Will the Northern Troubles of the late 20th century be officially redesignated as a war, and will the consequence be an amnesty for the killers on all sides? It is hard to imagine a British government making that jump, but official behaviour was hardly consistent over the years. Tony Blair's embrace of a peace process largely created by an IRA decision stunned some, writes Fionnuala O Connor
More than 10 years on, there are few illusions left. The shifts towards power that have transformed politics and a drip feed of revelation about collusion have together produced a pragmatism - even among former zealots and those who prefer to think well of authority. Willingness to attribute good intent to a few public figures is a bonus.
So the group co-chaired by former Church of Ireland primate Lord Eames and recent vice-chairman of the policing board Denis Bradley inherited some goodwill as well as massive scepticism, as they set about their brief "to seek a consensus on the best way to deal with the legacy of the past". They came packaged with the uncatchy title of "the Consultative Group on the Past". They were handicapped from the outset because they were appointed by Peter Hain, amid suspicion that their main, if tacit, task is to pre-empt any further public inquiries.
This did not involve acute judgment on the group's membership. More than placemanship might properly be expected from the Eames/Bradley combination of public bonhomie, safe hands and quirkiness, with colleagues who include the independent-minded north Belfast minister Lesley Carroll.
Having burrowed away since last summer in private meetings with victims groups, police, ex-prisoners and others, and having been allowed to read the unpublished Stevens/Stalker reports into collusion, the group this week took their show on the road.
They kicked off by briefing the media in advance of a public meeting in a Belfast hotel last Monday night. Next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday they will hold meetings twice a day in towns across the North. If the Belfast experience is any guide, they will be wrung out by Friday morning and just when they could have done with it, they may have lost a fair bit of goodwill.
A briefing intended to elicit more individual responses developed a life of its own when a couple of broadcasts said the Eames-Bradley team wanted an admission by the British government that they had been fighting a war, and that to winkle the truth out of killers, there should be an amnesty. Many reports scrupulously interpreted these as options for possible inclusion in a report only due to be written by next summer.
The most thoughtful reported that "sources close to" the consultative group had been taken aback by what they had learned of links between security forces and paramilitaries, including the IRA.
But on what was otherwise a "slow news day", there were a couple of hard-nosed versions of the briefing. Retrospective declaration of war and transformation of terrorists into decent soldiers via amnesty barged into public consciousness as firm proposals ready for dispatch to Gordon Brown. For much of this week, the Northern airways and letters pages have been exercised by a prospect that may never happen.
In terms of taking the poison out of memory and compelling more thoughtfulness about clearing away rubble, this might still work out for the best. Only those who suffered little or nothing during the Troubles could imagine that peacetime means less pain. There have been enough accounts from the bereaved and injured to make clear that the spectacle of others congratulating themselves and society for "moving on" presses hard on bruises and stings those still raw.
Some feel silenced by society's new expectations, sidelined by the bewildering shifts in politics. Some may also be silenced by the pain of others, forcefully expressed. While two people audibly suffering post-traumatic stress shouted at each other last Monday night, others near them murmured and stirred uneasily. A few spoke at length and repeatedly, others not at all.
The man whose voice was the first from the floor asked how he could talk out his pain, since he lived in a hostel. He had been kidnapped, he said, then shot. Though often only semi-coherent, he hit similar notes to several others in decrying the "good wages" paid to professional representatives of victims. But his main complaint was that he had been "put out of" a victims' group. His ragged voice was a reminder of a wilderness of sadness and human wreckage beyond the reach of formal organisations.
The harshest problem of the night for the Eames-Bradley panel, facing a hall full of pent-up anger as well as polished professionals, was to get across the idea, without causing more hurt, that they have a brief wider than representing victims. The harshest result of the night may have been that some went home still silenced.