clinton visit derry ireland

On This Day: Bill Clinton’s historic visit to Northern Ireland

Defying history and long odds, the president of the united states brought peace..

On November 30, 1995, US President Bill Clinton made a historic visit to Northern Ireland. Below, Niall O'Dowd recounts the impact of the day.

23 years ago this week Bill Clinton broke an ironclad rule of American diplomacy with a move that led to peace in Northern Ireland .

That rule that stood well over 200 years was that America never interfered in the internal affairs of Great Britain and Ireland was specifically the target of that rule.

For Irish Americans over the centuries no matter their power, that rule had stood. Despite contributing blood and sacrifice in the US Civil War, despite the strength of the Irish vote in the early part of the last century, despite the new Irish Republic in 1921, no president ever gave them a hearing.

Until Bill Clinton.

Here now on a bright Autumn day President Clinton and wife Hillary were descending down the steps from Air Force One at Belfast International Airport.

Ireland would never be the same again.

I vividly remember that moment, one of the highlights of my life. Irish America had finally found its voice and there was nothing surer in my mind but that peace would follow.

Later that day I stood among the 200,000 people crammed into the center of Belfast waiting for President Bill Clinton to appear for the city’s Christmas tree lighting.

While we waited Van Morrison warmed us up on a cold and frosty afternoon with the song “There Will Be Days Like This.”

With perfect hindsight, I can say Van was wrong. There will never be another day like that one.

On the chairs beside me sat Martin McGuinness , Gerry Adams , and Joe Cahill , the leadership of the Irish Republican movement. Not far from me sat David Ervine, Gary McMichael and Gusty Spence, heads of the Loyalist movement.

Adams and the Loyalists had met the American president, an unheard of occurrence. It was clear Clinton was all in.

Once the organizations they headed had been trying to kill each other. Now they were seated feet from each other, making moves for peace thanks in large part to the work of the Irish American president.

Up until that day the notion of an American president in Belfast was fanciful in the extreme, yet here Clinton was. I’ll always remember Martin McGuinness especially, and the disbelief and joy in his eyes, that this day had finally dawned.

If there is ever a day that will stand out in history, this was it. Indeed, it was the greatest day of my journalism career.

I was reminded of the day recently by an excellent article by James Carroll in the Boston Globe remembering the occasion and what the message of the first American president ever to visit Northern Ireland meant to the multitudes.

Interestingly, as Carroll noted, Clinton reached back to the American Civil War.

“I grew up in the American South,” Clinton said. “My forebears were soldiers in the Confederate Army...They lived the experience so many of you have lived.”

And then Clinton recalled the first post-Civil War Arkansas governor, who had fought for the Union.

“We have all done wrong,” Clinton said, quoting a speech the earlier Arkansas governor gave to his constituents, who had been split between the two sides.

“No one can say his heart is altogether clean, his hands altogether pure. Thus, as we wish to be forgiven, let us forgive those who have sinned against us and ours.” Then Clinton drew the lesson: “That was the beginning of American reconciliation, and it must be the beginning of Northern Ireland’s reconciliation.”

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times later wrote that she never saw Clinton happier than that day when he stepped out onto the stage before Belfast City Hall and thousands chanted his name. (Though in the Belfast accent, hilariously, it sounded more like “bull bull” than “Bill, Bill.”)

“In Ireland Mr. Clinton discovered the joys of being a foreign policy president,” Dowd wrote.

And Ireland discovered the incredible potential when American soft power – no troops, no drones, no bombs – was unleashed.

It all seems long ago and far away now, but life for many Irish reached a zenith that December day in Belfast in 1995 . America had, at last, stepped into the Irish/British conflict, and peace for the first time had a chance.

When we look at ethnic conflicts all over the world today and the inability to stop them the Clinton intervention in Ireland stands as a beacon of hope.

In the recent release of his oral histories the late Senator Ted Kennedy, a champion of the peace process, gives massive recognition to the role of Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, who galvanized community groups and women's groups on both sides.

