Michael AvilaCommunity Voices is an interview series where Michael Avila and Ani Kanakaki speak to a range of folks from the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland about the work they’re doing to bring about positive change. The series, formally known as #AtsUsNai, is produced in partnership with AvilaMedia and funded by the Community Relations Council. This week they caught up with Quintin Oliver – Architect of the ‘Yes’ Campaign to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 which brought peace to Northern Ireland.
Quintin grew up in the post-industrial streets of East Belfast through the city’s ‘Troubles’. He was brought up in a middle-class home and was told by others that his dad had a ‘Protestant’ job because he worked for the civil service. The Olivers were ‘Protestants’, even though they didn’t go to church. It wasn’t until he was 18 years of age that Quintin met a Catholic.
According to Quintin, Belfast was not an interesting place to grow up – in that context – and that you were essentially brought up to leave. And leave he did, when he departed for Scotland for university and worked in Glasgow for eight years before returning to NI. While Belfast may not have been an interesting place to grow up for him, it certainly laid the foundation for a more than interesting career.
Quintin returned to Belfast around the time of the Enniskillen Bombing in 1987 – he wanted to make a difference from a non-sectarian viewpoint. That viewpoint would be the key, not only to Quintin’s success, but to the success of Northern Ireland’s peace process. He was motivated to create a better society in Northern Ireland because he had seen it elsewhere.
Politics in Northern Ireland was still a ‘zero-sum’ game, with neither side making any significant steps towards accommodation. Quintin asked himself, “How can we bring people together to discuss issues where they might find common ground?” Quintin knew full well that ‘The Troubles’ had little to do with religion and everything to do with identity, power, and culture. He began to develop ways to elevate people above the psychological – and physical – walls that divide.
Throughout the 1990s, scepticism about any sort of agreement was rampant. Even days before what would become the Good Friday Agreement, polls showed that 87% of Northern Ireland’s population did not believe the agreement would happen. Quintin and some of his colleagues knew that if an agreement were to be made, that politicians would be too worn out from the process – and conflicted on its meaning – to successfully pitch the agreement to the public and could squander the chance to bring an end to Northern Ireland’s 30 year conflict. The agreement would have to be ratified by the public in a referendum and it was not clear that, even if there were to be a political agreement, that they would support it.
Unprecedentedly, an agreement was reached at the political level on Good Friday 1998 and was to be voted upon by the end of May, for June elections to the first NI Assembly. A similar referendum to ratify the GFA would take place in the Republic of Ireland.
Quintin knew this was time for action. He quit his job to assemble a team to organise a cross-party campaign within the span of three weeks. He almost went broke in the process, maxing out his credit cards and investing his children’s university tuition savings in the name of peace. Once the referendum campaign was formalised, they would have only six weeks to officially launch, motivate hundreds, and mobilise thousands for the all-Ireland vote; and hope for the best.
“We had to assure people that this was a more positive way forward – a more positive future. Positivity wasn’t rife in those days,” said Quintin.
The document that was agreed at Stormont Castle was understandably filled with legal jargon that would not appeal to a public in need of answers. This is where Quintin and his team’s creativity played a crucial role, designing the iconic ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ street signs that demonstrated the ramifications for either result.
Quintin’s team ran its ‘air’ campaign through the media, using celebrity personalities to bring awareness across Ireland and beyond.
One of the defining moments was when the Europa Hotel, a building which had seen its own share of troubles and bombs, agreed to drape the huge ‘Yes’ banner down its façade.
As the epitome of an activist for peace, Quintin shared the acute worry of most activists on the day of the vote: “Every campaigner before a poll is apprehensive because, no matter how much work you’ve done, no matter how much you think you have persuaded people with your arguments, you’re worried it’s all going to go horribly wrong.”
After polling closed and the counting of votes got underway, Quintin could see the piles of ‘Yes’ votes mounting and finally envisaged their long-held hopes coming to fruition. The result was ‘Yes’ at 71.12% and. Once ratified simultaneously
For Quintin, “The vote was about hope – it was hope for a better future. It was about a gritty, realistic, better future that was helped by the hope that something could change Northern Ireland’s awful past.”
Of course, as we know, the peace process has been far from perfect, but the important thing to remember is that despite challenges it has lasted, and in no small part to the legacy of Quintin Oliver and his team.
Quintin, like Anne Carr interviewed earlier in this series, was well aware the Good Friday Agreement was only the beginning of peace and that it would have to continue to be fostered.
Quintin would later become Director of Stratagem International, one of Belfast’s leading public policy organisations, where he would continue to build its Belfast branch through his expertise in strategic communications, training and campaigning. He has worked organisationally and individually abroad, helping to foster peace in places as far as Ukraine and Colombia, bringing with him the example of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing experiment to conflicted regions across the globe.
Northern Ireland, says Quintin, “could be a fantastic example of a place that has come through conflict and is at ease with itself – we all need to pull together to achieve it.”
You might ask the question, what does someone as accomplished as Quintin Oliver do with himself today? The answer remains the same – give back to the community he loves. A few years ago Quintin purchased the Carnegie Library in North Belfast’s Oldpark and with a dedicated team is working to restore the building as a hub to serve the community. Quintin understands well Belfast’s rich heritage that was overshadowed by the city’s troubled past. He sees this heritage as something to be shared and to be proud of. He says, “Belfast is my city and I want to give back to the place that has given me so much.”
You can learn more about the project and his vision for Northern Ireland’s future here:
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AvilaMedia is a social enterprise running community and research projects across Northern Ireland. If you’re interested in being interviewed for the #AtsUsNai project, you can get in contact with AvilaMedia here.
