From precarity to progress: Beyond the Good Friday Agreement

Abstract

Abstract This chapter analyses Alliance since the Good Friday Agreement, a deal the Party welcomed but whose philosophical and ideological approach—the management, and not necessarily healing, of ethno-nationalism—was at odds with the Alliance vision of integration and reconciliation. The Party was in disarray when its leader of eleven years, John Alderdice, suddenly quit. His replacement, Sean Neeson, struggled to cope but did commission a fundamental review of Party strategy which paid dividends in the long term. In the immediate years after the Good Friday Agreement, however, Alliance looked irrelevant and short of votes, to the point that the Party’s existence was threatened. After that, however, the Party recovered under the leadership of David Ford and prospered under Naomi Long. Chapter 4 covers both the nadir and the rebirth of the Party.