I’m just glad to have had the chance to witness history in the making. Bill and Hillary cut a triumphant swathe from Belfast to Derry back to Belfast and then on to Dublin where he received a rapturous reception. By the end, a deep and irrevocable bond had been forged.

It had all started for Irish Americans and Clinton in January 1992 when, on a cold and damp Monday evening, about two dozen Irish Americans met in the Fitzpatrick Manhattan hotel to create a new organization, Irish Americans for Clinton. The speakers that night were former Congressman Bruce Morrison, myself, and  Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform President Ciaran Staunton.

Hotelier John FitzPatrick kindly gave the room gratis. The new organization had no money raised.

The Clinton in question, who many barely knew was a governor of Arkansas, was then considered a long shot for the presidency and even the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

The gathering heard there was to be an ethnic fundraiser for Clinton a month later at the Sheraton Hotel. They hardly seemed impressed.

At the fundraiser itself, the new group scraped together just one table partly made up of visiting Irish students.

Everyone we called was too busy or gave Clinton no chance. It was very tough going. Nowadays a few hundred I’ve met claimed they were there.

The fledgling candidate at that banquet stopped by the table and seemed delighted he had an Irish following.

The dream since Famine times had been to engage an American president on the side of Ireland, not the British. But the Atlantic alliance and special relationship between the US and Britain had proven far too durable a kinship to crack.

Maverick politicians who evinced sympathy for Irish nationalists, such as Congressman Peter King , were untouchable. In a bizarre moment, King, then an elected official, was told by the secret service that he could not meet President Reagan during a visit to Long Island in the early 1980s.

It seemed an even longer shot that the isolation could be breached in 1992. After the first Iraq/Gulf war (the successful one) George Bush Senior looked unbeatable. His ratings were sky-high. His interest in Irish issues was zilch.

During the Bush administration, a group of Irish Americans met with a State Department official overseeing Ireland. The diplomat looked like he had barely started shaving.

He told them his Irish post was merely a function of the country being alphabetically closest to Iceland, a NATO ally and his real interest. As for Ireland, he pulled a batch of Daily Telegraph clippings from his drawer. The notoriously anti-Irish newspaper was his main source of information. The anger in the room was palpable, expressed best by Dr. Bob Lennon of the Irish American Unity Conference, who called the diplomat’s attitude “a complete disgrace.”

Outside on the sidewalk, the sense of despair was evident and the need to find an alternative plan starkly clear.

Leaders in the Irish lobby knew Bush was very unlikely to press for action on Northern Ireland. They were looking for a different kind of candidate and homed in on Clinton among the Democrats.

The Irish soon discovered there was something different about Clinton. Unlike 90 percent of American politicians , he needed no staffers to hand-hold him during discussions.

His time at Oxford University during the birth of the Northern Irish Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s had placed Ireland on his radar forever. Though he was from a state without an active Irish American base, he had followed the history of The Troubles ever since attending Oxford.

He was ready when the Irish came calling.

Clinton spoke at an Irish candidate’s forum night in April 1992 and, most importantly, promised a visa to the U.S. for Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, then an international pariah.

Most observers shrugged at the time. Campaigning was different to governing, such a promise would never be fulfilled, they thought. A visa for Gerry Adams was a pipedream.

Later that year, in September, Irish American legend Mayo-born Paul O’Dwyer and I met Clinton at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan and came out of the meetings glowing.

O'Dwyer, former New York City Council president, had been meeting with American politicians about Ireland since the 1930s. He’d never met one like this. “He will turn the Irish issue upside down,” he predicted. He never spoke a truer word.

Once in power, Clinton overturned 200 years of British oversight on American policy towards Ireland.

Urged on by a group of Irish American leaders who were intermediaries with Sinn Fein, Clinton jumped on board the Irish bandwagon. The State Department spluttered. Tom Foley, the Anglophile Speaker of the House, objected strongly.

But Clinton, the consummate politician saw something. In January 1994, after a titanic struggle between pro-British and pro-Irish forces, the decision on whether to give Gerry Adams a visa landed on Clinton’s desk.

On the night he had to make the decision he was sandwiched at a dinner between Speaker Foley and Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Both men pounded him on reasons why Adams should not be given a visa.

