Northern Editor Gerry Moriartytraces how the North's bitter rivals put the past behind them
Picture this, and hear the voices because you know them, one Oxbridge, one northside Dublin, and excuse the use of a famous Saxon word - it's required for the telling.
It's Thursday, October 12th, the penultimate day of the St Andrews talks, and Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair and his chief of staff Jonathan Powell are chatting over dinner. "Ian and Eileen Paisley's 50th wedding anniversary tomorrow, Bertie, hope you haven't forgotten," says Blair. "Did you get them a gift?"
"Eh, yeah, Tony, we got them a wooden bowl."
"A wooden bowl," says Blair.
"Yeah, carved from a fallen walnut tree."
"From a fallen walnut tree."
"Yeah, that stood on the site of the Battle of the Boyne."
"That stood . . . Oh!" says Blair, who turns to Powell and asks, "And what did we get them, Jonathan?"
"A photograph album, prime minister."
"Oh fock," says Blair.
"But it's a very expensive photograph album, prime minister," adds Powell.
Like the boy who brings the inappropriate present to a birthday party, there's then some musing from Blair's side that perhaps the bowl should be a "joint gift", but the Irish don't bite.
And you know the rest. That night the chances of a deal seemed doomed but, after another long bout of talking, by sunrise the shoots of hope spring again. Ahern presented the gift to the Paisleys about noon on Friday, with the DUP leader responding that the "bowl was coming home" and hoping that that Friday, the 13th, would be a great day "for all of the people of Ireland" and for his and everyone's children and grandchildren.
That Friday and today come under the category of wonderful days for these islands. Today certainly will be a great day for Blair and Ahern, who will be like proud parents at Stormont, one about to announce his retirement, the other facing into a general election and an uncertain political future. This is their legacy.
But getting from that St Andrews Friday to today at Stormont when Paisley and Martin McGuinness are to be appointed first and deputy first minister, was to prove an unpredictable, sometimes surreal journey.
Take, for instance, Michael "Rambo" Stone, who in the history books will have a footnote as an unlikely saviour of the St Andrews Agreement. Paisley, as far back as late summer, made it clear privately to Blair and to several others that he was up for a deal. For once he was ahead of many in his party and that was the problem: how to bring them, or most of them, with him.
On November 24th the Assembly was to meet to nominate Paisley and McGuinness as first minister and deputy first minister. But Paisley, facing mutiny in the camp, wasn't in a position to be nominated. What he did offer in the Assembly amounted to a "you jump first, we'll probably jump after" scenario to Sinn Féin.
This was never going to be good enough. But then Stone, Milltown Cemetery killer and abstract artist, tried to bustle his arthritic body into Parliament Buildings, forcing the abandonment of proceedings. This scuppered the plan of the hardliners, the so-called Twelve Apostles of the DUP, to raise points of order in the Assembly that would have further diluted Paisley's conditional commitment to share power, and could have spooked Sinn Féin away.
Security guards, one male and one female, subdued Stone at the revolving doors, prompting his loyalist antagonist Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair to sneer, "Imagine, Rambo disarmed by a woman!" Later it went beyond farce when Stone, back behind bars, said he wasn't intent on killing Adams and McGuinness; rather, he was engaged in performance art.
So, we stumbled on into Christmas, waiting for Sinn Féin to call its ardchomhairle to call its ardfheis to call for republican support for the PSNI. Blair, with a disastrous war on his hands and mutterings of rebellion within Labour, worked with Adams and Paisley through the Christmas holiday to broker an agreement on powersharing and policing.
Over in the Bee Gees' home in Florida, while Cherie and the family enjoyed the sun, Blair was on the phone for hours to Paisley and Adams, often rising to take calls at 4am or 5am because of the time difference. In the end he cut short his break by a day to deal with the problem face to face.
"He didn't have a holiday; he must have taken two or three dozen calls, long ones, from Paisley and Adams," said one source, impressed and surprised by Blair's willingness to indulge the two leaders.
Finally, Paisley, in a coded New Year's Day statement, said the DUP would "not be found wanting" if Sinn Féin delivered on policing. Adams was furious, accusing Paisley of reneging on a pledge to Blair that he would deliver stronger assurances.
We were waltzing around in that familiar but often impenetrable world of peace process casuistry. Paisley issued a statement saying, "If a government cannot be formed on March 26th because Sinn Féin fails to deliver it will be clear that Sinn Féin alone is to blame." Blair, according to senior sources, encouraged by some DUP sophists, took the view that the "converse of Dr Paisley's response must be true, which is that Paisley would share power if Sinn Féin delivers on policing".
When this was put to Adams, "he fell about laughing", according to another source. "In a rather jaundiced way," he elaborated. When the same convoluted interpretation was put to Adams's chief spokesman by The Irish Times in January he replied, "How in print do you describe a long yawn?"
"Okay," agreed one official, "it is all rather tortuous but how often did we go through the same hoops, parsing and analysing and trying to find something positive in IRA statements?"
Nonetheless, we staggered on. Adams, McGuinness and Gerry Kelly convincingly sold policing at a special ardfheis and at earlier public meetings in the most hardline of republican heartlands.
The March election was fought on water rates, not the union or a united Ireland. Paisley and Adams, squeezing on to the centre ground, emerged triumphant, the extremists on both sides routed, the SDLP and Ulster Unionists further undermined.
All the time Peter Hain was insisting that without a deal by March 26th Stormont would shut, but still the DUP refuseniks and sceptics dug in. Realising that Paisley still wanted a successful outcome, he played the hard cop. You have a simple choice, he warned them: Plan B, a greater role for Dublin in the North, or powersharing.
And then we came to Saturday, March 24th, the day the DUP executive had to decide whether to go into government with Sinn Féin the following Monday. That morning Blair had another heart-to-heart with Adams by phone, where he divined that with the proper conditions Sinn Féin's patience could be stretched, just a little.
Blair spoke to Paisley and Peter Robinson and his message was: it's over to you, Dr Paisley.
Blair was sticking to the March 26th deadline - unless the DUP could persuade Sinn Féin to push the deadline back. And that was the strategic route Paisley and Robinson rather brilliantly persuaded his executive to take.
That Saturday at teatime the two factions met at Stormont, rather nervously at first, Robinson and McGuinness leading for the DUP and Sinn Féin, Paisley and Adams keeping out of it.
Pizzas and food from local supermarkets were delivered. Nigel Dodds got food poisoning, as did his wife Diane. Before exiting the talks, Dodds went to the Sinn Féin delegation room to explain that he was ill, that he was not snubbing them.
Some in the Sinn Féin team appeared "stunned" by his explanation, said one source, because this indeed was a substantial gesture considering that not so long ago the IRA attacked Dodds while he was visiting his late son at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
The negotiating teams talked long and late, in between taking breaks to confer or to watch the football internationals or their highlights on Saturday, the two Irelands winning, England only scraping a draw. So the people who counted were happy.
Much of the talk was of that photograph. Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams and their teams would sit at a table opposite each other, said the DUP. No, side by side, said Sinn Féin. How about both sides converging at the apex of two sides of a square table, it was suggested. Okay, said the DUP, with Paisley and Adams in the middle of each group. No, said Sinn Féin, with Paisley and Adams each side of the apex.
Which was how we got that picture on the Monday, plus the generous Paisley and Adams statements that told the world that a 40-year-old, bitter, murderous conflict was over, and that set up today as a genuinely momentous day in modern Irish history.