Dermot Nesbitt's courteous reaction to my article of Saturday last on the Northern Ireland crisis deserves a considered response. So much of what he has said must strike a sympathetic chord with any genuine democrat.
Were I in the position in which he and his UUP colleagues find themselves, I am sure I would share many of the emotions that lie behind his views. And I might not find it easy to set aside these emotions to pursue the kind of actions which the Realpolitik of the situation unhappily seems to require in the long-term interests of Northern Ireland and of its unionist as well as nationalist people.
Let me clear up some misunderstandings, for which I must in some way be responsible.
Dermot Nesbitt has read my article as saying, or perhaps implying, that I "endorse the republican fiction that Sinn Fein and the IRA are two separate organisations", and that "Sinn Fein has no clear linkage with the IRA".
Nothing could be further from my intentions. I have consistently rejected this thesis, referring regularly to "Sinn Fein/IRA" rather than the evasive phrase "republican movement". I recently wrote at length on this point, challenging the dishonest attempts to portray these organisations as being independent of each other.
My reference to IRA members as "colleagues" of Gerry Adams specifically related to this issue.
From all that has happened in recent years it seems self-evident that within the Sinn Fein/IRA organisation there are stresses between those, such as Gerry Adams, who have been seeking to move the organisation away from violence and towards politics, and others resistant to this process.
And it also seems clear that the June/July negotiations have unhappily weakened the position within this organisation of those who have been seeking to pursue a political route, and this is a development of which the UUP should, I believe, take some account.
It does not help the debate to refuse to recognise the reality of this division within Sinn Fein/IRA. I can understand why unionists have been reluctant to give public recognition to this reality, just as Sinn Fein/IRA has been reluctant to recognise the problems posed for unionists by divisions within their ranks. But it is unreasonable to expect others to join in preserving the fiction that these divisions and tensions do not exist.
Two other fictions which each side seeks to preserve about the other also need to be addressed.
The Sinn Fein/IRA claim that the UUP leaders are not prepared to go into government with them in any circumstances, and that their failure to agree to form the executive reflects such an intransigent stance, rather than genuine reluctance to serve in government in the absence of decommissioning, is nonsense. Far from quoting this accusation of Sinn Fein's "without criticism", I expressed my dissent from that view.
But unionist refusal to face the fact that the Belfast Agreement wording did not require decommissioning before forming an executive does not stand up to scrutiny. The weakness of the unionist case on this issue is evidenced by Dermot Nesbitt's attempt to justify it by reference to two clauses of the agreement which palpably fail to sustain his case on this sequencing or timing issue, and these are "all participants reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations", and the "absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means . . . and opposition to any use or threat of force by others".
All Dermot Nesbitt has to say about the circumstances in which the UUP leadership came to accept the terms of Belfast Agreement must command respect. That leadership listened "to those who exhorted us to take risks, and put on the back burner our natural inclination to want a clear contract", and it is true that "the size of the risks can hardly be doubted".
Moreover, it is fair comment on his part to say that "those who argue for such risk-taking cannot now return and say that we should have pinned down every last detail on decommissioning". Had the UUP attempted to do that, there would have been no agreement.
That Dermot Nesbitt should feel that I "play down the importance of Mr Blair's side-letter" is understandable, but the fact remains that this side-letter could not vary the actual terms of the agreement, and the use of the word "should" rather than "must" in the phrase "decommissioning should begin right away" was intentionally ambiguous.
IT WAS not very noble of Mr Blair to employ such an ambiguous term in his lastminute attempt to persuade the UUP to sign the agreement, and it is understandable that its leaders should feel some bitterness at the sleight of hand involved.
But to come to the nub of the issue. No democratic politician in either island can, or should, fail to sympathise with the UUP situation in being faced with a proposal that they enter an executive before the beginning of decommissioning of IRA arms.
How many of us who are or have been engaged in democratic politics can say that if faced with such a requirement, we would be prepared to take such a course?
And if we in our different circumstances would find that difficult, perhaps to the point of being impossible to accept, can we blame members of the UUP for their stance? Honesty requires that we face ourselves with these questions. Let me try.
All of us who are or have been in politics try to live by certain principles. And most of us are not required to put these principles to the test: in normal democratic society we have it easy in this respect.
But there can be rare moments in the history of a state when the interests of society require a departure from such norms: "salus populi, suprema lex", the safety of the people may in certain extreme circumstances require that the law be set aside. There was such a moment at the moment when our State was being founded. None of us - I least of all - like to remember some of the things done by that government, of which my father was a member.
But it is the view of most historians today - even some whose family background was republican - that these actions saved our State from early dissolution.
Unionists are now facing a different dilemma. But I would like to think that were I in their shoes, and despite the revulsion I would feel at having to swallow my principles, I would put the prospect of creating a stable democratic society in Northern Ireland for my descendants first.
If I could live with serving with certain people in government after decommissioning had begun I would, I think, live with serving with them before decommissioning, on the basis that I would not be expected to continue do so if they failed to fulfil their obligations.
There is the question of whether the somewhat obscure "seismic shift" that seems to have involved IRA agreement to making a start with decommissioning shortly after the establishment of the executive can be revived, and given more concrete form than it then seemed to unionists to possess.
There is also the very real issue of whether if the UUP leadership went ahead on this basis, such a move would command sufficient support to achieve its objective. And, as Dermot Nesbitt points out with considerable force, there are the very valid unionist concerns about a ceasefire which seems to be interpreted by the IRA as not extending to the brutalisation and murder of members of the nationalist community who may have offended that organisation by drug-related activities, petty crime, or co-operation with the police force. Unionist fears that persistence with such activities could betoken an intention to set up, in Dermot Nesbitt's words, "an unstable mafia state" must command the sympathy of all who are concerned for the future of Northern Ireland.
All of these are real issues that need to be faced, and we in this State have no right to make light of them. What perhaps we are entitled to do, however, is to urge that what appears to be a possibility of creating a stable democratic society in Northern Ireland, for the benefit of all its citizens, should not be lost solely on the issue of living with an executive in which unionists and Sinn Fein participate for a short time in advance of the initiation of decommissioning.