When, nine years ago, John Hume told me of an impending move by Sinn Féin to abandon its campaign of violence, I knew that this development would pose a dilemma for democratic politicians on this island, writes Garret FitzGerald.
For, if this move were genuine and not some kind of trick, these politicians would have to choose between persisting with their traditional rejection of any negotiation with this organisation in advance of the handing over of its arms and explosives, or, on the other hand, opening discussions with that organisation's representatives in advance of disarmament, with a view to bringing to an end the IRA's murder campaign and thus saving countless lives.
Of course there were bound to be those who would believe that this initiative was some kind of trap set by the wily leaders of the IRA with a view to securing a winding-down of security that would facilitate that organisation in restarting their campaign of violence in more favourable circumstances.
However, I took the view that this machiavellian interpretation of such a move by the IRA did not make sense - for the damage done by such a process to the capacity of the IRA to remount its campaign after a period of negotiation would be likely to exceed any likely weakening of the capacity of the security forces during this process. And after its experience of an earlier ceasefire, that was likely to be the view held within the IRA itself. Moreover, this IRA initiative was precisely what I had sought to achieve in negotiating the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. In starting this process in early 1983 I had calculated that by giving fresh heart to the constitutional majority among Northern nationalists, and thus securing a shift in support away from Sinn Féin and towards the SDLP, the agreement would make the IRA realise the futility of its "Armalite and ballot-box" strategy and ultimately persuade them to abandon the former in favour of the latter.
While the agreement had achieved its immediate aim early on - rapidly reducing Sinn Féin's electoral support by one-third - it took much longer than I had hoped for this development to produce the hoped-for IRA decision to abandon violence in favour of politics. But now, aided by John Hume's skilled argumentation with Gerry Adams and success in persuading the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Brooke, to clarify Britain's "no selfish interest" stance on Northern Ireland, the IRA leadership seemed, in 1993, to have finally decided to try the alternative political route.
Against that background, and regardless of the problems such a development would pose for the democratic governments of Ireland and Britain, I believed it was incumbent on these administrations to respond positively to this new situation. The compromises into which both the Irish and British governments were drawn by this process have, of course, been far beyond anything democratic politicians in either State had ever envisaged when it began. It is not surprising that not just Northern unionists, but many others, have found all that ensued enormously distasteful.
It is only when one thinks of the alternative - of the hundreds of lives that would have been lost if the IRA had continued its campaign, in which so many innocent civilians as well as members of the security forces had already lost their lives - that one is led, grudgingly and reluctantly, to concede that this murky process has ultimately been justified. On the other side of the equation, the undoubted courage and skill with which this process has been carried through by the Sinn Féin/IRA leadership, despite strong opposition from within their ranks, has inevitably evoked grudging admiration..
Disturbingly these qualities of the Sinn Féin leadership have gradually come to loom much larger in many people's minds than memories of the several thousand people brutally murdered, often in the most atrocious circumstances, by that same leadership in their ultimately futile campaign of violence.
The success of the Sinn Féin/IRA propaganda campaign, claiming credit as peaceniks for having decided to stop killing people, has clearly been particularly successful with some younger voters who have no memory of the 30-year long murder campaign, waged in the name of the Irish people, the vast majority of whom throughout repudiated the IRA and all its works.
Very few of that generation seem to be aware, for example, of the fact that, quite apart from the several thousand murders in Britain and Northern Ireland, the IRA's victims have included many gardaí ruthlessly killed during bank robberies in this State. For years past, most of us have felt inhibited from continuing to express our feelings about IRA atrocities because of concern not to destabilise the peace process. But this process is now well enough established to survive the truth being told, and as we approach an election in which clearly many people are being tempted to support what they apparently see as nothing more than a radical democratic party, it is important that we should not allow votes to be cast in ignorance of that truth.
It is also important that our genuinely democratic parties now take all necessary steps to inhibit the importation into our State of the vote-stealing practices which have boosted the Sinn Féin vote in Northern Ireland. This brings back to my mind having to tell Margaret Thatcher about the case where a courageous SDLP woman election agent turned away more than 300 Sinn Féin members seeking to personate - and for her safety had to be taken away afterwards in a police vehicle.
No one in this State who has engaged in politics doubts that attempts will be made to supplement by these means the votes that Sinn Féin will legitimately garner in three months time. But, because the practice of personation at elections effectively disappeared from politics in this State several decades ago, our political system is not as well geared as it used to be to guard against such abuses: tables in polling stations are no longer anything like as well-manned by political party personation agents as they used to be.
In more ways than one, the May election will be a test of our democracy.