Nobody can be in any doubt about the intentions of those responsible for yesterday's bomb attack on the British any base at Lisburn. The design was to inflict the greatest possible human destruction, and in the event over 30 men and women have suffered the consequences, though mercifully there has been no loss of life. It was a callous, vicious and cowardly act that will do nothing to further any conceivable cause. Quite the reverse. Those who planned and carried it out - it was still unclear exactly who they were last night - know that, with 25 years of bloody killing in the recent past, all they can expect is a return to stalemate and hopelessness. Murder for allegedly political purposes is morally wrong and a crime against humanity; but it is also brutally ineffective as a means of imposing political agendas.
Mr Gary McMichael, of the Ulster Democratic Party, accurately described the bombs as "an attack on the community in Northern Ireland". It is such an attack in the broadest sense: one that raises the spectre of fear among Catholics as well as Protestants, and threatens the livelihood of everyone indiscriminately. It is only one of the results of its timing that it coincided with the ambitious investment conference in Pittsburgh which opened yesterday, and also with the attempt by a group of Northern businessmen to impress on the politicians the urgent need to keep the political process alive.
Whether that is now possible depends on the politicians themselves. The attack on Thiepvaf barracks coincided with two other events: the opening of the Conservative Party conference at Bournemouth and a meeting of loyalist prisoners and politicians at the Maze prison, within earshot of the bomb. Provocation, after weeks of mounting tension, culminating in the withdrawal by some loyalist prisoners of support for the ceasefire, is an obvious motive for the attack. With the talks at Stormont still stuck in the rut of intransigence, must it be inevitable that the propagators of violence on both sides should take the initiative, goading each other on to provoke and be provoked?
The vacuum since Drumcree polarised the community was always likely to move events in this direction. In the last three months, there have been few enough signs of serious political leadership: the bipartisan talks between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP have been a welcome exception but have not broken the deadlock. In any case the "spirit of Drumcree", by producing the repellent but characteristic reaction of injured innocence among leading unionists, has been detrimental to any attempt to get constructive talks under way. It is a sad thought that the "right to march" should take precedence over the right of the whole community to develop peacefully and begin dismantling the traditional barriers.
This does not justify violence like the attack in Lisburn, or even constitute an explanation. But unless the politicians those who have made dialogue impossible by the inflexibility of their demands want to abdicate all responsibility, they must reflect on their own part in how events have developed in the last two years. The widespread relief at the ceasefires, reflected on the ground by the appearance of new political groups like the Women's Coalition and the loyalist parties, failed to generate a corresponding sense of constructive openness and willingness to reexamine traditional attitudes among many of the mainstream leaders, particularly at local level. If they react, not by throwing up their hands in condemnation of the latest terrible reverse, but by recognising that, as politicians, their job is to find ways to go forward, there can still be hope. Peace has not yet slipped from their hands.