Here we are again, poised yet one more time on the brink of that old familiar place, square one, to which we are as attached as firmly as are Siamese twins to one another. Emotionalism, optimism, war-weariness, moral exhaustion have led us repeatedly to believe that there is a path away from square one, one which has been cut through the jungle by the artful machetes of the peace process. Few people have been as doubtful about this path, about the efficacy of the machetes, about the navigational instinct of those who lead the way, as I have been; yet like most people, I want this imbroglio to end, and so in my weaker moments, I have seen hope when in truth the path that was being cut was inevitably taking us back to our place of our departure.
What is this square one, this point to which we endlessly return? It is not simple violence, because for the moment, and relatively speaking, that is largely contained to a few areas and a few unfortunate communities. Square one is defined not by what is seen on the street but what is felt in the heart. Square one is that place where people know there is an inescapable alternative to political agreements and the rule of consensual law, and it is under the floorboards there, or lies concreted beneath that patio.
Downing Street
The people who have uttered the defining words of square one have usually been republican. It has been their war, their strategy, their will-power and their peace. The struggle, waged in their own language, through ballot paper in one hand and Armalite in the other, has seen its architects feted in the White House and welcomed in Downing Street, even though, despite all the undertakings, the IRA remained armed, trained and training. "They haven't gone away, you know," said Gerry Adams wolfishly. Hadn't then, haven't now, and won't.
The next phase in the struggle was recently foreshadowed by Gerry Adams in an interview on BBC Northern Ireland. He is never an easy interviewee, with his unblinking gaze which has seen so much over three decades of war; it is a gaze which causes many interviewers to turn to blancmange, for they know something of the sights this man has witnessed with those glinting eyes.
The BBC interviewer asked his opening question, and Gerry Adams fixed him with his basilisk stare before replying: "You know, when I hear a question like that, I'm reminded that the first people who need to be re-educated in the course of any conflict-resolution situation like this one are television interviewers."
So there we have it. Not merely are the institutions of state to be re-ordered around the prioritities and strategic requirements of Sinn FΘin-IRA, but so too is journalism when its practitioners have the temerity to ask Sinn FΘin leaders questions about their great project.
Nice Treaty
And what a project it is. It has brought Ulster Unionism, the SDLP and the RUC to their knees. Its leaders are internationally feted. Three members of the IRA army council were elected to Westminster. With the scalp of the Nice Treaty hanging from its belt, Sinn FΘin is now readying a 1,500-hundred strong army of workers for our forthcoming general election, in which it could gain up to a dozen seats, and maybe hold the balance of power.
Now this last would be fine if a commitment to politics meant just that. But it doesn't. The IRA is still recruiting, training and gathering intelligence.
It is importing weaponry from Eastern Europe, and even as it parlayed the release of its prisoners , it continued to refine its weapons technology, to the point of creating bombs as destructive as small nuclear devices. Moroever, it used the existence of the Real IRA as a goad towards more concessions: Unless you give us this and this and that and that, the Real IRA will take our volunteers.
Only one organisation is left to face the consequences in the North, and that is the British army. Yet far from the peace process lightening Northern Ireland's dependence on it, the very reverse has happened. For the province has become addicted to a military presence, both as a security blanket and as a totem on which to heap blame. Throughout the peace process, all the North's recidivist delinquencies have been repeatedly indulged, in the certainty that poor unfortunate squaddies - sons or even grands ons of the first soldiers who took to the streets in 1969 - will emerge yet again from their overcrowded barracks to pick up the pieces, before uncomplainingly returning to their dreary and seemingly endless confinement.
Single-strand strategy
The peace process was the single-strand strategy for the governments of the Republic and Britain. It is hard to imagine any government policy being so single-mindedly dysfunctional as that which gave so much to Sinn FΘin-IRA, and got only a temporary - and even then, limited - suspension of hostilities in return. But for Sinn FΘin-IRA, the peace process is a mere tactic within a strategy which has planned alternative routes through all the contingencies which might arise over the coming summer months, and the years ahead.
Nothing will come as a surprise to Sinn FΘin. They have been running rings around us, and now they are masters of all they survey.