of Staff and key negotiator on the Province, Jonathan Powell, have admitted that they used deception to advance the peace process in Northern Ireland. This chapter argues that the Labour government deceived the people of Northern Ireland about the implications of the Belfast Agreement (BFA) to secure a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum on the deal in May 1998. The British Prime Minister was prominent among those arguing that there would be decommissioning before either paramilitary prisoners were released or Sinn Féin sat in government. This misrepresented the Agreement but succeeded in achieving sufficient support among unionists for the deal. The next chapter defends the morality of this deception.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

    Paul Dixon

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  1. Paul Dixon
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Correspondence to Paul Dixon .

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Dixon, P. (2019). An ‘Inconvenient Truth’: The Deception at the Heart of the Peace Process. In: Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91343-8_6

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