Looking at the British Labour Party conference this week one English commentator observed that the whole of Ted Heath's 1970 Conservative cabinet was to the left of the Blair government. It seems hard to believe, considering Heath was once viewed as an abrasive, hard-nosed, doctrinaire Conservative who took on the unions in 1973 and wanted businessmen in government. That was until Lady Hacksaw arrived on the scene. She showed them right-wing.
It is true though that Heath's government would never have dreamed of abolishing student grants, never mind contemplating 'top-up' fees. Foundation hospitals would have been out of the question and as for privatising railways, electricity, telephones or coal, that was unthinkable. The 1970s were another world.
It was a world Labour clung to until about 10 years ago, in fact until Tony Blair became leader. Although the members of his cabinet now subscribe to 'New Labour' policies, in the eighties many of them were on the left, and some on the far left of the party. Blair himself, the enthusiastic bomber of Serbia, Kosovo and Iraq was a CND supporter. Dawn Primarolo, the paymaster-general, MP for Bristol South, one of the safest seats in Britain, first came to prominence as a fervent supporter of Tony Benn when he ruled the roost in Bristol. In those days she was known as 'Red Dawn'. Now she keeps the purse strings tight for Gordon Brown: no new income taxes.
Some flirted with Trotskyism, many were, perhaps still are, republicans, English republicans that is. David Blunkett, who used to run Sheffield like an independent Soviet republic, has shifted far right seduced by that siren of home secretaries, Lauran Order, though others say he was always a Stalinist and his time in local government proved it.
The point is this. Although politicians deny it, they change their views on almost everything as years go by. Sometimes they change as they grow older, sometimes because they won't get elected otherwise, sometimes because they simply have to change with the times.
Here, the people whose public positions have changed most are Sinn Féin. The position they have reached now seems to cause outrage all round. They have managed to unite both unionists and dissident republicans in opposition to them, surely a unique attainment?
Of course opposition from republicans and unionists stems from different origins. For dissident republicans the current SF leaders has betrayed the movement, an accusation as old as the movement, since the minority splinter always believes their supporters alone possess the one true way to the Holy Grail. In reality they resemble the loony left of the British Labour Party, beached as the tide of socialism and Marxism ebbed finally in 1989, people still chanting 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out!' when John Major was prime minister.
Our equivalent, the dissidents refuse to allow SF to change. They would have them still reading Che Guevara and eulogising Allende even though the CIA had him killed before the majority of SF voters were born. For them history stopped 30 years ago.
For the unionists it stopped much longer ago, though they disagree when: 1690, 1912, 1921, 1972? Take your choice. They too are outraged with SF and won't let them change. They don't believe them. Maybe it's a trick? They too feel betrayed because SF are no longer the oul' Fenian rebels they knew and needed. If the IRA hadn't re-emerged in 1970 the beleaguered unionists would have had to invent them.
The one thing unionists can deal with is an armed insurrection. What they have never been able to cope with is political argument. That's why Jim Molyneaux said the IRA ceasefire was the most de-stabilising event for the people of the north. The nature of the beast had changed.
But while interviewers and writers accept that the British Labour Party has changed, that Dawn Primarolo has changed, that John Reid the health secretary, the Catholic former communist has changed, that Pat Rabitte, Irish Labour Party leader and former Workers Party stalwart, has changed, they will not allow Sinn Féin to change. The truth is, that if the present SF leadership hadn't started in the eighties to transform their movement, it would have been completely washed up by now. What their opponents, both republican and unionist, expect them to do is to cling to the kind of dogma which struck a chord 30 years ago when Ted Heath was prime minister, in effect to live in a time warp.
If the British Labour Party had done that it would have been out of business. As the dreaded David Blunkett said recently, a party has to change or die. Sinn Féin has done it. The question is, can the Ulster Unionists?
