Not for the first time, the future of this land lies in the decisions of small groups of men, unelected and unknown to all but their immediate colleagues. How the Army Council of the IRA or the Combined Loyalist Military Command react to the recent brutal attacks will do more to determine what kind of life the people north and south of the border live in 1997 than all the earnest efforts of the Irish and British governments. It is a thought that should sober the politicians in Dublin, Belfast and London as they prepare for the ritual bloodletting of general elections during the year.
What now seems to be the brink of a return to violence should be seen first and foremost as the responsibility of those who use weapons in pursuit of their political ends. They have not succeeded before in imposing their will, and they will not succeed if they decide to resume killing. Bloodlust is the name of the game, not rational strategy.
But the present threat should also be seen as a crisis in the democracy that the Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn, believes can be shored up by more lavish payments to TDs and the political parties. If a handful of bloody minded men and women, loosely identified as republicans and loyalists, can stymie the best efforts of two elected governments, how have we arrived at this situation? How can we get out of the grip of the prejudices and preconceptions that got us here? We are now reaping the harvest of decades of fantastic delusions.
At this juncture, the one critical step to stop the slide rests with the IRA and Sinn Fein. Mr Gerry Adams now has to persuade the IRA Army Council that unless they want to risk precipitating a free fall into chaos, abandoning politics for good, they should read the political signs in Britain and acknowledge that Mr Major's government, in its present state of disarray, is not in a position to concede anything. The only valid option is to keep the political process in place until the British election before May.
That is only the first step, however. There are few grounds for optimism, but one of them is that the loyalists may not break their ceasefire whether they have done so already is not yet clear if there is no further attack by the IRA. But the threat of violence should not be used by the politicians in the North as an excuse to return to the politics of bickering and name calling. Moulds need to be broken new patterns, based on the common interest in peace and stability need to be formed trust, if at first only as an act of will, needs to be shown. If the party leaders are not capable of that, then they tacitly strengthen the wreckers who would tear the whole place apart.
Months have been spent in debating the precise terms under which the IRA can be represented at the political talks, much as the old philosophers debated the question of angels dancing on a pin head while the barbarians rampaged outside. There is a price for the IRA to pay for taking part in political dialogue, but it has come to overshadow the substance of negotiation and both sides have bid up the issue as if it was the core of the argument. It may well be that the chance of a resolution has now been lost.
Comprehensive talks are still the only way to address all the questions which have created the historical impasse. A whole range of safeguards exists to prevent one participant from threatening to use arms to force its will on the others. In the end, any settlement reached must be a democratic one, accepted by party representatives and subjected to the people's will. That simple fact has been lost from view in the last wasted months.