Nobody has emerged from the decades of conflict in the North and been able to say, I Was Right All Along. Modesty in self-assessment and modesty in language are our common requirements; and this I know as well as most, because I poured scorn on the peace process, regarding it as a ploy by the McAdams faction to further their ends, and no more than that.
Of course, it's complicated - they do want the peace process to further their ends, but that can only be possible in a consensual way within the odd, Heath Robinson political institutions which have been devised for Northern Ireland. We all know the impediment that lies before their admission to those institutions, and the atrocious murder of Rosemary Nelson makes that impediment all the more obvious, and all the more unavoidable.
It is clear: it will not be possible to decommission the weaponry of groups which form and reform around existing arsenals. The Red Hand Defenders, The Orange Commandos, The Sons of Ulster, The Guardians of the Walls and Whatever You're Having Yourself - they are drawn from the peripheries of loyalism to stocks of weaponry. The gun causes the people to form themselves around it and to revere it. It is the master, not the people themselves; it is as powerful as any tribal totem, and those who are loyal to it cannot surrender it, because it makes them what they are.
Apostolic succession
And so it is too on the republican side. The weapons dump has command of the apostolic succession of the IRA. Who holds the weapon is the heir of the men of 1916, of Kilmichael, of Crossbarry, of Balkan Street. The guns used in 1969 against the RUC conferred the authority of apostolic succession on those who bore them. The mantle had fallen onto their shoulders, and one day it would pass onto other shoulders; and so it goes. The men are defined by the weaponry. It gives them moral authority; it puts them within a historical lineage and places upon their shoulders a duty and a burden as vast as that felt by any bishop when the mitre is placed on his head.
This does not mean I like or respect these people; quite the reverse. I loathe and detest them with every breath in my body. But now is not the time to talk hatred; now is the time to talk of what is possible. Is it possible for the IRA to surrender its weapons? It is not. Is it possible for loyalist paramilitaries, with a different culture, and without that sense of apostolic tradition which is the leitmotif of republicanism, to surrender their weaponry? It is not. The gun defines them, and they will gather and worship at a half-brick if necessary.
I admire Ronnie Flanagan enormously. He is a man of great courage and transparent honesty, and he and his force, for all its imperfections, have been the guardians of civilisation in recent years. He recently spoke of the need to keep the various paramilitary groups intact so that their discipline can be used to maintain the ceasefire; with the utmost diffidence, I have to say, he is wrong.
Inevitable splits
Splits are not only inevitable, but they are welcome. Let factions form around arsenals. Let maddened men croon their tribal ditties beside assault-rifle and gelignite. What is important is that those with mandates to enter the executive of Northern Ireland are enabled to do so; and that is politically and morally possible only when they have made that short journey from the cult of the gun into the sunlight of open politics. Others have made that journey before. Dan Breen. De Valera. Sean MacBride. Proinsias De Rossa.
The split must come. It is morally inconceivable and politically preposterous for executive members to have paramilitary allies which, by the possession of guns and the transmission of oaths and covert loyalty, are in a condition of permanent and subversive illegality. It is not difficult to see or understand the impossibility of such arrangements. Nor should it be difficult to see how men and women who have formed their cult around the gun cannot surrender that gun; as soon might a priest surrender the consecrated host.
Let them continue their pagan worship of the gun. Others who once worshipped at the same shrine have seen other gods, other truths. They have been given a mandate - not just by their local electorates, but by the peoples of the island of Ireland - to form part of the government of Northern Ireland. This not just a matter of volition; it is one of obligation. How can we make possible what the people have demanded?
Blaming the RUC
We certainly cannot if Sinn Fein leaders respond to the murder of Rosemary Nelson by instantly blaming the RUC. Was it the RUC who threw a bomb at the RUC men holding the line at Drumcree, fatally injuring Constable Frank O'Reilly? Was it the RUC who booby-trapped the car of UDA men Glen Greer in Bangor, killing him? Was it the RUC who booby-trapped Eddie Copeland's car in Ardoyne?
If parroting sound-bites is how Sinn Fein responds to every crisis - and crises aplenty lie before us in the coming months - then we are inescapably doomed to re-experience all the sorrows we thought we were escaping from.