Twelve years ago, at the house of a mutual friend in London, I met a young, up-and-coming MP, writes Ronan Bennett.
He was friendly, humorous and, rare in a politician, interested in others. We fell to talking about the Troubles, which at that time - 1993 - continued to claim casualties at a depressingly consistent level.
I didn't find him particularly well informed or to have any noticeably strong views on Ireland. His thinking ran along conventional lines for the time; which was, roughly, that two tribal groups, driven by atavistic bloodlusts, were engaged in an incomprehensible - to civilised minds - and intractable conflict. The decent majority were being terrorised by gunmen and godfathers, and local politicians could not be trusted with power. The whole thing was a mess and the only thing that stopped it being more of a mess was the presence of thousands of British soldiers and paramilitary police.
The security option being the only policy on offer, it was a case of defeat the IRA, or at least fight them to a standstill, then hope they'll just forget about the whole thing and go away. It was vague, expensive, inherently corrosive of civil liberties, had the unfortunate but predictable side effect of alienating large sections of the population, and could never deliver what its framers most desired: a stable and enduring political settlement. Not that this young politician was in favour of jettisoning it (I did not get the impression he was even aware of alternatives).
On the contrary, Tony Blair, then shadow spokesman for home affairs, repeated over dinner the mantra of those long, stalemate days, exclaiming at one point in our discussion: "But it's insoluble!"
In this he was no different from the great majority of his colleagues in the Commons, or indeed in the Dáil. In the early 1990s, politicians could not see how to make the Troubles go away. And then, in October 1994, the impossible happened, the thing that politicians and commentators said could never happen came to pass: the men of violence declared a ceasefire.
There were plenty of people who gave the impression of being rather discomfited by this development, who looked and sounded as though they were more at home with the hardened battle lines and ideological givens of conflict than with the new and mystifyingly varied possibilities of peace. David Trimble, then leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, was one. John Major, the Conservative prime minister, was another. Many media commentators likewise appeared wrong-footed - Conor Cruise O'Brien memorably issued a preposterous prophesy that the ceasefire was prelude to full-blown civil war.
It's been a long and difficult road from then to now. Ceasefires have broken down and been reinstated; talks have been on, then off; institutions up and running, then collapsed. One of the architects of the Good Friday agreement, David Trimble, lost both his seat and his party. Rejectionist republicans have set off lethal bombs, though not recently. Loyalist killers have been busy, and remain busy. Robert McCartney was stabbed to death. The Northern Bank was robbed. None of this makes for satisfactory reading.
Now we have the IRA's announcement that the armed struggle is over. Every Sinn Féin member or supporter I have spoken to accepts that the war is over for good. Some are enthusiastic about the development, others wary, most blandly pragmatic. The point is, though, that they all recognise, in Gerry Adams's words, that the time for armed struggle is past. They accept that republican weapons must be destroyed and that the process of destruction must be verifiable.
The IRA's move was signalled by Adams last April, in the run-up to the British general election, and so it can hardly be said to have come as a surprise. And yet, just as in 1994, Sinn Féin's opponents were caught on the back foot. Unable to produce a constructive or even coherent response, they have fallen back on the post-ceasefire tactic of simply refusing to square up to the changed political reality. The IRA announcement is a ploy, a cynical manoeuvre to lull a gullible British government and its over-extended military establishment into leaving the field. It's the men of violence masquerading as peaceniks.
It might have been expected that Ian Paisley would take this line and press Tony Blair for a lengthy decontamination period before any moves to re-establish the power-sharing executive, but it is depressing to hear other more moderate voices from the UUP follow his lead.
For here is the real problem: it is not that republicans are unable to give up the war; it is that many unionists give the impression they would actually prefer war to any settlement negotiated with Sinn Féin. It is not that republicans are unable to adapt to the reconfigured post-ceasefire, post-Good Friday and now post-armed struggle world, but that unionists are at a loss when it comes to building a workable strategy for the new dispensation, one in which the interests of their community will be best managed and protected.
The unionist failure after 1994 was exemplified by David Trimble. His and John Major's disastrous handling of the IRA initiative meant that no progress could be made until Blair's election in 1997. When it became clear that Blair, breaking Major's policy of prevarication, was determined to press forward with the peace process, Trimble had to be dragged to the Good Friday table. Even then he showed no enthusiasm for the settlement that made him first minister and Seamus Mallon of the SDLP his deputy.
Trimble's ambivalence was reinforced by Sinn Féin's continuing electoral success. If Sinn Féin had gone the way of the PUP or the Workers' Party, say, how much more congenial Trimble would have found the executive. But that's the risk you take with democracy. Trimble did not attempt to marshal support for the institutions among the unionist community: Good Friday had no effective unionist champion. In the end, unionist voters couldn't see the point in Paisley Lite, and turned a wretched, diminished Trimble out of Upper Bann.
The question posed by all of this is can unionism follow republicanism and make the jump from war to peace? For now the unionist middle ground is rudderless and demoralised, and Paisley refuses to do business. But let us be clear about this: what was only a decade ago "insoluble", according to Tony Blair, is well on the way to being resolved. There can be no turning back of the clock.
The war is over, Dr Paisley. You can pretend otherwise all you like, but eventually you or your successor will have to face up to it. And the sooner the better for all of us.
Ronan Bennett is a novelist and screenwriter.
Breda O'Brien is on leave