Clinton, however, was not for turning. Despite the advice of the FBI, CIA, State Department and the British, on January 31, 1994, he gave a visa to Gerry Adams. In the end, the key counterweight was Senator Edward Kennedy , who had decided the Sinn Fein peace outreach was for real.

Clinton’s campaign promise had been fulfilled, and all hell broke loose.

John Major refused to take his calls and the British media lambasted him for it, calling it the greatest insult ever offered a British government. In America, of the major newspapers, only The New York Times approved.

Adams arrived amid a welter of excitement. He spoke at the Waldorf Astoria at an event hosted by Irish American business leader William Flynn and he went on Larry King Live, forcing British authorities to ban the show in Britain.

The Adams move was one of three key triggers that brought about the historic August 1994 IRA ceasefire . The American president’s unorthodox, outside the box maneuver had played a massive role in bringing an end to the violence in Northern Ireland.

He had also proven that the soft power of an American president, when used so brilliantly, could solve a problem so difficult some people even admired its enigmatic nature and pronounced it unsolvable.

Happily, Bill Clinton was not one of those.

To activist Irish organizations, Bill Clinton was a hero and his wife Hillary was not far behind. On their first visit to Ireland, in December 1995, they were feted and celebrated in Belfast, Derry, and Dublin like no one since JFK . Even the British admitted their mistake in opposing the visa.

Hillary too became a committed Irish peace activist. She hosted teas for women from deprived nationalist and loyalist areas. Her Vital Voices conferences gave voice to the North's female leaders, who had never been heard before. She was soon on first name terms with Irish leaders of every stripe.

Down the long years, Hillary gathered a tight group of Irish American supporters around her. One of her last visits as Secretary of State was to Belfast, where she practically pleaded to stay involved post-State.

Ireland and the successes there have meant much to the Clintons, almost as much as they have meant to the American Irish activists, who see in Bill the first American president to step up for their cause. Hilary also has a large share of the reflected glory, which she will no doubt draw on in the 2016 campaign

A small meeting in 1992 at Fitzpatrick’s Hotel culminated in the greening of a US president in a way no one had ever thought possible. We can thank our lucky stars he came along when he did.

*Originally published in 2015

Related: US Politics , Irish Politics , Democrats , Republicans , Belfast City , Dublin , Irish American , Northern Ireland

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Bill Clinton's Visit to Northern Ireland

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The learning network | nov. 30, 1995 | president clinton visits northern ireland to support peace process.

Nov. 30, 1995 | President Clinton Visits Northern Ireland to Support Peace Process

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Learn about key events in history and their connections to today.

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On Nov. 30, 1995, President Bill Clinton became the first United States chief executive to visit Northern Ireland, touring the cities of Belfast and Derry to show support for the peace process. The New York Times reported, “The president has been more deeply involved than any of his predecessors in the intractable problems of this island, an involvement that caused him to cast aside the fears of other presidents that a trip here might fray relations with the British.”

For decades, during a period known as the Troubles, Northern Ireland had been the scene of sectarian violence between the primarily Protestant unionists, who supported the continued union with Great Britain, and the primarily Roman Catholic nationalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to be united with the Republic of Ireland , which gained its independence from Britain in 1921. Nearly 3,400 civilians, paramilitaries and security forces had been killed from 1969 to 1994, when the nationalist Irish Republican Army and various unionist paramilitary groups agreed to a ceasefire.

President Clinton found that conditions in the country had improved. The Times described Belfast as having been “defaced until recently by miles of barbed wire and hundreds of concrete-filled barrels that formed an awful monument to sectarian savagery,” but now “British Army patrols have all but disappeared and the checkpoints that blocked roads leading from the airport and the Catholic south have been dismantled.”

Two and a half years after the president’s visit, leaders from Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland signed the Good Friday Agreement, which ended direct British rule and called for any change in Northern Ireland’s political status to be determined by a majority of the country’s citizens. In 2007, nationalist and unionist politicians reached a power-sharing agreement for the first time in five years . The Good Friday Agreement is considered the official end of the Troubles, though the actions of extremist paramilitary groups continue to bring sporadic violence.

