THERE is a certain place which Northern Ireland never leaves, though repeatedly, imminent and final departures from that place have been announced over the tannoy. The place is called Square One. We are as every bit as bound by its infuriating demographic arithmetic and its compelling gravity to remain at Square One as photons of light must gnashingly spend eternity within the heart of a Black Hole.
The furore over the Mitchell report confirms that central unassailable fact. The Commission could never do what all the conferences and conventions and assemblies - which the British government has wearily conjured into existence over the past 25 years - have failed to do. It cannot reconcile the extreme unionists with the extreme nationalists in the North, even on that single, simple issue of guns, never mind, God help us, the complexities of governance of Square One.
No common ground
For there is no political commonality in Northern Ireland; the common ground of geography is disputed; the single garden of Gethsemane despatches different messages; the one myth of Cuchulainn is adduced to support two identities; identical words conceal opposite meanings.
And in the peculiar gravitational field of the North the centre is always pulled outward by the extreme. All deals done in the centre must be accepted by the flanks; every time the province is about to depart to a commonly agreed, glorious new future, the gravitational pull of one extreme or the other halts the departure, leaving us ever at Square One.
This is not a new piece of quantum mechanics. It has been evident from the 1960s, when Ian Paisley hatched Protestant mutiny over cross Border detente. Yet again and again since then, the impossible is attempted, as now, with the proposed but assuredly doomed round table talks.
Ian Paisley's DUP will never sit down with an armed Sinn Fein IRA. Never.
And any attempt to have talks without the die hard Paisleyites - as at Sunningdale - will be meaningless. Unregenerate die hards are the very people to do business with; the flanks carry the political weight in Northern Ireland, always. Yet still we try to get our gossamer spacecraft of accommodation and compromise away from the gravitational pull of reality. Gravity wins every time; and we deny it every time.
So Mitchell was drawn into this idiocy. "Decommissioning should suggest neither victory nor defeat," observes the report. What? The IRA is the Irish Republican Army. My loathing of the IRA is irrelevant. IRA volunteers take an oath of allegiance to a united Irish Republic, the one declared 80 years ago this April, which they will defend by force of arms if their leaders so choose.
During its "ceasefire" the "IRA has murdered at least eight men. Most of these killings were done with hitherto unused guns by new volunteers who were being blooded; and they were not being blooded with a view to careers as bullfighters or Foreign Legionnaires.
No surrender
Listen carefully: this IRA will not surrender its arms short of the goals set out 80 years ago in April, 1916. It has not fought its war to achieve some accommodation with the unionists within Northern Ireland. Its aims remain - a united, unitary Britless Ireland. The moment the Sinn Fein IRA leadership - permanently recognises any legitimacy to the unionist identity, rather than as a temporary expedient, it will be overthrown, as the O'Connell O Bradaigh leadership was because it supported a semi autonomous Ulster within a united Ireland, as were their predecessors who, too, sought accommodation with unionism.
That is why Item 20d of the Commission report, which speaks of the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations, speaks merely wishfully for the IRA will not disarm while the Northern Ireland state exists. Never.
And can the unionists come to the table with a still armed Sinn Fein IRA neatly seated there and talk to the men who might have authorised the murders of so many unionists and who are still armed? And if they can - and the if there is a cliff - what is there to talk about?
What can Gerry Adams agree with David Trimble that will not enrage the hard men of mid Tyrone and North Armagh, who are still fighting the Plantation of Ulster? What can David Trimble offer which will not get Paisley rising gravely from his seat, to start it all over again?
Everybody gazing at that still empty table knows that the no talks stance of the Paisleyites is supported by a bigger constituency than Sinn Fein's. It is staunchly Protestant, unionist, loyal, royal and orange; its entire culture and identity are founded on opposition to concessions, deals, compromises. Its gravity can prevent the spacecraft towards the planet of Peace and Harmony leaving lust as Sinn Fein's can.
Look around you. Do you recognise the landscape? You should do. It's called Square One.
Of course this is infuriating. Of course nice people in Northern Ireland and beyond wring, their hands and say, "Oh why can't these people be reasonable?"
Perfectly reasonable
Good. This brings us closer to the truth of this odd society. By their standards, these people are being reasonable. Republicans who accept the Northern Ireland state are not being republicans and their leadership will be overthrown. Loyalists who compromise their loyalty are not being loyal and they too will be overthrown. This is all perfectly reasonable.
Repeatedly we have seen formulaic attempts to bring the extremes of Northern Ireland to some central point and there to talk through some elected convention. Those who make that journey and vacate the extremes will find those vacancies filled by new individuals. Names change in Northern Ireland but positions don't. That is its nature. That is why we are at Square One. That is why we will stay there.