BY GENERAL consent and account, Northern Ireland - its people, politicians and pundits alike - stand on the brink of darkest despair. On this day just two years ago, the story seemed so very different.

Improbable as it appeared to some observers, the air was filled with talk of new beginnings, of negotiations and compromises to come of Northern Ireland, even, as a place called Hope!

After a summer of political and social devastation the relief will be if this weekend ends with the last of the North's marches safely over, and the IRA deciding not to mark the second anniversary of its ceasefire with another bomb in London.

The British government is preparing once more to "talk up" the talks process, due to resume on September 9th. But few think that process is going anywhere. The sense is of a British government - in its dying days; the expectation of a political vacuum lasting to the other side of elections in Britain and Ireland. The great unknown is how the paramilitaries, on both sides, will choose to fill it.

So what, from the British perspective, was the peace process, and why did it fail? One senior politician, close to the Whitehall action, privately says the whole thing "was a double cross". And he applies the term equally in describing the IRA cessation and the British government's reaction to it.

This source confirms the view of Sinn Fein and others, that London was not prepared for the ceasefire announcement, and that Mr Major was thrown by it. In essence, he thinks the British prime minister embraced the concept of a `peace process' because everybody else, Albert Reynolds, John Hume and Gerry Adams, had one. And he believes the immediate and subsequent calculations were about re establishing and maintaining British "control" of the agenda.

London's overriding concern, he ventures, was to secure Dublin's agreement for a Joint Declaration capable of commanding unionist acquiescence and, crucially, of "locking the Americans in". Once that was accomplished in December 1993, this source believes, the peace process was doomed to perish on the rock of the "consent" principle.

This view chimes with that held at the time by senior Ulster Unionists, although it proved unable to sustain Mr (now Sir) James Molyneaux's leadership. It finds a ready echo, too, in the opinion of one Irish source who says the British saw the ceasefire as "a challenge to their authority and control".

Labour's Mo Mowlam dismisses the conspiracy theory. "To suggest it was about British control is a very nationalist perspective," she says. Once it was going, she accepts, British ministers "like everybody else, tried to move it in the direction they were most comfortable with". But that, says Dr Mowlam, is the nature of negotiation.

The shadow Northern Ireland Secretary thinks the British response was altogether less conspiratorial and "much more random". Sir Patrick Mayhew, she suspects, was "going by his nose and the seat of his pants".

Dr Mowlam identifies the causes of breakdown: "The differences between the parties in their approaches . . . to structures, timing and content . . . were so great, in the end there wasn't enough movement, trust or confidence for them to believe it was viable."

Meanwhile, members of the present administration repudiate the republican analysis of the reasons for the failure of the peace. And senior British sources reject the starting point for this article, insisting that, in a sense, the IRA ceasefire "distorted" perceptions of the all important "political process" in the North.

In essence, the argument is that the consequent analogies with South Africa and the Middle East ignored the fact that the majority in the North already had a political and democratic process.

As one senior British source put it: "The political process was there. It could be, can be, strengthened by peace. But it doesn't depend on it . . . If it were not thus, then violent minorities could hold any political process to ransom.

And he was emphatic: "The ceasefire didn't create a new process, and that was seen by both governments . . . It didn't change the fundamentals in terms of the need for agreement on the three sets of relationships."

But surely they didn't think the IRA had abandoned the armed struggle to join some variation of the Brooke/Mayhew talks? Was that really the only prize on offer, a seat at the table on par with the Alliance Party?

Many people believed violence had dictated the political agenda in Northern Ireland. And republicans, undefeated if hardly victorious after 25 years, clearly reckoned their decision to end hostilities translated into a position of political strength rather than weakness.

The British view, to the contrary, is that it was "fear of being excluded and the lack of concessions" which helped propel the Provisionals toward a ceasefire. The senior source recalls that the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, on the day of the Downing Street Declaration said they were talking about "the handing up of weapons".

And he continues: "What was clear was that we were talking about an abandonment of the path of violence. They now say they never understood it that way. Well, everybody else did."

But, during that long, so oft denied period of secret contact with the IRA, hadn't there been nods and winks, hints that all things might be possible given an end to war?

"Yes, all things were possible," comes the reply. "Subject to consent, and we still say that. No outcome is excluded. But they could never have believed any outcome wouldn't be subject to consent. If they did, they were deluding themselves."

The possibility that the republicans deluded themselves, or were misled by others, has had currency as long as the peace process itself. Johnathan Caine, former special adviser to Sir Patrick Mayhew, is one of those who wonders if John Hume and Albert Reynolds sold the republicans "a false prospectus", suggesting that "faced with peace, the British would give more than in reality they could".

Rejecting the charge that Mr Major was restrained by his dependence on unionist votes, Mr Caine maintains Sir Patrick was always determined the process "was too important to fall prey to party politics". And he says the Secretary of State came to believe "that Gerry Adams was for real".

THE British government never trusted the ceasefire: that appears to be the long and the short of it. Hence the "working assumption", the distinction between "exploratory talks" and substantive negotiations, the protracted debate over decommissioning, and the security dispositions which always had to be instantly reversible.

Yet not all is reversible. And the veteran left winger Tony Benn, for one, believes the process can't just be "turned back".

Noting the American involvement, Mr Benn cheerfully says: "The British are only one third responsible for the government of Northern Ireland." A great exaggeration, doubtless. But many on the left believe European and American pressure could prove significant should a Blair government inherit the `Irish' question.

Unionists may find it convenient to dismiss Mr Benn. But his determined optimism may rankle nonetheless. And some at least will recognise the central truth in his contention that much has changed in the past 18 months. Mr Major may have been unable to deliver the Framework Documents, but he never withdrew them either. Like the IRA, they never really went away.