Connect to Today:

In a 2010 Op-Ed piece that appeared in The Times, Ali Abunimah stated that the United States should apply lessons learned from the Northern Irish peace process to negotiations taking place in the Middle East. Specifically, he argued that Hamas, a political group that rules the Gaza Strip, must be allowed to take part in the peace negotiations, despite the United States, Israel and Europe regarding it as a terrorist organization. Mr. Abunimah compared the situation with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army being allowed to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Abunimah also cited a letter by British and Irish negotiators. It argues: “Engaging Hamas does not amount to condoning terrorism or attacks on civilians. In fact, it is a precondition for security and for brokering a workable agreement.”

What do you think about negotiating with political groups like Hamas that many consider terrorist organizations? Is it necessary to include all sides in negotiations in order to achieve a lasting peace? Why or why not?

Learn more about what happened in history on Nov. 30»

Learn more about Historic Headlines and our collaboration with findingDulcinea »

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this post left out the phrase “in five years,” and the corresponding link, from the sentence “In 2007, nationalist and unionist politicians reached a power-sharing agreement for the first time in five years .”

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In ‘Derry Girls,’ the Lighter Side of Life in a Conflict Zone

The sitcom set in Northern Ireland takes place in a maelstrom of sectarian violence and adolescent angst. It’s funny, too.

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By Alice Jones

LONDON — When Lisa McGee was 13, she wrote a letter to Chelsea Clinton. It was November 1995, and President Bill Clinton was scheduled to visit the city of Derry in a show of support for Northern Ireland’s peace process. It would be the first time a sitting president of the United States had come to the troubled region.

In an interview, McGee, the creator of “Derry Girls,” recalled that she saw an opportunity to make a new friend. So she wrote to the president’s daughter to invite her to see a film at the city’s Strand movie theater.

“She never replied,” said McGee, now 38. “The innocence of that. Living in this place that’s violent and scary, but we were these eejits running about writing letters to Chelsea Clinton.”

That missed connection makes it into the final episode of the second season of “Derry Girls,” the hit sitcom that streams on Netflix from Aug. 2. But, in a tweak to history, the show’s Catholic schoolgirl heroines — Erin, Orla, Clare and Michelle — invite Chelsea Clinton to sample the wave machine at the local pool instead. (“I hope she remembers her swimming cap,” Orla worries. “They’ve got dead strict ...”)

In the “Derry Girls” universe, the mundane and the profound sit side by side. Cease-fires, bombings and kidnapping are given equal narrative weight to teen crushes, field trips and visits to the chip shop , which is to say that they are barely given weight at all.

In the first episode of the first season, a character is distraught at news of a bomb on a bridge, because it means she can’t get to the tanning salon. In a subsequent scene, when the girls’ school bus is stopped by British soldiers, one of them stares down the barrel of their machine guns — and flirts . In the second series, a scuffle at school prom is intercut with euphoric street scenes following the 1994 cease-fire by the Irish Republican Army.

McGee based the show on her own experience of growing up in Derry. The city, which is also called Londonderry by unionists who want the region to remain part of the United Kingdom , was a unique maelstrom of sectarian violence and adolescent angst in the 1990s.

She remembered key events in “the Troubles,” as the conflict was called, “like they were yesterday,” she said: the 1994 cease-fire, Mr. Clinton’s visit and the 1998 Omagh bombing. “But a lot of it for me was just having to go a different way to school because of a bomb scare,” she said.

“Derry Girls” debuted on Channel 4 in Britain in January 2018 and was an instant hit: It became the most watched television show in Northern Ireland since records began in 2002, with a 64 percent audience share. On Netflix, it attracted a global audience, including from India, Pakistan, Mexico and the United States .

In April 2018, Gleann Doherty, a tour operator in Derry, added a “Derry Girls” guided walk to his repertoire. A 90-minute tour around the show’s locations, it was particularly popular with fans from the United States, Canada and New Zealand, he said in a telephone interview, adding that many international viewers said they watched the show with subtitles to decode the accent and slang.

