I had to rub my eyes and pinch my cheeks when I saw the headline in Daily Ireland yesterday: 'Sinn Féin the only party in the Six Counties to back the British plan to re-organise local councils across the North'. Time was when Sinn Féin was the only party to oppose British government plans for the North – no matter what those plans were.
The strangeness of it all was compounded further when Francie Molloy broke ranks and voiced opposition to his own party's position on the matter, and then virtual surrealism set in when Mitchel McLaughlin, the Sinn Féin chairman, joined the battle to declare the Lord Mayor of Dungannon duly suspended from the party because of his public pronouncements.
Don't look at me, by the way, to tell you whether seven councils are better than 15. All I know is that the system at present is crazy, with bureaucrats and full time civil servants running the place while chamberloads of Orange and Green councillors shout and yell at each other over, well... nothing really.
Yes, the councils provided a democratic forum of sorts but they have existed for so long with no real power they have become a joke. After the craic of the elections there was nothing in there to write home about.
I accept there are and always have been some very fine local councillors who work day and night for their constituents and we all would have been in a right mess without them.
It's also true to say the local councils provided a much needed training ground for a new breed of politician here, people who would normally have been full-time, elected parliamentarians except for the fact we did not have a normal, full-time parliament.
But the system needed a change and the proposed overhall is probably as good as it gets. Seven councils could probably serve the 1.7 million (if that indeed is the correct figure) inhabitants of the six counties as well as 15 could. Certainly it will be better than what we have.
The real test will be how the new councils provide services for the community. The real test will be how the new councils deal with enhanced powers.
For the time seems to be coming – I certainly hope so, anyway – when the (seven) local councils in the six counties are able to function as powerful tools of local democracy, following the British government returning powers that were removed from them over 30 years ago.
In the days of the old Stormont regime the local councils were little more than instruments of anti-Catholic, sectarian discrimination. All has changed, however, and we are going to have to get used to the idea of governing ourselves at local level, as well as at Stormont level and above and beyond.
And let's not get too carried away with the idea of Orange councils east of the Bann and Green councils west of the Bann with game on for Belfast. The fact of the matter is that society here is split into Orange and Green and we are just going to have to learn how to co-operate and get along.
The unionists are probably right when they say the whole shebang reeks of a secret deal done between Sinn Féin and the British. I don't mean for that to sound pejorative, its just that it probably was the result of a secret deal done between the British and Sinn Féin. And there are probably a whole rake of other deals done between the same two parties that may or may not come to light in the future.
Let's not forget the IRA and the British were engaged in a shooting and bombing war since 1970 until last August so, yes, deals were done in order to achieve peace. And so what?
We will also have to get used to the idea of Sinn Féin agreeing with the British government, either on their own or in the company of other parties.
We will soon be getting sight of the legislation that will devolve power for policing to a new Department for Justice at Stormont. The legislation regarding OTRs is already passing through the British parliament. Soon we will hear Hugh Orde setting out plans to do away with the Special Branch, and maybe even something about the use of plastic bullets.
All of which will enable Sinn Féin to take their seats on the policing boards and eventually recommend that nationalists join the PSNI.
Well, is there anyone out there who seriously believes that Sinn Féin will not take their place on the Policing Boards, nor recommend nationalists to join? When the time is right they will do so, and nationalists will just have to get used to the idea of being in the police here, running the police here, being in charge of the police – indeed, being in charge of the Department of Justice itself.
And why should it be otherwise? We just can't sit back and let unionists run the police forever, decide on the ethos of the police forever, be the majority in the police for ever.
Of course nationalists will take up the running of the police, just as they will take up the running of every aspect of state here. And they will transform every aspect of the state here to turn them into Irish institutions. And that is they way to achieve equality and a united Ireland.
