Alastair Campbell said Northern Ireland might have moved beyond the annual Drumcree march crisis if it had followed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission-style process after the Good Friday Agreement. He raised the point in a diary column for The New European after interviewing Paul van Zyl.
Campbell wrote that he had asked: "should we have done something similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the Good Friday Agreement was reached in Northern Ireland?" He was speaking after an event in Edinburgh organised by Levy, where van Zyl also appeared. Van Zyl served as executive secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1995 to 1998.
Edinburgh and Paul van Zyl
Campbell said he had discussed whether something similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission should have been done after the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. That came as he interviewed van Zyl for an upcoming episode of The Rest Is Politics LEADING. The link to South Africa was explicit: Campbell was weighing whether a post-conflict process there could have changed how the Drumcree dispute developed.
He then took the point into Dublin, where he was asked about the continuing difficulties caused by the Drumcree march while he was there to speak at another event and do media about his new book. Campbell described the march as a route in which Protestants want to walk through a predominantly Catholic area and Catholics want to stop them. He said its purpose dates back to the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Dublin and the Drumcree march
Campbell answered that question by tying the dispute to the long view after the Good Friday Agreement. He said: "had we gone through the kind of process the South Africans did, would it be too much to hope that we could have moved beyond a march, whose purpose dates back to the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, becoming the cause of an annual political crisis that puts pressure on a process which has allowed a generation to be raised in relative peace?"
The practical point in that answer is not about the march itself but about the pressure it keeps placing on the settlement that followed the Good Friday Agreement. Campbell’s case is that a formal reckoning, similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission model, might have reduced the cycle of annual confrontation around Drumcree and left People in Northern Ireland with less recurring political strain.
Royal Free and Fiona
Campbell also folded in a separate account of recent NHS treatment. He said every one of his recent interactions with his GP and in a couple of London hospitals had been superb. He added that he arrived at the Royal Free at 8am for an 08.20 weekend blood test and was out by 08.10.
Fiona suggested he might have been given special treatment. Campbell replied: "This was Fiona’s suggestion" and added: "10 minutes early counts as late in my book." The remark sits beside his broader praise for the NHS, but it also leaves the impression that he was joking about whether his own name affected how the visit unfolded.
For Northern Ireland, the unresolved point is the one Campbell put in direct terms: whether a Truth and Reconciliation Commission-style process should have been tried after the Good Friday Agreement. He did not answer that question with evidence of a formal plan, only with the argument that the annual Drumcree march crisis might have been less persistent if such a process had been used.
