Will we have a happy St Patrick's Day? By the middle of next month, will the efforts of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern have reinvigor-ated the peace process? And will May see an election that marks a truly new beginning, all sides starting afresh? Well, the effort is being made by both prime ministers. The intention is that both sides here – republicans/
nationalists and unionists/Britain – will be persuaded to play their part in transforming the situation.
The IRA will make a dramatic gesture – perhaps an act of decommissioning witnessed by respected members of the unionist community, or a declaration that the war is over – or begin the process of disbanding as a paramilitary organisation. Whatever form it may take, the belief is that republicans are, in Martin McGuinness's phrase, "up for it".
So far so good. If all or even any of the above were to happen, it would be a major contribution to progress by republicans.
And unionists/the British? Well, the belief is that unionists will go back into the executive and give a guarantee that they will not jump out again as they have done so often in the past. For its part, the British army will demilitarise. That is to say, it will reduce foot patrols, dismantle its watch-towers and spy-posts, and cut back its troop numbers to pre-Troubles levels.
You get the idea – balanced reductions of presence and weaponry by both sides, equal commitment by both sides to a new beginning. But whoa! Is this reduction equal? The new beginning, we're told, will lead us into an era where the gun has finally been taken out of Irish politics. In part this looks possible. There is talk that the IRA may publicly decommission weapons and set a timetable for the destruction of the remainder. If it does, it will be setting a timetable for its own demise.
However, no such timetable from the British army. There is absolutely no question – never has been any question – of their weapons being decommissioned, publicly or otherwise. Yes, there is an indication that troop numbers will be reduced, but that's REDUCED. More than 4,000 fully armed men and a few women who have been trained to kill other human beings efficiently and effectively will remain stationed in the north. So whatever about the guns of the British army remaining silent, they most certainly are not going away.
No such timetable from the unionists either. Let's pass over a stable executive, let's even pass over respected policing. There are over 130,000 legally held weapons here and the vast majority are held by unionists. The names of those who have them and why they still need them has never been revealed. But what doesn't need to be revealed is the fact that this vast arsenal will not be factored into any decommissioning sum. Not a bullet, not an inch.
And no such timetable from unionist paramilitaries such as the UVF, the UFF, the LVF. When UUP people like Jim Molyneaux or his political godson Jeffrey Donaldson want to sound even-handed, they end a speech attacking republicans by calling for the immediate dissolution of the IRA "and all loyalist paramilitary groupings as well".
Do they mean it? Have they worked to bring it about? Do you think the UFF et al will have decommissioned, disbanded, said the war is over by St Patrick's Day?
So there's the equation. On the one side, the IRA does appear to be preparing to bow off-stage; on the other the British army, the 130,000 unionist gun-holders and the hundreds of well armed unionist paramilitaries appear set to remain firmly on-stage, resisting all efforts to bring down the curtain and write a new, peaceful script.
At the anti-war rally in Belfast last Saturday, Eamon McCann said that in finding a resonance within ourselves for the plight of the Iraqi people, we were forging a bond with each other, drawing together across our divisions to act as one concerned community.
His words have a ring of truth. Certainly we're good at working together to combat distant injustices. Look at the Irish contribution to UN peace-keeping, look at our contributions to aid agencies like Trocaire, look at our exhilarating response to Bush's war-mongering
Only don't look for that kind of commitment to peace and co-operation at home. IRA decommissioning and disbandment, which unionists have so long pressed for, now look possible.
But any republican/nationalist who thinks that this will be balanced by the removal of unionist/British guns and their threat of violence, before St Patrick's Day or in the foreseeable future, had better think again.
