The state of drift that had settled over the efforts to negotiate a permanent end to the divisions in Northern Ireland was bad before the IRA bomb last Friday. It will be infinitely worse if it persists in its aftermath. And persist it will until the two governments show a credible sense of common purpose. That will mean profound rethinking of their heretofore divergent strategies. Yet, there are some signs of flickering hope.
Mr Major's statement in the House of Commons yesterday afternoon, and his television address last night, showed the dilemma the governments face. On the one hand, it is necessary to make it clear that violence has no place in the political process. Those responsible for breaking the IRA ceasefire, and their sympathisers, need to realise that they have gained nothing.
Mr Gerry Adams demonstrates a lack of political realism when he argues simpliciter that "dialogue works": what kind of dialogue does he imagine is possible with the perpetrators of the deaths, injuries and destruction at Canary Wharf? One of the bomb's casualties has inevitably been his own standing in the dialogue process.
On the other hand, there is an urgent need not to allow politics to flag. There is an understandable disarray among the political parties which accurately reflects public opinion. Without the appearance of movement, or the sense that movement is possible, a return to entrenched positions will be difficult to avoid. Mr Major hit the right tone of lack of recrimination and committed himself to the process of establishing confidence. He promised there would be open minds in London and Dublin. (The open minds in London will presumably extend to Mr Spring's proposal for "proximity talks" by whatever name called.) At all events, as far as possible, business will be as usual, according to the Prime Minister.
This is particularly the case with the main plank of British government policy, the proposal to hold an election as an alternative to an immediate start to decommissioning. As the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, pointed out last night, a number of questions still need to be clarified. The Prime Minister himself acknowledged that a substantial hurdle to the acceptance of his proposal has been the "misrepresentations" and "misunderstandings" that have surrounded it. But if what Mr Major has in mind can be shown capable of leading "directly and speedily" to talks between the democratic parties, taking account of the issues raised by Mr Spring, it offers at least a partial way out of the political deadlock.
Sinn Fein has consistently opposed the idea, and if some analysts are to be believed, it was Mr Major's decision to announce the policy in his response to the Mitchell report that provided the IRA with its pretext for the Canary Wharf bomb. It now could conceivably act as a method of bringing Sinn Fein back into the political arena. "Sinn Fein must decide whether they are a front for the IRA or a democratic political party committed to the bomb and not the bullet... The British and Irish people need to know where Sinn Fein now stands." Mr Major's hint that the answer could lie in electoral endorsement of a positive political programme by Mr Adams is a constructive approach.
So is Mr John Hume's imaginative idea of a referendum to which Mr Bruton, Mr Major and Mr Spring have all responded with cautious interest. The risk in such an initiative, of course, is either that the wrong questions will be asked or that the only answers it will provide are the obvious ones. But if any logic can succeed with the IRA (which claims to act on behalf of the Irish people) it may be the logic of a clear demand expressed at the ballot box by the vast majority of that same people for an end to violence. A plebescite in these terms it is not a million miles from an election on the now more carefully focused basis that Mr Major seems to have in mind, and the finding of the next step forward may lie somewhere in between.