The Belfast Agreement is working but all parties to it have a duty to assuage the fears of others, argues Mark Durkan
I believe the new relationship of equality and partnership between unionist and nationalist is beginning to work. Slowly but steadily we are moving to a new understanding of ourselves, of each other, our strengths and shortcomings. The realisation is dawning that our destinies are wrapped in each other; that dialogue is essential.
The Good Friday agreement represents a covenant of honour between nationalists and unionists. It ensures that come what may, no community will be excluded, no identity isolated. It provides the template not only for the present, but also for the future, moving towards an agreed Ireland.
If we assume the Good Friday agreement is bedding down we can ask what challenges it offers.
First, it is to register definitively that the relationship between unionism and nationalism has changed - rather than undermining each other and our cherished institutions, we are underwriting each other and our shared institutions.
Second, it is to build partnership within the North, and between North and South, and develop new British Irish relationships, offering mutual assurance and common purpose.
Third, it is to secure equality, not just by entrenching rights, but by reducing and removing those differences in experiences and expectations which amount to inequality.
Fourthly, it is to respect those differences of identity and affinity which mark the fault-line of our divisions - to challenge and eradicate sectarianism by not just tolerating difference but learning to appreciating it.
The nationalist mindset since Northern Ireland's creation had been of victimhood. It was in many ways well founded, having suffered discrimination, gerrymandering and institutional violence. Where previously it was our duty to expose such injustice, now it is our duty to not just denounce wrongs, but to deliver rights.
That is why, when others stood on the sidelines, the SDLP led the fight to prevent the British Government from diluting the Patten report on policing.
And it is why, when in response to our concerns, the two governments published proposals offering both the spirit and the substance of the Patten report, we decided to help bring about a new beginning to policing by joining the new Policing Board.
Sinn Féin is now trying to take credit for our success. They are trying to argue that the detailed commitments which the SDLP won to new policing legislation are in response to their current stance. Untrue, but no matter. Sinn Féin attacked these commitments as insignificant then, but now attach great significance to them.
Key decisions have recently been made and more key decisions will fall to the Policing Board, as envisaged by Patten. Decisions that will translate the principles of Patten into practice on the ground. But I recognise that there are still fears out there. Traditional fears, new fears, economic, community fears and cultural fears. I believe that it is our job to understand those fears and then work steadfastly to remove any reason for them.
We must accompany this comprehension of fear with a duty - an absolute duty to confront sectarianism wherever it emerges. Bigotry is all too present in the community, as is evident from the annual outbreaks of hatred.
Our third principle is unity through peace. The SDLP has always espoused unity by persuasion and unity with consent. Now that the terror and din of the IRA's murderous campaign has abated, some unionists can more fully appreciate that the nationalist case can be motivated by vision rather than vendetta, and that Irish unity is not about the entrapment of a new minority. Working the agreement to the full, including on policing, we can show that nationalists are not congenitally subversive.
Equally, with the growing experience of inclusion, partnership and north-south co-operation, more nationalists can appreciate that unionists may still resile from Irish unity for reasons that are more than congenital intransigence.
The outstanding strength of the Good Friday agreement is that it provides reciprocal guarantees for unionists in circumstances where Ireland is the sovereign government, as those that exist for nationalists while the British government retains sovereignty.
I see a genuine persuasion exercise of the merits of an integrated, agreed Ireland as an essential defining part for new nationalism. I do so with some hope.
We now know Irish unity will be legislated for once there is a majority in both parts of Ireland. We are honest to unionists about unity.
We are equally honest in our determination to uphold and develop the agreement, recognising that its legitimacy transcends unionism and nationalism, and that its principles, structures and guarantees must endure whatever constitutional status is democratically agreed for Northern Ireland in the future.
Mark Durkan is leader of the SDLP and deputy first minister of Northern Ireland. This article was extracted from a speech he delivered last night at the Oxford Union