Keeping their eyes on the prize

The promise, inevitably, is that there are aspects of it that each of the disparate parties to the negotiations about the implementation of the Belfast Agreement will find difficult to stomach. But as yet, there is no firm indication as to how far the document can or will go in relation to the key questions that have been at the centre of the wranglings, and the accusations and counter-accusations, between the UUP and Sinn Féin: in particular, decommissioning and policing.

Without reading the document itself, all we have go on is informed speculation – and the straws in the wind that are provided by the public comments of the main players, none of whom wants to concede ground, but most of whom seem to be setting the scene for some kind of accommodation. The paranoid grumblings of Jeffery Donaldson and his Anti-agreement cadre of the Ulster Unionist Party notwithstanding, the mood on the weekend seems to be cautiously – very cautiously – optimistic.

By the time you're reading this, that optimism may have been routed. If so we are in for a bleak period in Northern politics – and more crucially in Northern life. Whatever its shortcomings, the Belfast Agreement represents not just the best short-term option available – it is the only game in town. Scupper it and the shit is likely to hit the fan again, like it hasn't done in years. The nay-sayers should be aware of this. If you refuse to go forward, then the danger is that you will slip back – over the edge, and into the abyss.

The summer has shown just how close we are to that precipice, with loyalist murder squads pursuing their grisly campaign of sectarian assassination, and with violent confrontations between Republicans and the RUC in the Ardoyne. During the past month I spoke to one thoughtful and progressive acquaintance, who has a senior and influential role in the North, and his sense of despondency was deep and unsettling. "There are mornings that you wake up and you just wish that you had been born somewhere else," he said. It's a feeling that is undoubtedly shared by a lot of people in Northern Ireland, who really just want to get on with the ordinary things in life – and that includes ordinary politics, with all of its potential for argument and debate and conflict – without the threat of violence that still overhangs everything in the place.

It is important to acknowledge first that Sinn Féin is correct in its interpretation of the position on decommissioning. They have stuck, as is their form, to the letter of the text, and they have delivered everything that they said that they would. The discipline within the Republican movement has been solid. And the leadership have taken a number of historic leaps into the future, hazarding an increasingly clear stand against the use of force in the politics of the North. In fairness, the leader of the UUP David Trimble also travelled some distance – but looking over his shoulder all the time at the DUP, and at dissident elements within his own party, he faltered when he might well have been better to go for broke.

In his case, speed was of the essence because the tide was – at least briefly – in his favour after the Agreement had been signed. Now, having stalled and delayed, his job, and that of his stand-in Reg Empey, has become far more difficult. By slowing the process down, he played into the hands of extremists on all sides, who developed a sense again that everything was still up for grabs. The vacuum was a recipe for disaster: it provided the opportunity for the anti-agreement elements within his own party to build up a head of steam; it contributed to a sharp downturn in his party's performance in the British general election; it put the Sinn Féin leadership in an embarrassing position, where any concession that they may have hoped to deliver would be tainted by seeming as if it was happening directly as a result of Unionist intransigence; and it gave fuel to the paranoia of paramilitaries from both sides, including those being recruited by the Real IRA, that they had better start preparing for a return to heavy action.

All of that is impossible to undo now. The challenge is to find a way, in which those who do retain a commitment to pursuing a peaceful path can go forward, that doesn't give rise to a renewal of the kind of deeply rooted and relentless violent conflict that was endemic in the North for close to thirty years. It seems clear to me that the rise in the number of sectarian murders being perpetrated by Loyalist gangs makes it virtually impossible for the IRA to make any dramatic move on decommissioning under the present circumstances. The people they represent have no faith – and have no reason to have faith – in the RUC, as an impartial police force that will protect them, or pursue those responsible for the sectarian killings with the necessary determination. But if the policing situation were to change, that double-bind might be unlocked.

I do believe that it is both necessary and desirable for Sinn Féin and the IRA to go beyond the letter of what was required of them by the Belfast Agreement. They have been consistent in insisting that the arms issue can be resolved. They do need comfort sufficient to pacify those within their own ranks who fear that the days of the Unionist veto are back. But the moment of truth is at hand in relation to decommissioning – or at least in relation to the beginning of that process. How long it is scheduled to take should not be allowed to become an obstacle: as Gerry Adams keeps saying, the guns of the IRA are silent. They do not currently represent a threat to the peace process. And with the passage of time and Sinn Féin's assimilation into the political process, they will become even less so.

The situation is delicate, to the extent that everyone involved has to take cognisance of the difficulties of the other parties. Now, however, is the time for courageous leadership. It isn't about saving the process – it is about saving the peace. It is about bringing the people with you, and ensuring that the groundswell of support is not there for the extremists who are intent on stirring up sectarian hatred and violence.

If the progress that has been achieved can be copperfastened in a way that ensures that there is not a complete breakdown in the paramilitary ceasefires, then that in itself will be a significant achievement. The most important failing of the Belfast Agreement is that it institutionalises that which it should ultimately seek to eliminate – the divided nature of Northern society. But it can act as a bridge – and in the space that it creates, the real work of eliminating the sectarianism and bigotry that divides people of both Nationalist and Unionist persuasion who have far more in common, in terms of their real political needs than they currently seem to be able to acknowledge, can go on.

Amid all the wheeling and dealing, the sulking and the skulking, it is vital that people keep their eyes on the prize. When you think of how bad it has been in the North, and the terrible suffering that so many good folk have been through, and the carnage and the murders and the atrocities – then surely, you feel, it must be possible to get the superglue operating again sufficient to ensure that we all can be spared a return to that.