The North:The end of Irish history? That might be pushing it a bit - but 2007 will rank as a landmark year in the North, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Earlier this year, former Sinn Féin publicity chief Danny Morrison e-mailed some people he felt might have a sense of humour and, perhaps more pertinently, irony. It contained a photograph from 1982 when he and Gerry Adams were elected to one of the North's assemblies that carried the adjectives - as did so many other previous elected bodies - failed and short-lived. This was the geansaí and tweed jacket Sinn Féin period, long before Tiochfaidh Armani. It showed Morrison speaking with some animation to Adams, and Adams laughing. The caption had Morrison saying, "Gerry, I think we should ceasefire, dump arms, drop Articles 2 & 3, recognise Stormont, and support the cops". And Adams replying, "For God's sake, Dan. Try getting that past Martin McGuinness!"
It's easy to conjure a parallel image. Picture as recently as a year or two ago Peter Robinson strolling along the Lagan with Jeffrey Donaldson, and Robinson saying to Jeffrey: "Catch yourself on, Jeffrey. Ian Paisley drink tea with Archbishop Brady, shake hands with Mary McAleese, the DUP share power with the Shinners, and Ian and Martin McGuinness running the place! Sure, you couldn't sell that to the Doc."
Yes, we have come a very long way in a very short time, and Sinn Féin and the DUP have performed some amazing somersaults. But, and it's still hard to credit, this is the political promised land - à la Francis Fukuyama, should we be talking about the end of Irish history?
There's a peculiar symbiosis between politics and journalism in Northern Ireland. For years and years the politicians, with the British and Irish governments and Washington coaxing them along, have been chasing the goal of a political settlement, deal, arrangement, accord - call it what you will.
And for years the journalists have been chasing the politicians chasing the dream. It was a circular accommodation that seemed destined to keep both trades in work to the grave, because every time a deal was in sight - or even temporarily achieved - it collapsed or was derailed. To reheat an old line of a colleague: "Whenever politicians saw light at the end of a tunnel, they bought more tunnel." This time last year the politicians were stuck up at Stormont, wrestling with a familiar problem: the old who'll-jump-first test. Sinn Féin, in that protracted way it does things, was talking of calling an ard chomhairle to call a special ard fheis to possibly call on members to support the police. But only if the DUP would provide cast-iron assurances that it would subsequently share power.
AND ROUND AND round Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson danced to the tune of this political rondo. But somehow, as they moved in circles into the new year, this year they also moved forward. The previous October, the St Andrews Agreement provided the framework for a deal. Former Northern Secretary Peter Hain said to the politicians - chiefly to the DUP - if you can't work it out with Plan A (power-sharing), the British and Irish governments will work it out for you with Plan B (a stronger role for Dublin in the affairs of Northern Ireland, continuing direct rule, and 108 redundant politicians).
And then the unthinkable started unfolding. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and the entire Sinn Féin and IRA leadership travelled into the most republican of heartlands, to say it was time to endorse the PSNI. It was a message they carried overwhelmingly. You could sense a republican war-weariness, an acknowledgement it was time to settle down to real business.
Ian Paisley wouldn't say yes, he wouldn't say no. But we knew he was game for a deal because that was the message that was delivered behind the scenes, it was the message Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern were personally hearing, it was the message the DUP refuseniks in their gut also sensed and feared.
There was an Assembly election in March - in which the DUP and Sinn Féin respectively further lorded it over the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP - that was peculiar in that it was supposed to be an endorsement of a future power-sharing government. But through the campaign the DUP would not overtly concede that this was what the election was about. That was in order to keep the party as united as possible, even as some of those refuseniks saw the writing on the wall and acted against the Doc, even in his Ballymena fastness.
But Paisley, buoyed by the likes of Robinson, Donaldson and Ian jnr, and notwithstanding mutterings of mutiny from the likes of Nigel Dodds and Jim Allister, kept his nerve. Old dog for the hard road, he had read his constituency better than the not-an-inch unionists: there was a war-weariness out there too in the unionist heartlands; it was time for a deal, they felt, even with the Shinners. And Paisley knew that.
Peter Hain had set March 26th as the absolute deadline for a deal, but, as everyone knows, Northern politicians don't do deadlines. But, for the experienced political and official negotiators, that was a problem that could be finessed. If we couldn't have a deal by March 26th we could have a picture.
And so much has been written about Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting adjacent to each other on each side of the apex of that diamond shaped-table at Stormont that there really is no need to go over all that again. It is no exaggeration to say it was a huge moment in modern British-Irish history. It led on to May 8th, when the deal was more formally sealed with the formation of the power-sharing Northern Executive led by First Minister the Rev Ian Paisley, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. How many of us thought we'd ever write such a line?
PAISLEY AND MCGUINNESS and the Northern Executive face problems. Sinn Féin wants justice and policing devolved to the Executive by May. The DUP doesn't. Still, an Assembly committee chaired by Jeffrey Donaldson is carrying out practical work on this project behind the scenes. It might not be achievable by May, and there will be rows, but a compromise could be possible.
The murder of Paul Quinn from south Armagh still looms over the political project. Ultimately the murder may not terminally shake the DUP-Sinn Féin axis, but how it will all unfold remains unpredictable, and right now Sinn Féin isn't handling the issue well.
There will be stresses too in the Northern Executive in the coming year. At the moment, effectively, there are two executives - the four-party Executive and the more dominant DUP-Sinn Féin controlled Executive. DUP/Sinn Féin versus UUP/SDLP squabbles are sure to run throughout 2008. Not much Cabinet collectivity here.
The past is still a major issue. Sectarianism hasn't gone away, and neither have the UDA, UVF, and the dissident republican groups.
Yet, real - sometimes tedious, sometimes pedestrian - politics is being practised. And such is the commitment of the DUP and Sinn Féin to make this work that it will take some very nasty tremors to uproot this political sapling that took so long to grow.
First Minister Paisley and Deputy First Minister McGuinness are regularly ribbed about their so-called Chuckle Brothers routine, most recently seen at the White House with President George Bush. But the importance of that cheerful relationship should not be underestimated. Often it may be more style than substance, but the positive symbolism helps - against decades of horror and distrust it speaks of a humanity that can heal.
Most people - regardless of the unanswered question, what was it all about? - are glad to be at this place. This was a momentous year. You think of Irish history, of 1798, and Robert Emmet five years later, Daniel O'Connell, the Young Irelanders, and the Fenians, Parnell, Carson, and 1916, the War of Independence and the Civil War, and the Troubles, and you think - while trying to avoid overstatement - that 2007 ranks right up there with them. This was a year - nine years after Good Friday and 38 years from the beginning of the Troubles - when a form of Irish historic finality was achieved. The end of Irish history? Of course not, but politicians and the people they represent are in an unfamiliar, uncharted, better world: they are players in a new history that carries real hope and opportunity, and we're chasing different stories.