THE wilder shores of republicanism were in evidence this week with the IRA killings in Lurgan. We should not be too surprised. During the late lamented IRA ceasefire there were many killings of suspected drug dealers carried out by the IRA, using the flag of convenience of an organisation that styled itself Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD).

Everyone conveniently looked away during the DAAD killings, but lit is striking to note that until recently fewer people had been killed after the collapse of the IRA ceasefire than were during it. The point is that, even with its legendary discipline, the IRA leadership sanctioned killings during the ceasefire in order to keep their own dogs of war within the fold.

DAAD's existence should have taught us is that there is an irreconcilable element in the IRA, that has an utterly jaundiced view of any political negotiations. It is too uncomfortable for such people to contemplate the reality of a messy and uncertain political future, rather than the pristine dream of the day the British longboats finally leave Erin's shores and the Tricolour is run up the mast.

The notion of a clean, political separation from Britain with no attendant problems is still alive within the movement, despite the political realities.

But then, facing political reality has never been an IRA strong suit. Yet the evidence of its own failed history is, there for it to, view. In every military campaign since Independence the IRA has ended up on the losing side. It lost the civil war, Eamon de Valera defeated it with coercion and co option when he came to power, its 1950s Border campaign collapsed, and even by its own admission it is certainly not in a winning position after almost 30 years of guerrilla war in this campaign.

Its irredentism has cost it dear. It was Sinn Fein, not Fianna Fail, that was the natural party, first of opposition and then government in the South after the Civil War after all, was it not the IRA that had fought the War of Independence? But the more pragmatic de Valera outmanoeuvred it as the irredentists clung to their purist vision and never allowed its political wing to develop.

This failure bedevils the republican movement today. Unlike, say, the ANC in South Africa, where the military movement was clearly an instrument of the political wing that assumed responsibility as soon as negotiations began, the IRA/Sinn Fein relationship has remained until recently like the pantomime horse - the military side leading and the political end following blindly.

Even today, Sinn Fein is considered the junior partner and the "Johnny come lately" by many republican supporters, who believe that were it not for the IRA defending nationalist areas at the outbreak of the Troubles, hundreds more nationalists would have been killed.

These supporters believe it was the IRA that gave them a sense of dignity and a pride that they would no longer be forced to accept second class status, and which forced the British to treat them with respect.

Despite the numerous IRA atrocities since, they still believe the IRA took them off their knees. The notion of being treated with dignity is still central to the IRA ethos so the Major government's backtracking on a date for talks and the imposition of a "decontamination and decommissioning" precondition before entering talks fuelled the suspicions of those militants within the movement that they were being treated in a second class fashion again.

But dignity and wounded pride aside, it is abundantly clear now that once again there is no prospect whatever of military victory, and that the prisons and graveyards are full of young men, and women who have given their lives and freedom in the name of an unwinnable war.

This dawning reality of another military failure was a major factor in galvanising Gerry Adams and others to seek to reinvent the republican movement in the wake of the 1981 hunger strikes and the unprecedented political victories that followed. But backing the movement away from the blind alley it was careering into and towards a political rather than a military strategy carries enormous risks, given that an unknown number of members of the movement (said to be about 15 per cent now) apparently refuse to contemplate a world without an active IRA.

The internal tension in the movement between the political pragmatists and the militarists has never been really resolved, as the DAAD episodes reveal. The British clearly played to that during the 17 months of the ceasefire, using obvious delay ing tactics, most likely in the hopes of provoking a split.

In those circumstances it was a remarkable achievement to hold the cessation for 17 months as Adams and his leadership group did. Indeed, one of the great untold stories of that ceasefire is just how tough it was to do so.

Given this internal standoff, can - the issue really be resolved, or are we condemned to a continuing and off with no resolution within the republican movement? That is unlikely. The vast majority of the movement will either go one way of the other, given the discipline shown so far in avoiding a split.

ADAMS risked a split once before in 1985, when the party voted to take seats in the Dail, and the tiny rump that became Republican Sinn Fein departed. It is possible that any group departing after another agreed decision could be similar in size, but either way the republican movement will have to face up to its own internal contradictions sooner rather than later, perhaps within a matter of weeks.

The size of its recent electoral mandate accelerates that decision. The greatest mistake it could make would be to assume that the "twin track of bomb and ballot can continue much longer. Nothing would infuriate American and nationalist opinion more than the notion that the IRA is somehow deluding itself that it can continue to have it both ways.

The good news is that the political forces have clearly been gaining ground. Recent election victories have enormously strengthened the hands of Adams, Martin McGuinness and others, as has the pragmatic approach of the new Labour government to the problem and the likely election of Bertie Ahern in Dublin.

The bad news is that unless a solution to decommissioning and Drumcree is found, events could spiral out of everyone's control again.

Despite the coming roadblocks and the recent horrific murders, the betting should still be on a new ceasefire. The current Sinn Fein leadership is, above all, possessed of a relentless strategic vision, which allows it to plan through crisis and to keep a firm goal in mind. It will have been picking up the pieces and moving on in the hours after the Lurgan killings, as it will post Drumcree, in a few weeks.

"Eyes on the Prize" of inclusive talks could be its motto. Its greatest strength may be that no one within or outside its organisation can match its relentless pursuit of its goal of making the republican movement relevant politically. The senseless killings in Lurgan will only have made that need even more apparent to it. The choice of yet another military failure or the beginning of a political success for its movement is stark.