“It’s now my second most popular tour, after the Bogside tour,” Doherty said. “Now for every ticket I sell for the City Walls tour, I sell five for ‘Derry Girls.’”

The show has been commissioned by Channel 4 for a third series, which McGee is writing now. In time, she said, she would like to take the story up to the Good Friday Agreement that ended the conflict in 1998.

What makes “Derry Girls” unique is the light touch it uses to deal with the heavy hand of history. “We couldn’t present that dreary Northern Ireland again, where it’s always men in leather jackets, everything’s gray and nobody has a sense of humor,” McGee said.

Seamas O’Reilly, a writer whose memoir about growing up in Derry in the 1990s, “Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?,” will be published in March 2020, called the show “the first bit of good publicity that Derry has had in 20 years.”

“It shows it as a very boring, normal, mundane place — with teenagers, discos and funny neighbors,” he said. “It’s not like Sarajevo with everyone sleeping on sandbags. It captures very well that Derry is a chirpy, well-meaning place but it also has a legacy of so much trauma.”

The second series ends with archive footage of Mr. Clinton’s 1995 speech in Derry: “You have so much more to gain by working together than by drifting apart. Have the patience to work for a just and lasting peace.”

It was a deliberate choice, McGee said, in the light of the current turmoil in Northern Ireland over Britain’s impending departure from the European Union, known as Brexit.

Derry is on the border with the Republic of Ireland, which is a member of the bloc; and in the 2016 referendum, 78 percent of voters in Foyle, the parliamentary district that contains Derry, favored remaining in the European Union. Many fear that the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic will inflame sectarian tensions and threaten stability.

“There’s always a belief in your head, when you’re from there, that it could turn, because you’ve seen it turn before,” McGee said. “It’s made me double down on how important peace is.”

The killing of Lyra McKee , a journalist, by a dissident republican group called the New I.R.A. during riots in the Creggan housing estate in April was a grim marker of the city’s current problems and the dangerous disaffection they can breed. Foyle has an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent , more than twice the average in Northern Ireland. In 2017, Derry was listed last of 57 United Kingdom cities surveyed by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in its “ Good Growth for Cities ” report.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the people of Derry this angry,” McGee said of the aftermath of the murder. “There was a very clear message being sent: that we weren’t going back.”

The famous mural in the city that reads “You are now entering Free Derry” and features in the opening scenes of “Derry Girls” was graffitied with the word s “Not in our name. RIP Lyra” in the days after the shooting.

“To paint over a dissident republican slogan is a very, very brave thing to do,” McGee said. “And it’s ordinary people doing it. That has never happened before. ”

The city has a new mural now, too. In January, a 30-foot-high painting of the sitcom’s lead characters was painted on the side of Badgers Bar on Orchard Street. It’s where Doherty ends his “Derry Girls” tour, and it has become a magnet for tourists and a symbol of pride for city dwellers.

“I’m just determined to tell positive stories about where I come from,” McGee said. “What happened in Creggan that night — nobody wanted it, the people who did it represent nobody. I feel it’s my responsibility to show Derry for what it really is.”

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Bill Clinton's first visit to Northern Ireland in 1995

It's been over 25 years since former US President Bill Clinton's visit to Belfast

• 15:07, 13 NOV 2021

We're taking a look back at some of the famous faces that have paid Northern Ireland a visit down through the years - including Bill Clinton.

So did you know that Clinton was the first US President to visit Northern Ireland?

Clinton and his family came on a three-day visit to Britain and Northern Ireland which began November 29, 1995. The former US President arrived in Northern Ireland on November 30.

Read more: Belfast gig venues that are no longer with us

Bill Clinton managed to squeeze in a lot of appearances during his visit - from talks with Belfast entrepreneurs and managers at the East Belfast Enterprise Park, to delivering his speech at the Mackie Metal Plant - listened to by local schoolchildren David Sterrett and Catherine Hamill who gave their own moving speeches about peace.

Clinton also made time to visit residents of the Falls and Shankill Road, showing his genuine interest in the local people and the peace process.

Have a look at the selection of photos from Bill Clinton's visit to Northern Ireland back in 1995.

