IT SEEMS almost unbearably ironic that Gerry Adams's autobiography, launched at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin last night, should be entitled Before the Dawn. How many darkest hours must there be? Even Sir Patrick Mayhew, that most determined of optimists, has stopped telling us to "Cheer up, for Heaven's sake."
And yet, surely the Tanaiste is also right when, quoting Raymond Aron, he urges us "not to abandon the duty of hope". There is also an obligation, particularly just now, to keep a proper sense of proportion.
Sometimes the outside observer can see things more clearly than those of us who live on this island. Bruce Morrison, the former US congressman, remarked this week that the peace process in Northern Ireland had turned out to be a lot more difficult and complicated than it looked a year ago. We should not be surprised by this, or even particularly depressed.
Our problems are as deep rooted and intractable as those which confront Arabs and Jews, or the peoples of Bosnia. The difference is mainly - one of scale, that we have been spared the kind of bloodshed they have suffered.
Only last week, in a village in Co Tyrone, somebody suggested to me that perhaps if the violence had been worse, or if the IRA's ceasefire in 1994 had been followed by the splits within the republican movement that were widely predicted, the politicians might have been inspired by a greater sense of urgency. That is a counsel of despair.
It is still very early to assess the consequences, good and bad, which will flow from the massive seizure of explosive and bomb making equipment in Britain this week. But already there are serious lessons for our political leaders.
Mercifully, the threat of bomb attacks and the suffering they would have caused have been averted. But a young man, bright and full of promise, has been shot dead. I know, from my parents' experience as Irish emigrants in London, what sacrifices Diarmuid O'Neill's mother and father must have made to send him to a school like the Oratory.
The headmaster there described him this week as a "courteous and hard working boy". The fact that he joined the IRA, embezzled money for organisation and ended up with his body riddled with bullets is an indictment of failed politics.
But it is also a dreadful warning. Over and over again, we have been told that one of the forces driving the peace process is a determination on the part of all those involved that another generation of young Irish people should not be lost to the futility of violence.
BEFORE the letters of complaint arrive, I am very well aware that the overwhelming majority of our young people is never likely to be tempted in this direction. But Diarmuid O'Neill's death, like that of Edward O'Brien earlier this year, shows that another generation is already involved and that, unless we can bring the Northern conflict to an end through political negotiations, more young lives will be lost or twisted beyond repair.
In the short term, unfortunately, the most immediate result of the seizure of bomb making equipment by the British police is likely to be more attacks in London or other cities. The IRA has suffered a serious setback. It will want to demonstrate that it still maintains the power to strike at targets in Britain.
This is the more important because it appears that there is a real reluctance to restart the campaign in Northern Ireland. That would involve running the risk of a spiral towards civil war, something for which its own grass roots supporters have no appetite.
In the longer term, though, the losses which the IRA has sustained in Britain mean that hard questions will be asked of the militarists about the efficiency and effectiveness of its strategy. It seems to be accepted that what one might call "the peace party" has effectively won over a majority within the republican movement with the argument that a united Ireland cannot be achieved by force and that there will have to be a negotiated settlement to the conflict in the North.
To avoid a split and to convince the IRA to call a new and, hopefully, permanent end to its campaign of violence, Gerry Adams needs to be able to argue that there is the real possibility of substantive political progress towards a settlement.
Despite the hopeful signals of some degree of agreement between the SDLP and the UUP, it is frankly difficult to see this happening within the present talks at Stormont. There are a number of reasons, not all of them the fault of the politicians in Northern Ireland.
By far the most important is the degree of uncertainty induced by the prospect of a British general election and, to a lesser extent, the same sense of preelection nerves which is tangible in the Dail. It isn't simply that John Major is unlikely to devote his attention to the task of propelling the talks forward. Politicians within Northern Ireland are also looking over their shoulders, calculating how any hint of movement might affect their party's chances at the polls.
It is not an atmosphere in which either side is likely to take risks, particularly given the atmosphere of mistrust between the two communities which has not been helped by the news of IRA activity in Britain.
IF, AS now seems likely, we do have to wait for a new IRA ceasefire, what can be done to create an atmosphere in Northern Ireland which might make the prospect for the success of any future talks rather more hopeful?
There is no doubt that the damage done to the relationships between the two communities by Drumcree and its aftermath is even worse than most people feared. In particular, it seems that the anger of very many nationalists, directed originally against the RUC and the various Orange institutions, has now widened to take in a sullen resentment of the unionist community as a whole as being in some way to blame for what happened during the summer marching season.
This is a serious charge but it is the only explanation of the concerted boycott of Protestant shops in some Catholic towns and villages in the Border counties. Nationalist leaders have been, let us say, less than wholehearted in condemning the tactic. On the whole they have resorted to saying that if shopkeepers took part in loyalist blockades, then it is understandable that nationalists might want to withdraw their custom.
It is time for Gerry Adams and John Hume, who represent the overwhelming majority of Northern nationalists, to call a halt to this. Of course their community has been hurt by Drumcree and all that has flowed from it. But if the peace process is to have any chance of success, Irish nationalism has to convince the unionist community that it has nothing to fear from negotiations.
Threatening the livelihood of Protestant butchers and milkmen is not the way to do this.