Abstract
The Agreement that emerged from the multi-party talks in Belfast on Good Friday 1998 was put to referendums on 22 May 1998 in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It was approved by 71% in Northern Ireland and 94% in the Republic of Ireland. This chapter considers the reasoning behind the simultaneous referendums and what was at stake in the 1998 Agreement being voted on. It also compares the different experiences of the two referendums, including in the structures, funding and fallout of the different campaigns. It concludes by considering the fact that the 1998 Agreement includes provision for further concurrent referendums in the future, namely on whether Northern Ireland should become part of a united Ireland.
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Notes
- 1.
The second referendum in Northern Ireland was as part of the UK-wide referendum on staying in the European Community in June 1975 (see Chapter 22 by Smith elsewhere in this volume). The vote in Northern Ireland was 52.1% to remain in the EC, on a turnout of 47.4%. In terms of both turnout and Yes vote, this was by far the lowest of all the component regions/nations of the UK.
- 2.
This was illustrated in the results of the Lord Ashcroft poll (2018) on ‘Brexit, the Border and the Union’. Asked in Spring 2018 whether or not Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK, a majority (57%) of voters in England, Scotland and Wales answered that it was for the people of Northern Ireland to decide. And, in the event of Northern Ireland voting to leave the UK, more than six in ten said they ‘wouldn’t mind either way’.
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Hayward, K. (2021). The 1998 Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement Referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In: Smith, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of European Referendums . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55803-1_12
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