Those who insist that it is not the objective of the Ulster Unionist Party to avoid sharing office with Irish nationalism are probably correct. Certain unionists, no doubt, are most anxious to share office with nationalists, even with republicans. You might say that what they seek is to prevent offices occupied by such people exercising forms of power over which unionism would have no control, but even this may miss the point.
That element of unionism which entered into this process in what looked liked good faith is, in effect, seeking the acquiescence of Irish nationalism in the rewriting of history. The Belfast Agreement gave unionism much of what it claimed to want. In particular, it delivered the effective end of the alleged nationalist claim over the territory of the North, unless or until a majority of the electorate there became willing to resurrect this.
In a sense, the agreement took care of the present and immediate future. But, being very much an interim settlement, it did not address what might be called the "permanent future"; nor did it seek to confirm the meaning of the past. Unionism's attempts to stonewall implementation of the agreement have been directed at consolidating control over both of these temporal territories.
THERE is a difference between nationalists sharing power with unionism and nationalist involvement in the government of a state run by moderate unionism. The former might involve an Irish nationalism exhibiting signs of growing self-confidence, with an eye to - leaving Irish unity out of the equation - the eventual re-nationalisation of the Northern state. The latter would mean a continuation of the status quo, the mouldy, dissolute state which has failed more than half of its citizens from the beginning. This fundamental choice of direction will dictate what happens in the long-term future.
The demographics are clear: within a generation, the North will have a Catholic majority. This, however, as we are frequently told, will not mean a nationalist majority, because of the number of "Castle Catholics" who favour the continuation of British rule.
But this is now and that will be then. A self-confident engagement by Irish nationalism in the running of the Northern state would have profound implications for the morale of nationalism, and therefore a major influence on the future drift of affairs. It is even possible that, in certain circumstances, once the point of absolute majority had been reached, the situation would have altered so radically that we might have a phenomenon of "Castle Protestants" favouring Irish unity.
This is essentially what is being fought about now. From a unionist perspective, any incorporation of nationalism into the governance of Northern Ireland, other than in a subservient position, would be the beginning of the end. Unionists have recently been appearing to negotiate around these questions only because of the immense moral pressure building up as a result of the scrutiny of the watching world. The "process" in which unionism is engaged, however, is one of creating the appearance of movement while taking surreptitious steps back from the line of engagement.
The main reason for the failure - particularly by the two sovereign governments - to confront the obduracy of unionism is that most of this reality has been partially hidden behind a veil of pseudo-morality. The Belfast Agreement was a no-fault solution, but this has come to mean that the perception of fault has continued to lie where the most effective propaganda had always ensured it would reside: with the IRA.
The trick of unionism has been not just to present itself to the world as put-upon by republican violence, but to persuade the world that this is the primary issue of the conflict. The fact that unionism ran a quasi-fascist statelet in which Catholics were ground underfoot is usually glossed over.
The objective of unionists in relation to the agreement is retrospectively to seek to pretend that the document they signed was not a two-way peace settlement but a negotiated end to a terrorist campaign, of which they were the entirely innocent victims. This tactic is designed to enable them to continue pretending that they are fully paid-up members of the human race, and also to dictate that nationalism joins the process of change in a second-class position. What it seeks, in effect, is for the world to say that unionism is entirely innocent.
THE challenge for Irish nationalism has been to make this reality visible. This has not been easy, because of the numbers of people of influence who have been prepared to turn a blind eye to both the nature and tactics of unionism. Right through this process it has proved impossible to keep unionism under moral pressure because, invariably, there were voices for hire - in the British establishment, in the Irish Government and Opposition, in the media on both sides of the Irish Sea - willing to help unionism off the hook.
In recent years Irish nationalism in general, and Northern republicanism in particular, has been ceding a succession of compromises with a view to reaching an accommodation. Nothing, other than rhetoric and moral indignation, has come from the other side.
But even in the wake of the debacle of early July, when unionism should finally be lying exposed in all its duplicitousness, it is republicans who have once again been on the defensive. And, for all that the armchair supporters of unionism professed to be outraged by David Trimble's dismissive rejection of the Patten Report on the RUC, be sure that the same voices will again within a week or two be seeking to dig Mr Trimble out of the trench in which he has half-buried himself.
Unionists never wanted guns handed in for the sake of reassurance, but because only if an exercise in decommissioning occurred would they be able to continue maintaining that there never was a war, and ipso facto, no context for one. Indeed, the unionists and their fellow travellers have recently been seeking to up the ante - against the possibility that some formula for decommissioning might be arrived at - and have started to demand, in effect, the full demobilisation of the IRA.
This is crystallised in the sudden emergence of the issue of nationalist youths being banished by IRA diktat as punishment for offences against their communities. In the five years since the first ceasefire, there have been many such banishments by all paramilitary groups, but it bothered few until the issue became useful to unionism.
The peace process, with its prisoner releases and other hallmarks of conflict-resolving settlements, has seemed implicitly to accept that what was occurring was an attempt to bring a war to an end. But there remains a doublethink at work which allows the unionist "war, what war?" version to dominate official thinking and public perception. Unless this syndrome is confronted, no progress is possible.