As the Ulster Unionist leadership walked through the gates of Castle Buildings yesterday, their thoughts were as much focused on the victims of terrorism over the last 27 years as the task in hand. Nobody could pretend it was an easy decision. Who could deny that the DUP's taunts - that the UUP was "crawling" into a process with the "unrepentant murderers of our fellow countrymen" - hurt?
The decision to stay in, arrived at coolly over several weeks and in a way so democratic that it would put practically any party in the British Isles to shame, was not based upon a slavish desire to please the British government. Quite the opposite. It is precisely because that government cannot be relied upon to cherish the extremities of the British state and because unionism believes that Sinn Fein/IRA are unrepentant fascistic murderers that the UUP held its ground.
Markethill was clearly designed to upset the strategy. It failed. David Trimble was greeted with relief and approval in the strongly unionist town on Tuesday afternoon.
The IRA which, ironically, can be relied upon to represent honestly the view of the so-called republican movement has blown Gerry Adams's cover. Those who hailed the day Sinn Fein signed up to the Mitchell Principles on democracy and non-violence looked sheepish 36 hours later with publication of the IRA interview in An Phoblacht. It was a classic piece of republican double-speak: truly the Armalite and ballot-box strategy is back in play. More than that, it was a none-too-subtle message that the IRA had not gone away and was not prepared to countenance a democratic settlement. Yesterday was a difficult day for Trimble; tomorrow is an impossible day for Adams. O Bradaigh right?
The British and Irish governments have a problem also. If Adams cannot speak for the IRA, who can? And why has so much effort been spent in including that organisation? Rather, the South Armagh Brigade has sent a message that it did not kill and maim, and themselves die and be imprisoned for a proportional assembly and some cross-Border bodies. The UUP will demonstrate that Sinn Fein's argument is with their fellow nationalists as much as it is with unionists. While the intensive consultation exercise found a great desire on the part of mainstream unionism for their view to be represented at the table of democracy, sullied as it now is, their greatest fear is that constitutional nationalism cannot release itself from the Sinn Fein honey trap. While these fears have some apparent substance on the evidence so far, Sinn Fein's avowed wish to corral the SDLP and, in particular, the Irish Government into the politics of sado-masochism is bound to founder. The republic of Sinn Fein's imagination will lose out in any contest with the actually existing Republic, confirmed by the votes of 98 per cent of the people of independent Ireland and the long-established and settled view of the majority of nationalists in Northern Ireland.
While unionists and nationalists can publicly disagree about the nature of Sinn Fein's mandate, be it for murder or for peace, the vulgar fund-raising in the US has not shifted the desire for unity in Northern Ireland above 19 per cent in the recent polls. It is a paltry mandate. Even the question as to whether there will be a united Ireland in 2020 revealed that most nationalists think not.
The unionist community, so often accused of paranoia, showed itself to be remarkably relaxed: only 3 per cent were convinced that this process will result in Irish unity.
The UUP decision to keep the options open following the IRA's fraudulent cessation proved wise. It succeeded in creating a negotiating position from which several useful confidence-building measures on security, education, Europe and local government followed. The Irish Government was thwarted in its attempts to discredit Gen de Chastelain as chairman of the International Commission on Arms Decommissioning. Sinn Fein can have drawn little comfort from the recent statements of the British and Irish governments either. Both are convinced of the necessity of consent underpinning the process, as well as the outcome, and both now recognise the "indispensability" of decommissioning during the process.
This is not to say that the process will be allowed to concentrate on wringing concessions from unionism. Having outlined in some detail the arrangement for the internal administration of Northern Ireland in 1992, unionism has been involved in recent years in considerable thought about the best way of creating a truly modern and functional relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic and between the Republic and the UK.
Every change in Northern Ireland must be matched by a commensurate shift towards dismantling the barriers between the Republic and its only land neighbour. A new Northern Ireland is coming into view in the light of the decisions in Scotland and Wales. It is for the British and Irish governments to ensure that violence will not be allowed to prevent the people of Northern Ireland grasping that new future which the greater number, of both traditions, so desperately desire. (Steven King is adviser to the Ulster Unionist Party deputy leader, Mr John Taylor)