One puzzle about last week's three-day session of Northern Ireland talks was how Leeds Castle came to be in Kent. The explanation would be familiar to those who have seen Brian Friel's Translations or are aware of John O'Donovan's efforts to establish the correct Irish place-names in the 1830s under the Ordnance Survey. It is a derivation of a Saxon name Esledes, writes Martin Mansergh
Like the great castles of Wales, Edward I extended and further fortified Leeds Castle, and honeymooned there with his second wife.
In a detail omitted by Shakespeare, Richard II was imprisoned there briefly in 1399, between the Tower and Pontefract, where he was murdered, following his forced abdication. An alliance negotiated there in 1416 between Henry V and the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, who stayed a month with an expensive retinue, came to nothing. Henry VIII stopped there on his way back from France and the Low Countries in 1544.
Ownership of the castle passed to Sir Anthony St Leger, a former Lord Deputy, who had grown rich from the dissolution of the monasteries in Ireland. Leeds Castle was used by parliament in the Civil War. Its present opulent interior, like that of many great houses, owes much to a wealthy Anglo-American, Lady Baillie, daughter of an aristocrat and grand-daughter of a US Navy Secretary.
Apart from the relative seclusion such talks require, a striking historic setting heightens the atmosphere.
It is unnecessary to refer explicitly to the hand of history, when the visual backdrop says it all.
The latest talks took place 10 years after the first ceasefires, and two years since suspension of the Assembly.
It is high time to conclude the peace process and move beyond it. The talks were about agreeing a basis for ending all forms of paramilitarism, disposing of the sinews of war, establishing a consensus of support for a new and then devolved dispensation on policing, all so as to restore political institutions on a stable and enduring basis.
Often in situations where no agreement is concluded, it is difficult to pinpoint the main difficulty. This time, it was possible to narrow down the main source of disagreement to the issue still exercising the DUP of improving the accountability of internal Northern Ireland and North-South institutions, even though this was not what precipitated their collapse.
The DUP came to the negotiations as victorious outsiders, still adjusting from opposition to responsibility. They had no part in the Belfast Agreement, but took up ministerial positions on a semi-detached basis. They were outside the loop of discussions in the Executive and the North-South Ministerial Council. With the exception of Jeffrey Donaldson, formerly UUP, they were new to intensive post-Belfast Agreement negotiating sessions. It would be tempting, but pointless at present, to apportion blame for the inconclusive outcome. Instead, extra time has been given to try and secure agreement on the institutional issues, so as to unlock the potential for a general advance. In a process designed to be inclusive, the full inclusion of the DUP is important.
The operation of the North-South institutions was practically without controversy. Their modus operandi was tied down, so as to make solo runs and "unholy" North-South alliances impossible. North-South co-operation, in practical terms, may be of even more advantage to the North than to the South. Tourism would be an obvious example. Support for Ulster-Scots would be another. Energy co-operation, an obvious next step, would be a third, as would restoration of the Ulster Canal, once the institutions are restored. Business confidence, as well as relations on the ground, would be helped by a return to devolved institutions.
One cannot posit as a principle of government a reserved right to overturn its decisions by the assembly to which it is responsible. While that power resides in all parliaments, its exercise on a matter of importance precipitates the fall of the government. Government ministers normally have considerable discretion. They can take many decisions without reference to cabinet.
The DUP proposes to remove such discretion. Genuine power-sharing means accepting that ministers, both unionist and nationalist, exercise at least some autonomous power. Two decisions by Sinn Féin ministers in the Executive annoyed Unionists. One was the abolition of the 11-plus exam by Martin McGuinness, bringing Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK, in accordance with overwhelming professional advice. The unionist working class are as much losers by selection as nationalists. The other decision was the finely balanced one by Bairbre de Brún to locate maternity services at the Royal Victoria Hospital. A DUP minister might have made a different decision. Would that have been more just?
Power-sharing means that, just occasionally, unlike in the past, strategic decisions respond more closely to nationalist needs or convenience, though there is a unionist community in west Belfast, as there is in Derry.
To revert to Saxon times, last Sunday fortnight, following the British-Irish Association Conference, I attended an extraordinary multicultural Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. The service was the St Frideswide procession, named after the founding saint, where the whole congregation processes round the cathedral in atonement of a terrible massacre by the Saxons of Danish settlements in 1002. Danish families sought refuge in the church, and were burnt alive on the orders of King Ethelred "the Unready".
Two years later, in penance for this terrible deed, the service sheet would have us believe, he founded a new church on the same site, which would have been a remarkable example at that time. Actually, he was unrepentant, like many war leaders of a later age, referring to the Danes as "tares among wheat", and the event as "a most just slaughter".
The best atonement to be expected in our time is, before too long, a final breakthrough to an enduring peace.