After De Chastelain's report on decommissioning, Gerry Adams asked who would be most happy about the downturn in events? He answered his own question – Ian Paisley and Jeffrey Donaldson.
It has always been so. With Paisleyites on the outside, ambitious hard-line politicians and many gullible grass-roots people on the inside, constructive unionism has been hampered at every turn. Most attempts to facilitate the legitimate needs of nationalists have only been won at a cost to unionism because of its inability to engineer legitimate changes without attracting ludicrous charges of sell-out.
Paisleyites, working in an unholy alliance with fellow travellers inside the UUP, continue to hinder progress.
Gerry Adams must also be acutely aware of hardline reactionary republicans who are also happy. They share Paisley's preference for traditional zero sum games and may be enraged that decommissioning took place at all or that republicans take cognisance of unionist concerns. Most dissidents, unionist or nationalist, have a shared determination that mutual hostility continues.
Sources suggest that some dissident unionists are even reverting to Conor Cruise O'Brien style politics by turning their backs on the Union and advocating Irish unity as a means of avoiding having to make peace with their immediate neighbours. It is said they prefer to deal with Irish politicians supposedly uncorrupted by our violent heritage – an idea greeted with some derision by people in the south. This is only a ruse to disguise their refusal to build new relationships.
The DUP continues to struggle with itself. It was formed in violence – at least the violence of words – directed in the main, not at nationalists, republicans and Catholics, but at fellow unionists who sought a wholesome society free from the scourge of sectarianism. The real Paisleyite motivation is to be found in their old power struggle with, and envy against, Ulster Unionists. They find it impossible to rise above this entanglement with their archrivals. Unfortunately some grass roots Ulster Unionists listen to the resulting myths, distortions and reactionary rhetoric. Thankfully however loyalist paramilitaries, whatever their sins, are less likely to provide hard men to back up the reactionary agenda than was once the case.
David Trimble knows that real progress has been made and republicans have moved light years from where they once were. However Paisleyite rhetoric has found succour in the devious activities of republicans at Castelreagh, Stormont and Colombia and this continues to haunt unionist mindsets. The result is that those Ulster Unionists who took risks to enable republicans to begin to move from bomb and bullet now face uncertainty, frustration and potential disarray. On the other hand republican sources now confirm that deep frustration if not outright anger followed last Tuesday's events. Some republicans feel that unionists took everything and returned nothing but insults. They believe that unionist negotiators don't fully understand how deep this issue goes in the republican psyche.
But this ignores the essential difficulty facing the UUP and many others. We genuinely need transparency and the knowledge that things have really changed. Many, including the Taoiseach recognise the centrality of confidence building. We needed a 'Mandella moment' of such force that it would have silenced the fears of all who are prepared to listen. Instead a major decommissioning act was unobserved, unquantified and incapable of generating the necessary confidence. Nothing can silence extreme right-wing activists who need and heed perverted rhetoric about crushing the IRA or about banging on Tony Blair's table demanding strong arm tactics. Such neanderthals exist but most unionists are decent people who remain open to persuasion.
Over recent weeks and months UUP leaders as well as members have engaged in honest dialogue with republicans. Some of this engagement focused on future possibilities and republicans seem prepared to help the future.
They also have made significant efforts to understand and come to terms with unionism and Protestantism. Unionists also want to learn more about and to accommodate republicanism. In many relatively small gatherings possibilities of a new dispensation capable of dispelling the mists of despair gathering around the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone are to be clearly seen. Many such small steps could yet combine to form one giant step forward for all of us.
