It's up to gunmen to sort out arms issue

PART of the problem with the debate on decommissioning is that the history of militant Irish nationalism makes it seem irrelevant. We have the comforting precedent of Fianna Fail's early period as what Sean Lemass in 1928 famously called a "slightly constitutional" party, with an each-way bet on parliamentary democracy.

The parallel has a superficial credibility. Gerry Adams, like Eamon de Valera, leads a movement forged in the heat of violent conflict. He and his Sinn Fein colleagues are demobbed soldiers of destiny. He, too, is trying to retain the support of a hard core of nationalist zealots while engaging in a process of historic compromise.

If de Valera's gunmen-turned-politicians could let their weapons rust away without too many questions being asked, why should Adams's followers not be allowed to do the same thing?

But the precedent is a false one, dangerously illusory even for Sinn Fein itself. Northern Ireland now is not the Free State of 70 years ago. There are two immense differences that have a crucial bearing on the question of paramilitary arms.

One is that Sinn Fein, unlike Fianna Fail, does not have a reasonable prospect of taking power through the ballot box. De Valera could resolve the problem of his party's ambiguous relationship with the State by becoming the State. Sinn Fein will always be a minority party within a complex and delicate governmental structure.

Fianna Fail could make the arms question irrelevant by acquiring complete authority through the ballot box. It could replace the illegitimate access to violence of an insurrectionary movement with the legitimate access to violence of an elected government. Sinn Fein can't do this. Even if it were possible for it to be elected as a government in Northern Ireland (and under the Belfast Agreement it is not), it wouldn't want to be, for the state it aspires to is an all-Ireland one.

The other crucial difference between de Valera's situation in 1928 and Gerry Adams's now is that de Valera operated in a context in which the holding of illegal arms had been, within the previous decade, the norm. Any available government would be made up of people who had used illegal weapons, or supported their use, in the very recent past.

The essential choice for the electorate was between two parties that had emerged from the armed nationalism of the War of Independence. If an ambiguous relationship to violence and the law had been a bar to taking part in government, the Free State would have been ungovernable.

But in Northern Ireland now the body politic is not composed, for the most part, of people who belonged to, or supported, private armies. While many democratic politicians, particularly within mainstream unionism, have encouraged violence through their rhetoric, there remains a gulf between those who have formed and controlled private armies and those who haven't.

The political culture is not dominated by paramilitaries in transition to democracy, as the Free State's was 70 years ago. If some parties retain the capacity to threaten the use of force to achieve their political ends, the others will be placed at a disadvantage.

SINN FEIN and the IRA should forget the 1920s and start thinking about the coming decade. If it turns its gaze from the past to the future, the republican movement will see it is in Sinn Fein's interest that the IRA should get rid of its weapons.

Regrettably, we will not, over the next five years, see the disappearance of the gun from Irish politics. It is clear that there are, on both sides, fascistic psychopaths who are unwilling and perhaps unable to accept the democratic wishes of the Irish and British peoples.

The Omagh bombing, the use of torture and mutilation in so-called punishment attacks and witness intimidation in the Republic have given ample warning of the viciousness of unreconstructed republicanism. The campaign of bombing and intimidation against Catholics and the brutality of "punishment" attacks against Protestants have underlined the continuing existence of a hard core of thuggery and sadism within the dregs of loyalism.

The new administration in Northern Ireland will have to deal with these threats, sooner rather than later. And an absolute precondition for doing so will be the existence of an unambiguous distinction between those who support political violence and those who do not.

How can the Orange Volunteers be seen as illegitimate if the Ulster Volunteer Force, represented by the PUP within the arena of democratic politics, holds on to an arsenal? How can Sinn Fein, within the structures of government, condemn its former comrades in the "Real IRA" if its comrades in the IRA continue to pose the implicit threat of a return to murder and mayhem? How can the determination of mainstream democratic politicians to deal with a terrorist threat be taken seriously if those same politicians are sitting in executives and committees with the representatives of a merely dormant terrorism?

The reality is that Ireland, North and South, has not the luxury of allowing rust and bogwater to solve the decommissioning problem. If paramilitary violence were not an immediate and urgent issue, there would be great virtue in not asking too many questions and letting things take their course. Ambiguity has served the peace process well, but its usefulness is evaporating fast.

When children are incinerated on the streets, when people coming out of Mass have bombs thrown at them, when writers like Eamonn Collins are murdered for their views, when the integrity of the legal system is threatened by witness intimidation, there is no room for ambiguity. Political leaders can't concede to fascism by allowing private armies to rule by fear. Conversely, anyone who insists on retaining the support of a private army can't be a political leader.

SINN FEIN, the PUP and the UDP have to understand that there is no such thing as a la carte democracy. And they have to come to terms with the fact that, unlike paramilitary leaders, democratic politicians have to pay for power with responsibility.

They - not Bertie Ahern, David Trimble, Mo Mowlam or Bill Clinton - have to take responsibility for decommissioning. Instead of blaming everyone else, they have to make this issue their own. One way they can do that is by doing it together. If the machinery of government and of the Belfast Agreement can't solve the problem, then the paramilitaries should create their own machinery.

Why doesn't the IRA negotiate with the UVF and the UDA? If the IRA gives up a rifle in return for a UVF rifle, each side could avoid the dreaded accusation of "surrender".

By extracting loyalist weapons in return for its own, the IRA could finally give substance to its claims of defending the Catholic community. By giving up some of its arsenal as a way of destroying some of the IRA's, the loyalists could live up to their rhetorical self-image as protectors of Protestants. By solving a political problem, both sides could show they are ready for democratic politics.