One of the stars that aligned when Tony Blair felt the hand of history on his shoulder 25 years ago was the changing politics of the Irish lobby in the US. For years, American money had been funnelled to the IRA through an organisation called Noraid.
When I worked for the BBC in the early 1990s, I interviewed Irish Americans at a St Patrick’s Day fundraiser in New York who thought they were supporting freedom fighters against English colonial oppressors. They did not know that most people in Northern Ireland wanted to be part of the UK.
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/belfast-joe-biden-good-friday-agreement-b2316483.html