The prospect of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams concluding an agreement to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland is tantalising. That the figure who did so much, whatever his intention, to stoke the fires of sectarianism and bigotry in Northern Ireland for decades should join with those who murdered so many of his co-religionists, or who condoned the murder of his co-religionists, is a remarkable transformation. But there will be more significance to an agreement, one which transcends the symbolic.
This more significant dimension has to do with policing and the prospect of Sinn Féin becoming part of the policing operation, indeed, possibly, having responsibility for it.
There is a sense in which the whole problem of Northern Ireland is about policing and it is this. For a state to work there has to be a consensus between most if not all its inhabitants to accord to the state the exclusive use of force. Indeed, this is almost a definition of a state.
Thus a state may, through force where necessary, impose criminal sanctions on conduct deemed harmful, may enforce contracts, may extract taxation, may require general obedience to its laws and regulations.
But in the absence of consensus on the state's exclusive right to use force, the very existence and raison d'être of the state is challenged.
That was the problem in Northern Ireland. There was no agreement on the existence of the state, certainly no agreement on the state's exclusive right to use force.
And that absence of agreement focused on a refusal on the part of a significant minority to accept the police force in Northern Ireland as having a legitimate right to enforce law and order.
Now the prospect of Sinn Féin and what is known as the republican movement as a whole buying into the police force in Northern Ireland at all, and buying into it to the extent of wanting to assume some responsibility for it, is a remarkable development. It is so because it signals, more than anything else could, the acceptance by republicans of the legitimacy of the Northern state and the exclusive right of its police force to use force.
As a corollary to that, it represents an acceptance by the republican movement of the redundancy of the IRA for if the police force has the exclusive right to use force, then the IRA has no basis for existence. Furthermore, it signals that there is no use for the arms the IRA possesses.
There are a few other issues of significance. In the event of anti-social behaviour on the part of youths or otherwise in, say, west Belfast, it will not be IRA vigilantes that will be sent to deal with the problem, it will be the police force. Where crime generally occurs there will be an obligation on the part of republicans, as well as everyone else, to give whatever information they have to the police force and otherwise to co-operate with the police force. And there is a further rub.
Were a dissident element of the IRA, whether currently dissident or a present element that becomes dissident because of opposition to what is now taking place, engages in subversive or other illegal activity, it will be the responsibility of other non-dissident republicans to co-operate fully with the police. And, arguably, where the police force chooses to investigate crimes of, say, the last few years, perpetrated by the IRA, then surely it will be the duty of republicans to inform?
Of course it will not operate as neatly as that and of course there will be obstructions and difficulties, maybe even the odd crises, with Sunday Independent alarm headlines of IRA intelligence gathering or training and maybe ever the occasional robbery. Why such should be a surprise to the Sunday Independent, given the acquaintance that some associated with the newspaper had with the aftershocks of the Official IRA ceasefire of 1972, is a wonder. Were they unaware that the Official IRA engaged in a murder campaign for well over a decade later, engaged in bank robberies, counterfeiting, racketeering and intimidation for a decade and a half, at least, afterwards? This included the murder of Seamus Costello in 1977, of which there might have been a special awareness. And by the way, the Official IRA never decommissioned even a matchstick and some of the guns of that era remain around and available should the need ever arise.
The acceptance by republicans of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is as clear an acknowledgment as there could be that the war is over, that the attempt to change the constitutional status of Northern Ireland other than by agreement is over, that violence and subversion are over.
One is left wondering what the murder of over 1,000 people by the IRA was about but that's another matter, and of course the Northern Ireland of today is a different place to the political slum that pertained prior to 1968. But aside from the powerful symbolic force of Sinn Féin and the DUP getting together, there is the more potent development signalling an end to rebellion.