Yesterday, in contrast with a week ago, Mr Spring and Sir Patrick Mayhew made it clear, in suitably guarded words, that their efforts to reach agreement on decommissioning and other matters relating to all party talks in the North were beginning to make progress. That is welcome news, if overdue. With the Forum election tomorrow and the talks scheduled to open in 12 days' time, the lack of any clear guidance by the governments on the shape of the agenda and how to deal with paramilitary arms, has inevitably added to the general sense of drift.
Genuine differences of principle are involved. But even when these are resolved, as now seems likely, it will be politics rather than irreducible demands which will decide whether or not the individual parties join in the negotiations or not. The preliminaries have been drawn out too long, too much energy has been wasted in carefully balancing agendas, each of the parties has been encouraged to believe that its own narrowly focused aims can or should be fully taken into account in setting out the rules of the game. Instead of being a means to an end, setting up the talks has often appeared to be an end in itself.
It has been right to insist that all participants and military associates should abjure violence, but given that there is no way to make that commitment irrevocable, the issue ought not to have been allowed to become the one on which the whole process may depend. As Mr Bruton said in the Dail yesterday, the approach suggested by Senator George Mitchell, leaving it to the parties to "consider" the matter during talks, offers a reasonable and pragmatic formula to start with.
One result of delay has been to reduce the sense of making history in tomorrow's exercise of democracy in the North. It is the first time, though indirectly, that voters are asked to support negotiators who will be responsible for finding a political settlement to remove polarisation and the fear of politically motivated violence, and lay the foundations of a new sense of community. That is an ambitious goal, with powerful forces of tradition arrayed against it, but it is attainable if the political leaders have the courage to forget the old slogans and see what dialogue can do.
What is the alternative? The difficulty in the North is that laissez faire has never been a sufficiently unacceptable course, and paramilitary activity, while generally condemned, has inculcated an understandable refusal to allow it to set the political agenda. The gain from an economic point of view if peace is copper fastened is obvious, but does it balance the loss perceived from making political concessions? One way or another, the administration has remained stable during 25 years of violence, the trains have run, grants and social welfare have been paid. The urgency of fundamental change, and the creation of political channels through which it can be directed, have undoubtedly been affected by this reality.
Mr David Trimble's article, published in these pages today, illustrates the point perfectly. On the day before an election in which his leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party has come under pressure, no new flexibility was to be expected. But his reference to the "little Hitlers in the Department of Foreign Affairs (in Dublin) and their accomplices in Stormont Castle", together with his toughening of the UUP agenda for talks, shows that the luxury of disputation matters more than looking for a viable middle way.
If the two governments are now close to agreement on the formal shape of the talks, their next responsibility will be to ensure that all parties are present on June 10th (with an IRA ceasefire in place). The political momentum must be regained.