MR SPRING said last Friday was one of the darkest and most depressing days in recent Irish history. He said
It left me, and, I am sure, the overwhelming majority of people throughout Ireland, both sad and angry.
The London bomb shattered more than the lives of its victims. It shattered also the hopes so many of us cherished that we had at last left behind the dark shadow of violence, he said. It faces all of us with the question whether the peace process is stronger than those who seek to destroy it, and the need for us to make it so.
I have heard some people interviewed on the radio claim that they have got nothing from the cease fires. This is simply not true.
The past eighteen months lifted a great burden from the lives of ordinary people in Northern Ireland. They were enjoying, many for the first time in their lives, the benefit of a peaceful society, which is of course their fundamental right. People from both parts of the island were reaching out, in a transformed climate, and discovering common interests and affinities which the violence had blighted.
Friday's bomb by itself has done huge damage to all of these developments. If it presages the resumption of a campaign of violence then we will be throwing away the gains which have so painstakingly been made.
No language is sufficiently strong to condemn the action of those responsible for the bomb. Its wanton disregard for its victims was matched by an equally contemptuous disregard for the collateral damage done to the true welfare of the Irish people, both in terms of their political hopes and aspirations and their natural right to peace for themselves, their families and their society. We cannot pretend that this was not a very grave setback to the search for a political accommodation.
However, the present situation balls for more than condemnation or passive despair. We must seek to put matters right. It is the sobering truth that this bomb may be the opening move in a new spiral of tragedy and destruction.
As Saturday's Government statement makes clear, the fact that commitment to a total cessation of violence, which was to have held in all circumstances, has now been revoked, in the bloodiest possible way, fundamentally alters the situation. That fundamental change cannot be ignored by the Government and must, of necessity, bring about a change in our approach. That is why the Government do not feel it right or appropriate to meet Sinn Fein at Ministerial level until there is a restoration of the IRA ceasefire. The republican movement must be shown, with whatever emphasis it takes, that we do not and will not condone violence.
As has been made clear, this does not mean that Sinn Fein is being isolated or marginalised. Contacts will continue at official level in order that we can establish whether and how Sinn Fein can be brought back fully into the process. There will be no closing off of practical channels of communication, and no lack of opportunity for dialogue in either direction.
Nevertheless, the Government has a particular responsibility, as the custodian of democratic values on which this State is founded, and as the representative both in Ireland and internationally, of the interests of all of our people, to make utterly clear the dividing line between politics and violence.
The crucial goal now is that the ceasefire should be restored and the search for political progress resumed in the only climate where meaningful and inclusive political negotiations are likely to succeed, namely a climate free of the threat or use of violence for political ends.
I know for a fact that a great many members of Sinn Fein are working hard to bring about such a decision. Sinn Fein has invested heavily in the peace process and many within that organisation have worked tirelessly in its cause.
I have repeatedly praised the personal courage and political creativity shown by the Sinn Fein leadership in bringing about the August 1994 cessation of violence. That courage and creativity is now needed more than ever, as well as a realistic awareness that each atrocity narrows palpably the prospect of political agreement and the trust that is the essential foundation for any lasting settlement.
It is equally vital that the loyalist ceasefires hold firm and that the appalling spiral of killing and retaliation not be allowed once again to impose its fatal logic upon us.
The honest and courageous leadership which the leaders of the loyalist political parties have shown over recent days is commendable and once again demonstrates that they have a vital role to play in the search for a settlement.
The fundamental problems which we need to overcome by political negotiation have not altered since last Friday indeed, Friday's bomb serves only to remind us of the urgency and necessity of agreement, and of the terrible future to which a failure to agree would condemn us.
Just as the Irish Government and nationalists generally were for too long dismissive of the unionist identity and unwilling to acknowledge the real interests and fears of the unionist community, so the British government and unionists generally have not appreciated or taken on board the sensitivities and concerns and demands of the nationalist community.
The unionist refusal to talk, or their insistence that talks must be on their own terms and within a conceptual and institutional framework of their own making has been decoded as a reluctance to take part in the common enterprise of building a society in which all can feel at home. Many nationalists see it as a refusal to acknowledge or address their legitimate concerns.
The search for peace and for a negotiated settlement to underpin the peace must inevitably be a joint enterprise between the two sovereign governments and all those with a contribution to make to a solution.
In this, the relationship between the two governments is the enabling condition for progress on all other fronts. It is indeed an "iron law", to borrow Mr Paddy Ashdown's phrase, that the prospect of success for any initiative on Northern Ireland is in direct proportion to degree of agreement the two governments bring to bear in seeking that objective.
The Northern parties, since the ceasefires, have been locked in a stand off between those who wished to go into inclusive negotiating without preconditions, and the two unionist parties, who did not.
That stand off has caused great and dangerous frustration.
I would, however, repudiate the view that there has been no progress in that period. Progress may have been too slow for many people's liking, including that of the Irish Government, but we have continued to work for agreement with the British government.
"The political stand off at the moment is mainly concerned with a disagreement as to whether an" election must come before negotiations, or negotiations before an election.
This disagreement coincides more or less exactly with the constitutional fault line in Northern, Ireland, the pro union parties demanding an election first, the nationalist parties the opposite. For as long as that remains the case the elective process inevitably polarises the political debate.
The nationalist parties' reluctance to begin with an election is not, I believe, based primarily on a fear of a return to Stormont. It reflects, I believe, a fear that the purpose of such an election would be ritual and symbolic rather than practical.
That nationalists feared that the purpose of such an election would be to establish the dominance of the majority, and the primacy of the internal strand of negotiations, as a prelude to going to the table.
The suggestion that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland should revert to the status of a subject minority is for them very like what a proposal for a united Ireland is for unionists attain recipe for wall to wall opposition.
The final say about any elective process rests with those who are invited to stand for such elections, namely the Northern Ireland political parties.
I think it has been a helpful development that Prime Minister Major, in a carefully measured speech in the House of Commons yesterday, sought to address two areas of particular concern.
He sought to provide assurances that an elective approach would not lead to inordinate delay.
Secondly, he sought to make clear that all party negotiations would ensue as an immediate and direct result of an elective process.
I believe these clarifications are positive and helpful, and will make it easier for the elective approach to be considered calmly and rationally.
Looking beyond the particular issue of an elective process, there is an urgent need to address the basis and format of negotiations themselves. Much work remains to be done to establish the model of negotiations which can command the agreement of all of the parties.
It was for that reason that I proposed that the two governments should take the initiative of calling all the parties into one convenient venue for an intensive two day conference. I am, of course, fully aware that certain parties have difficulty in meeting certain other parties. The arrangements and, so to speak, the geometry of the proceedings can easily be arranged to take account of all of these sensitivities and to ensure that no group is pressurised into a meeting which it did not want to hold.
At the same time, the proximity of the parties would enable an intensive interaction to be set up between them and with the governments, using whatever contacts and meetings are appropriate for any given participant.
I believe the present stand off between the approach of those who believe elections must precede negotiations, on the one hand, and those who believe elections should flow from negotiations, on the other, are not necessarily irreconcilable.