`I don't know if any of us realised how much we had been held back by the violence, just how oppressed we had been by the lack of peace." Often on these great public occasions, the most apt comment comes not from the politicians or their speech-writers, but from a voice in the crowd.
Joan McGuinness may not be quite an ordinary woman, since she and her husband ran a successful business in Dundalk. That presumably is why she was chosen to speak alongside President Clinton in Market Square on Tuesday night, underlining his message that peace has played an enormous part in the economic miracle that has changed the town over the past few years.
Media guru Eoghan Harris advises politicians to tell a story if they want to reach an audience. Joan McGuinness did that. She told of how her family's business failed and of feeling the anger and bitterness of the workers. Later she and her husband were able to come back to Dundalk and set up a new business which has prospered, with US support.
She reminded us of what it was like before the first IRA ceasefire, when it was impossible to imagine that there would ever be peace. It is difficult even now to recall the claustrophobic darkness of those days just a few years ago. We knew that there were hopeful political developments taking place, but, as she observed, our capacity for hope had been stunted almost fatally by 30 years of violence.
Even after the euphoria of the first ceasefire, few people in Northern Ireland believed that it would last. The trenches seemed as deep as ever. Bill Clinton's first visit to Belfast, that magic night when Van Morrison sang Days Like This and the leader of the most powerful nation in the world switched on the Christmas lights was the first time most people in Northern Ireland felt safe enough to show the depth of their emotions.
The cynics will say, "Oh yeah, and even at that very moment the IRA was making the Canary Wharf bomb." This time around, some commentators have expressed disappointment in the lack of anything new politically in President Clinton's speech in Dundalk. "A bit bland", I heard one academic say on television and I remember the days when we prayed for blandness in Northern Ireland politics.
The President was right to remind us that it is just six years since his first visit, when people were still trying to believe that peace meant it was safe to go shopping for Christmas presents as a family or to let the children stay out at night. Now the emphasis, quite rightly, is on economic regeneration and the minutiae of political choreography, but the momentum which has kept the peace process alive through the darkest days has been the determination of so-called ordinary people to believe the violence is over for good.
We know that President Clinton has played an extremely important political role in the nitty-gritty of negotiations. Over the past few days, we have been told again of his personal commitment and his tireless energy. Nobody, least of all myself, would seek to minimise that role. But it has been at least as important, particularly in the early days leading up to the Belfast Agreement, that the US President was able to give our own politicians the self-confidence to believe that they could do it.
It does no harm to recall not only the pariah status of Sinn Fein in this State and in Britain, but the patronising contempt with which most people outside Northern Ireland regarded the local politicians.
Bill Clinton changed all that. By making politicians from both communities welcome in the White House and listening seriously to them, he not only gave them more credibility at home and abroad, but also a new sense of their own abilities and of their responsibilities. This process wasn't confined to politicians. So often by concentrating on the meetings, the stand-offs and recriminations, we fail to realise how much the good health of the peace process depends on the support of ordinary people. Hope has to be kept alive at the grassroots to allow the politicians to move.
Mo Mowlam was the first British politician to put this into practice in Northern Ireland. It has become fashionable to sneer at her touchy-feely style, but sometimes what people need, particularly when the political process seems so intractable, is to know that those in positions of power do care about their fears.
The Clintons know this very well. As the President put it in Belfast yesterday, "peace is not a spectator sport". Hillary has demonstrated her own beliefs on the ground in Northern Ireland, which she did without her husband. By going out to speak to women's groups, meeting with victims, she showed how bridges to peace can be built step by modest step.
We know that there are serious problems still to be overcome, but, as anyone who has seen Billy Elliott knows, choreography can be a long and stressful business, causing pain to all concerned, before the dancers learn to move together in perfect grace. President Clinton's long involvement in our affairs has helped us to believe that we will achieve such grace. That in the end may be his most important legacy.