Martin McGuinness said on RTÉ radio this week that he and Ian Paisley, for all their friendly working relationship, have yet to discuss the past roles each of them played in the Troubles. It is easy to understand why, in the aftermath of so visceral and bitter a conflict, it might seem best to wrap recent history in a shroud of silence.
That judgment may appear to be vindicated by the first public meeting in Belfast of the Consultative Group on the Past, led by former Church of Ireland primate Lord Robin Eames and former Policing Board vice-chairman Denis Bradley, which is examining ways of dealing with the legacy of the Troubles. Much of the meeting was taken up with criticism of the group from relatives of victims from both communities - a reminder of how hard collective remembrance can be in a divided society whose wounds are still raw.
Yet oblivion is not an option. We know from harsh experience on this island that if past conflicts are ignored, they do not merely disappear. The Troubles themselves were fuelled by the selective tribal recall in which grief becomes grievance and memory becomes mythology. Each side remembers the agony it has suffered, but forgets the pain it has inflicted. The dead are not allowed to rest in peace, but are recruited symbolically to fight in renewed episodes of violence. If the current peace settlement is to be what we hope it is - a historic end to political violence - it must include a collective acknowledgment of the suffering caused by both paramilitaries and the state.
Some factors specific to the Troubles make the work of the Eames-Bradley group all the more important. Over 2,000 of the 3,600 killings are unsolved, meaning that a majority of bereaved families have never had a judicial process to offer them some kind of closure. Many of those who were convicted were released as part of the peace process. And the "abject and true remorse" offered by Gusty Spence when he announced the Loyalist ceasefires, has not been evident among the paramilitaries. Republicans still configure their campaign as a "war" against the army and police, even though a majority of their victims were civilians. Loyalists still maintain that they were "defenders of their communities", even when they were murdering innocent Catholics.
No process will ever assuage all ideological bitterness or appease the hurt and anger of all those whose lives have been ruined. The signs are, moreover, that the report of the Eames-Bradley group, when it is published in the summer, may be more disturbing than emollient. It may raise uncomfortable issues for both the British and Irish governments, for political parties, the media and the churches. It may challenge society on both sides of the Border to take the hard road to reconciliation, by way of truth, acknowledgment, apology and a serious commitment to non-violence. The group may find that it has to cause some pain in order to heal the greater hurt, but it should not be deflected from its crucial task.