One prominent member of the new anti-agreement ginger group, Union First, told a Belfast newspaper that his reaction to the award of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize to David Trimble and John Hume was "unprintable".
Union First, of course, denies being anti-agreement. That it has been unable to recruit a single person who campaigned for the agreement to its organisation shows its real intentions. On the contrary, Union First says, it is doing David Trimble a favour. With friends like these. . .
Amid the anti-agreement campaigners' begrudgery over the peace prize, one startling fact stands out: there is no sympathy for their position in public life in the Republic or Great Britain or in the international community. Conor Cruise O'Brien might be the only possible exception. It is a tragedy that the views Dr O'Brien articulated in the 1970s are now orthodox, but that Dr O'Brien himself has moved on.
Few people, even unionists, will deny John Hume is a worthy recipient of the Nobel prize. He is the greatest leader Irish nationalism has produced since Parnell. Like Parnell, he is flawed, but the award will be savoured in the SDLP as vindication for the approach of non-violence, especially as the plaudits in recent years have gone to those in nationalism who are only in the intermediate school.
For John to follow in the path of his role-model, Martin Luther King, will be a great personal achievement.
For David Trimble, comparisons with King, Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa will be less comfortable. Equally, he will abjure the inevitable analogies with F.W. de Klerk. He would point out that unionists are a majority in Northern Ireland and that de Klerk's achievement was only a successful exercise in decline management.
I remember him being struck, however, before becoming UUP leader, by de Klerk's response when asked why he had decided to scrap apartheid. "Because God told me to," de Klerk had replied.
Unionists have long been accused - by John Hume among others - of having a "laager mentality". They once revelled - in an ironic sense - in the image of Ulster as "the best laager in the world". Change has been painful. That Sinn Fein has had to change more, has had to accept the legitimacy of Northern Ireland and sit with democrats in what republicans see as the palace of injustice, is a source of satisfaction to some unionists, a daily torment for others.
Gerry Adams welcomed the award, many felt, through gritted teeth. The reaction of other republican leaders, such as Mitchel McLaughlin and Martin McGuinness, was noticeably less sour. It is perhaps too much to hope that Mr Adams's response was tinged with regret that the prize was awarded before tangible progress has been made on disposal of the weapons of war.
Certainly, the greatest sense on east Belfast's ultra-loyalist Lower Newtownards Road, upon hearing of the Nobel Prize, was one of immense relief that Gerry Adams had been overlooked. Conversely, there will be a sense of hurt in republican areas that Gerry Adams will not share the glory when David Trimble receives the award alongside John Hume on December 10th in Oslo.
Republicans will console themselves with the confidence that the peace prize will prove less of a pat on the back to David Trimble and more of a shove along the road. The First Minister has acknowledged that the prize is as much one for those unionists who have supported his courageous stand in recent months as for himself. The grassroots of the UUP have made it clear that no more fudge and smudge on decommissioning will be acceptable.
A section of unionist opinion - largely outside party ranks - argues that David Trimble has nothing more to lose and urges him not to imperil the agreement by taking too fast an opinion on decommissioning. By common consent, even a tiny fraction of the IRA arsenal as a down payment will unlock the door to executive office. To sit in government with an organisation which retains the bulk of its firepower - on the clear understanding that it intends to ditch the rest by June 2000 - is compromise enough for most unionists.
Machiavelli argued that if you cannot defeat your enemy, you must treat him generously. To do otherwise is to store up trouble and sow the seeds for future revenge. The republican movement was cute enough to sue for peace before its violent campaign collapsed under the weight of security force pressure and its own internal contradictions.
Union First and its DUP and UKUP allies, by setting impossible conditions on Sinn Fein's entry into the executive, seek to humiliate Sinn Fein and the IRA. They do so in the full knowledge that this will imperil the agreement and the IRA ceasefire. By so doing, they are underscoring Sinn Fein's view that unionism cannot sustain itself and succeed in replicating the British character of Northern Ireland in an atmosphere of social, economic, cultural and political equality. Unionism is Protestant sectarianism writ large in this view.
David Trimble's challenge is to prove Sinn Fein and his own detractors wrong. George Bernard Shaw, another Nobel winner, wrote in Man And Superman: "Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get." Union First's biggest handicap is that its leadership was not excluded from the talks process. If it did not succeed in achieving its aims in the Talks, the fault must lie with it. At least Ian Paisley and Bob McCartney had the sense to realise that the talks could not deliver their vision of Northern Ireland.
That is why, come the UUP conference on Saturday, Union First will be seen to be Shaw's "chocolate cream soldiers".
Steven King is an adviser to the Ulster Unionist deputy leader, Mr John Taylor