Michelle Gildernew is the MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone and served as the Sinn Féin representative in London during the time of the peace talks. She was first elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998.

The MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone has said she does not believe the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) would have passed if put to a referendum in 2023.

Michelle Gildernew made these comments when discussing the legacy of the GFA and the challenges facing politics in 2023.

Speaking to The Impartial Reporter about the historic peace talks, Mrs. Gildernew said: “We have challenges now that we didn’t face then – I think now, some of those challenges, if they were around in 1998, we would never have gotten the Good Friday Agreement over the line.”

When asked if the GFA need to be updated for 2023, Mrs. Gildernew said: “I think given some of the reactionary forces in politics in the North, that if there was any shape at rewriting it, then you would lose what was valuable within the GFA.

“Things like the petition of concern which was introduced to protect minorities has been turned on its head.

“I think if you were to rewrite the GFA, you would bring some of those reactionary forces into play who would rejig it to suit themselves.”

She added: “I would be fearful that any rewrite of the GFA would render it null and void.”

Looking back at 1998 and her involvement in the agreement’s delivery, Mrs. Gildernew said: “In the run up to the GFA, I had taken on the role of the Sinn Féin rep in London, and became the contact between home and London.

“I was briefing the parties over there on the negotiations as they were happening, and being the contact between MPs and supporters in Britain.”

Speaking to this newspaper, Mrs. Gildernew recalled close relationships with Labour MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn, and Conservative MP Peter Temple-Morris, who later defected to Labour.

Of Mr. Temple-Morris, she added: “He was the only Tory who would speak to me.”

Prior to the agreement, Mrs. Gildernew was also present for the first meeting between Sinn Féin and then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

She said: “Gerry Adams has recently posted the picture of us on the steps of Downing Street in December, 1997, in the lead up to that [the GFA’s subsequent delivery], so I was there for the first meeting between Tony Blair and Sinn Féin.”

Her role changed after the peace deal, she said. “After the referenda [on the GFA, across the island of Ireland], I was asked to run as a member of the Assembly and got elected to the Assembly in 1998. The first few months, I was back and forth to London a lot.”

Looking back at the busy times around the GFA’s delivery, she said: “It is a time I remember as mostly positive – getting to know people from other parties, and I remember being out in Brussels [on political business], and I was there when my paternal grandmother died, and the first person to sympathise with me was David Ervine [the former leader of the Progressive Unionist Party].”

Looking at the impact of the GFA on politics in Northern Ireland, Mrs. Gildernew said: “For some parties, getting the GFA was the end goal, but for Sinn Féin it was a transition.

“We brought people with us; we had meetings in halls and around kitchen tables. I remember Mitchell McLaughlin [former Sinn Féin MLA and speaker of the Assembly] speaking at a meeting, and saying,‘Read the GFA, and read it again’.

“For us, the GFA was not ‘a Republican document’, but we could take it and work with it, and bring people with us. It was positive for Nationalists, Unionists, and others.”

Concluding, Mrs. Gildernew added: “There are things within the GFA that are still outstanding and need to be implemented, but there are still things within the GFA that are a good template for Ireland moving forward.

“I would love it to be reprinted and distributed again.”