ABSTRACT
The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 put in place a new political structure for Northern Ireland based upon a consensus of both communities. It introduced a constitutional system within which all people and groups in the province could feel they had ownership of. The Good Friday Agreement was inclusive rather than exclusive, and it recognized the region's many different and conflicting identities rather than championing just one. Although the political violence had ended back at the time of the various paramilitary cease-fires, the Good Friday Agreement helped to copper-fasten the end of politically motivated violence by locking representatives of those groups into the political structure. David Campbell, Peter Weir, David Brewster and most damagingly Jeffrey Donaldson all walked out of the conference, motivated as much by personal history and conviction as they were by pre-election manoeuvring and expectations of rejection within the Unionist community.
