ALTHOUGH the signals continue to be a little mixed, I detect, at the time of writing, a strong sense that we are within a week or so of a resumption of the IRA ceasefire. If I am correct, then we need at this moment to breathe deeply and think hard. If we blow this opportunity, we condemn another generation of our own people to a lifetime of war.
We cannot afford a repetition of the mistakes of the past 18 months.
Whether we know it or not, the stability of the peace depends to a high degree on the tone and emphasis of Irish political smoke signals. I have no doubt that the shift in this regard which came with the removal of Albert Reynolds contributed greatly to the breakdown of February last.
To be honest, I'm not at all hopeful. I have seen no evidence that the lessons of the recent past have begun to sink home, either in the political establishment or the Republic's media. We still have the same tired old series of self justifications which made the collapse of the peace process all but inevitable. In recent weeks, we've witnessed some shadow boxing by the leaders of our two largest political parties, which marked out the territory in which hope will either be nurtured or destroyed.
Earlier this month, responding at a Fine Gael function in Mullingar to a statement by Mr Bertie Ahern at Arbour Hill two weeks previously, MrBruton attacked the "misguided" criticism which the Fianna Fail leader had made of the present Government. Mr Bruton said he regretted "the ambiguity emerging in recent Fianna Fail thinking, articulated especially by the current leader" which differed "radically" from the inclusive and balanced approach of previous leaders of his party, "who went out of their way to reach out to both traditions in Northern Ireland".
Mr Ahern, he said, seemed to want the Government to reach out "only to one tradition". This criticism was repeated last week by Government Whip Jim Higgins of Fine Gael, who declared that Fianna Fail had "become the willing victim of a reverse takeover by militant republicanism" and was "being harnessed to a dangerously one sided agenda".
In essence, Mr Ahern and Fianna Fail are being criticised for expressing republican aspirations and quite unexceptionably mild ones at that. What Mr Ahern had said was that "parts of the Government here seem to be more interested in chasing after an unresponsive unionist leadership than consolidating the democratic nationalist consensus which underpinned the peace".
The most immediate thing about this, it seems to me, is not that it is "one sided", but that it is the truth. What makes it somewhat exceptional as opposed to exceptionable is the fact that we have not heard an Irish political leader express these views in the recent past.
MR Bruton made great play in Mullingar of the concept of pluralism, a quality which he described as being central to the value system of this State. But what is "pluralist" about a republic in which republican ideas cannot be expressed? Surely this, too, might be called "one sided"?
When Mr Bruton speaks of "the pluralist and tolerant approach of the majority of our own people, who take Tone's words about uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter seriously", he betrays, I believe, a flawed understanding of the public mood. Yes, most people in this Republic would subscribe to Tone's ideas, but most know too that the unionist leadership has no intention of uniting with anybody or anything except the land of cream and gravy to the cast.
What we are offered by our political leadership is not pluralism, but capitulation. The notion that there is something "unpluralist" about pointing out that the leadership of unionist Ireland is intransigent, bigoted and hypocritical may be an easy button to press in the culture of guilt and fear created over 25 years of violence. But to do so is not truthful.
Over the past quarter of a century, this unionist leadership has said no to everything. It said no to ending discrimination and abuse, no to the ending of Stormont, no to Sunningdale, no to the Anglo Irish Agreement, no to Hume Adams, no to dialogue with Catholics and Dissenters. No is the" only word it seems to know. And yet, the majority of our political leadership, and virtually all of our media commentators, attempt to tell us that support for Northern unionists amounts to some form of pluralism.
What is pluralist about "no"? What is pluralist about David Trimble? What is pluralist about Ian Paisley? Nothing. And neither is there anything pluralist about the craven attempts by political leaders in the Republic to appease and placate them.
The central strand in recent political thinking in this State has pretended to be pluralist by bending over backwards to accommodate the unionist leadership. This yes, one sided thinking, by virtue of being deeply intolerant of the needs and beliefs of the nationalist community in the North, as well as the silent but passionately held aspiration to unity held by a majority of people in the Republic, almost destroyed the peace process.
For why should the British government seek to treat Northern nationalists as full human beings when the Government of this Republic is so ambivalent about them?
SUCH thinking remains intrinsic to the culture and politics of the class of people who currently dominate political life in this Republic. Little did Frantz Fanon ever imagine that his analysis of the post colonial condition, written several decades ago about European colonialism in Africa, might be fulfilled so totally and so succinctly in the Ireland of the 1990s.
The nominally independent, but in reality post colonial state, wrote Fanon, throws up its own class of native settlers who, having internalised the colonial ethos and perspective, carry on the colonial project in the guise of freedom. When John Bruton blurted out to Prince Charles last summer that the prince represented "everything we aspire to", he was speaking on behalf of this Irish native settler class. After almost 75 years of independence, he was telling Prince Charles that "we" aspire to being British.
What is wrong with this is not simply that it is an insult to the vast majority of people who call themselves Irish. What is wrong with it is not just that it is an insult to the thousands and thousands of people who laid down their lives for Irish freedom. What is wrong with it, most immediately and critically, is that for the past 25 years, such thinking has undermined each and every attempt to reach a settlement on this island, because in the final analysis, unionist and British intransigence was always endorsed from Dublin.
Unless this thinking is interrogated and dismantled, all the talking in the world will not lead to peace. We in this Republic, our leaders and those who claim to speak on our behalf, need to remember that we are not British, that we are not unionists, that we are not loyalists. These interests already have their voices and do not need an echo from Dublin.