Mercifully, no one was killed or injured as a result of the IRA bombs in Wilmslow yesterday morning, but this is surely the only scrap of comfort. This was a senseless and abhorrent operation which will only serve to exacerbate the divisions on this island.
In an act of what can only be called political vandalism, a prosperous commuter town outside Manchester was chosen to give what the British Prime Minister correctly described as a "two fingered insult to democracy". The monstrous insensitivity of mounting such a bombing just 15 miles from where Tim Parry was killed in Warrington and in the centre of a region with strong Irish connections, appears to be a matter of no concern to the IRA.
Until now, it was thought that the IRA would seize upon the opportunity afforded by the British general election to call an unequivocal ceasefire and position itself for the resumption of the multi party talks on June 3rd. The IRA leadership had a chance to display some courage and vision; the Northern Ireland Office and the Government had made it abundantly clear that a ceasefire would give Sinn Fein an entree into the talks; President Clinton and Senator Edward Kennedy have promised that - in the event of a ceasefire - US diplomatic pressure would be exerted to ensure Sinn Fein's participation in the talks. The IRA had an opportunity to build on these assurances; instead in Wilmslow yesterday morning it reverted to type, cocked a snook at the democratic process and returned to the trenches.
Certainly, it is difficult to detect much in the way of an overall strategy which might explain Wilmslow. It may be that the Provisionals are determined to remind the British establishment that they have never really gone away. It may be that the Republican leadership needs to continue this kind of low level violence in order to assuage some impatient hardliners in its own ranks. It could be that Wilmslow is the precursor to an IRA spectacular of the type feared by the security forces, or perhaps, a final fling by the bombers before another renewal of the ceasefire. Either way, the Taoiseach's view that yesterday's events only serve to expose the Provisionals' "politically bankrupt" strategy, has rarely seemed more correct.
The Wilmslow bombing will scarcely achieve anything of substance for the IRA. It will, assuredly, deepen the decommissioning quagmire that has enveloped the talks process. And it will stiffen the resolve of the British government, and indeed that of the Labour leader, Mr Tony Blair, in their approach to the IRA.
And still Mr Martin McGuinness continues with the customary mantra about how Mr Major alone is responsible for the breakdown in the peace process and how the actions of the IRA needed to be divorced from those of Sinn Fein. Mr McGuinness might be more usefully employed working out some of the contradictions between the long term analysis of the peace process developed by the Sinn Fein leadership which clearly identifies the need to reach out to the Unionist community - and a nasty day's work in Wilmslow.
He might also explain how yesterday's bombs in the North of England advance the objective of a new, negotiated settlement on this island?