If you have any interesting photos or stories about famous people visiting Northern Ireland, we would love to hear from you - d rop us an email at [email protected]

Mackie Metal Plant

Bill Clinton giving his speech at the Mackie Meat Plant in Belfast with David Sterrett and Catherine Hamill pictured on either side

David Sterrett and Catherine Hamill making their speeches

Bill Clinton giving Catherine Hamill a hug after her speech

Former US President Bill Clinton waving to the audience

The Presidential Car

The Presidential Car driving Bill Clinton on Falls Road

Greeting the crowd

Bill Clinton shaking hands with residents of Falls Road

Bill Clinton meeting with Shankill Road residents during a stroll through Belfast

• Belfast City Centre

Bill Clinton making a speech

• Shankill Road
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The Siege Museum in Derry~Londonderry

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Over 300 years ago, the Walled City saw an intense military confrontation that lasted 105 days but has echoed down through the ages...

The Siege Museum in Derry~Londonderry charts the history of the siege of 1689, when some 30,000 local Protestants held the city in the face of Catholic King James II’s Jacobite forces. The exhibition houses a treasure trove of artefacts both past and present – from weapons and military outfits to commemorative trinkets – that tell the story of this epic standoff between rival factions. Guided tours of the museum and the city walls are also available, during which you’ll hear dramatic tales of key battles and flashpoints during the conflict.

The museum also contains separate meeting rooms for the Loyal Orders, including the Apprentice Boys of Derry, one of several clubs which were founded in the 1800s to commemorate the Siege Heroes. Rooms relating to the Orange Order, Women’s Orange and The Royal Black Institution shed light on these age-old organisations which still play an important part in shaping the identity of many people from Northern Ireland today.

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The Siege Museum, Derry~Londonderry

Need to know

The Siege Museum is open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm. Last entry is 4pm.

More information on booking a guided tour of the Siege Museum and the City Walls is available here .

Parking is available nearby. The museum is fully wheelchair accessible and assistance dogs are welcome.

Things to see and do nearby

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Bishop's Gate Hotel

Londonderry

Browns Bonds Hill

Derry~Londonderry

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Guildhall Taphouse

The Sooty Olive Restaurant and Winebar

Peace Bridge

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54.9923883297495 -7.30934143066406

River Foyle Stand Up paddle boarding

The Craft Village

The Guildhall

Tower Museum

Museum of Free Derry

The exquisite Grade B1 listed Bishop’s Gate Hotel is perfectly positioned within the historic city walls in the heart of Derry City’s Cathedral Quarter. An iconic landmark with a unique history, the hotel is an intimate urban oasis featuring 31 luxurious guestrooms.

Browns has gained a reputation for excellent food, genuine hospitality and unpretentious service.

City Sightseeing are a global brand with endless years’ experience in the tourism industry.

Offering a fresh, alternative take on a traditional bar. Food served daily 12:00 - 18:00.

Restaurant serving great food at great prices in the heart of Derry's Waterside area

The Peace Bridge has become an integral part of the city’s infrastructure and is held in high regard by locals and visitors alike for its stunning physical beauty and in equal measures for the symbolic story it represents.

Multi award winning restaurant and craft brewery at the end of the Peace Bridge.

Your adventure experience will begin on the banks of the River Foyle, where your local guide and experienced instructor will teach you the basics of paddling.

Welcome to the distinctive delights of the hidden jewel in Derry~Londonderry’s crown, the classic Craft Village. Dickensian in appearance and delightful in layout, Derry~Londonderry’s Craft Village is a cultural oasis in the heart of a vibrant city.

Fashioned in neo-gothic style, the Guildhall is one of the most striking buildings in the North West and was originally built in 1887. The building now boasts a multifaceted tourism experience providing a central hub for visitors exploring the city

The Tower Museum houses two permanent exhibitions: The Story of Derry and An Armada Shipwreck - La Trinidad Valencera, as well as other temporary exhibitions. The Derry Girls Experience will arrive at the Tower Museum on Tuesday 4th July!

The museum is a public space where the concept of Free Derry can be explored in both historic and contemporary contexts.