Beyond the Good Friday Agreement: How Former Enemies Are Creating a New Vision of Peace and Economic Security in Northern Ireland

Tells the story of how former members of the Irish Republican Army and Protestant paramilitary groups have joined forces to identify and address the critical economic needs of their working-class communities, healing the wounds inflicted by decades of conflict in the process.

By exploring the development of working relationships among former adversaries in the form of cross-community, grassroots, working-class advocacy, Beyond the Good Friday Agreement differs from most books on the Northern Ireland peace process and offers a new outlook on peace studies. Through more than sixty-five in-depth interviews with individuals engaged in the Northern Ireland peace process, the book emphasizes the central importance of local leaders in peace-making and post-conflict community rebuilding. It explores the peace process through the lens of cross-community efforts and collaborations between Protestant/Loyalists and Catholic/republicans working together. Employing philosopher and anti-fascist activist Antonio Gramsci's theoretical model of the "organic intellectual," Cassidy creates a new way of thinking about the role of local activism in Northern Ireland's post-conflict development. Rather than presenting the peace process from the perspective of elites, this book examines the lives of the people who fought in and were most directly affected by the conflict and its aftermath and bears witness to the sustainable peace and economic justice these grassroots leaders and their communities are working to establish.