BACK TO THE FUTURE

Once again the Northern Ireland agenda shifts, and once again the unhappy region returns to the headlines. Is it because the Protestant ethnic cleansers continue to butcher members of the local ethnic minority? Or is it because the leaders of the two major political elements found among that ethnic minority have been talking towards an agreed agenda? Or is it because the two ethnic streams seem further apart and more murderously disposed than at any time since the 1920s, the 1880s or the 17th century?

I don't know.

All of these things are true. There is talk of peace, but precious little that is tangible. Talk is cheap. Posturing is easy. Compromise and convergence demand courage.

The attempts by John Hume and Gerry Adams to find a common ground by which the IRA might be called on to cease fire may represent bravery as well. Bravery and, perhaps, foolishness.

That the logjam must be broken is undeniable. And since Sinn Fein garner one Catholic vote in three, they must be involved in some way in any meaningful settlement. Those people who support them will not go away.

Such is the logic behind Hume's discussions with Adams, his attempts to persuade the Sinn Fein leader that the path of progress begins with peace, that is with an IRA ceasefire. And the statement issued on the last weekend in September seemed pretty reasonable. Certainly, if everyone set out "to ensure that any new agreement that might emerge respects the diversity of our different traditions and earns their allegiance and agreement", then we'd all be set fair for life, liberty and the pursuit of our own version of happiness.

It is the subtexts which undermine this sunny prospect. I'm not merely referring to the culture of violence which has become intrinsic to the northern body politic. Nor the corruption of so many of the ordinary human and commercial interactions through gangsterism and extortion.

No, there's more. Not having read the report, I admit to some disadvantage. So I won't labour the point too much, except to say that, if the Irish Times report is correct, and Hume/Adams refer to "the Irish people as a whole" having a right to self-determination, then they are already up the wrong tree.

Mind you, it is as I would have predicted.

The question is, what about the British people who live in Ireland? Nationalists always incorporate all inhabitants of the island into "the Irish people as a whole". It is a curiously imperialist notion, and one based on the territorial model of nationality found in the United Kingdom.

In "Britain" one finds a territorial unit, an island, inhabited by various ethnic strands. British orthodoxy sees them all as constituent parts of one great inclusive nation. Irish nationalists subscribe exactly to this view, except that their territorial unit is the island of Ireland.

Their preferred system of government is republican, of course. But this small constitutional quibble aside, there is an absolute parallel. It runs directly counter to the urge towards separatism one finds throughout Europe at the present time. Bretons, Basques, Catalans and Lombards, to name but a few, all clamour for autonomy and reject the concept of inclusive territorial nationalism.

Elsewhere, in the former Yugoslavia and in the southern rim of the old USSR, these divisions have developed the kind of murderous overtones that we on this island have become all-too-familiar with.

Such a sense of overarching territorial coherence has its value, of course. One must acknowledge that Yugoslavia was a stable political entity for forty years, and that the heavy hand of Marshal Tito and the unitary state buried and controlled vicious ethnic passions. But it only works as long as the population acquiesces. Once they reject the consensus, you're fucked, and the outcome is the kind of disgusting monstrousness that has emerged in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia.

People in Ireland have got to make up their minds. Are they unitarists or pluralists? What is their Irish nation? This is important, because if nobody has much of a clue, if nobody gives a toss, then the definition will be provided by the forces of darkness. In the absence of an identity that represents the majority population, the agenda will be set by the small but vocal minority.

This is what is happening when two northern politicians talk of "the Irish people as a whole", and make representations to American leaders on behalf of that people. Do they represent the Irish people? Does their passion outweigh the indifference of that large majority who did not vote for them? If it does, then we may all deserve what we get.

I hope that their talks lead towards peace. I wish those endeavours well.. who wouldn't. But I doubt that any meaningful peace can be achieved without a complete ceasefire, and without huge compromises being made on all sides. Hume/Adams' apparent call for Britain to declare that it has no long-term interest in Ireland and that it will actively pursue Unionist consent to that end, is unflammatory to say the least.

It also begs another question: if the people of the south express no long-term interest in the north, as well they might, what then? Or, if they have already voted for integration into Europe, where does that leave all these old-fashioned ideals and objectives? As I have often said, the people of the south are far more respectful of the traditions, rights and identities of both sides of the northern ethnic conflict than either of those ethnic groups themselves.

Speaking as a southerner: we respect both the Protestant/Unionist tradition and the Catholic/Nationalsit tradition, and those unfortunates who are somewhere in the middle. It is clear from all manner of elections and polls that southerners have no wish to encompass either group. Furthermore, they believe that a solution must be found within the north. There is no point dragging in either of the big brothers: if the people up there don't want it, no coercion or armtwisting will change their minds.

My cynical view is that Hume/Adams, among others, are looking to find a terminology, a "set of signals" that will satisfy both the rationalists and the atavists. A wink and a nod.

You know the idea: all the British have to do is say they want out, and the IRA will put away their guns, the sun will emerge, and a new era of peace will dawn, with the umbrella removed from unionist intransigence, they'll see the light and settle down to becomimg good Irish folk; and the prosperous new Ireland will need their entrepreneurial skills and hard-headedness ..

All that wishful-thinking condescending sectarian rubbish. Both sides have a lot to give up. The nationalists have got to forget about their united Ireland (largely thanks to the violence). And the unionists? They've got to forget about Belfast being the same as Birmingham and Brighton being the same as Bangor. They're not.

The north will probably have to become a kind of neutral zone in which twin nationalities are accepted and recognised, like in Belgium, where Walloons and Flems live as distinct ethnic groups, but both are Belgians, or in Spain, where regions such as Catalonia have some level of autonomy, or Switzerland, where four quite distinct ethnic groups co-exist, thanks to the substantial autonomies afforded by the canton system, and to the constitutional recognition of each ethnic identity.

Whatever emerges will be new, however. There is no law that says that solutions must be found in either the tired terminology or exhausted conventions and structures of the past. Something new would be just as good. The problem is that in a region in which all legitimacy is derived from the past, and in which historical precedent is the foundation for political discourse, nobody seems willing to break out of the ancient stockades.

Time may reveal that the Hume/Adams initiative is just such a bold move out of the past. If so, it is to be welcomed.

On the other hand, it may be a convergence of views towards the establishment of a common nationalist agenda. If so, it is still stuck along the old ethnic faultline. Which has got us nowhere over the last three centuries and is unlikely to get us very far in the next either.

• The Hog