THE first news broadcast of 1997 was ominous, signalling a return to bleak midwinter reality after the hopes of peace at Christmas. The news reader used an odd turn of phrase "The IRA has heralded the New Year by leaving a landmine abandoned in the grounds of Belfast Castle".
We have had our attention focused, much more sharply than we would have wished, on the fact that 1997 will be a year of decision for all the people of this island. Not just in relation to the North, though it provides a starting point. Ever since the IRA called off its ceasefire, we have been living in an uneasy no man's land between peace and war. Gerry Adams may describe this space as a de facto ceasefire, but it is becoming harder every day to see how it can last. On the contrary, it seems more and more likely that 1997 will see the die cast one way or the other - a return to violence or real progress towards a settlement.
The North presents a clear and terrible challenge, not only to the paramilitaries but to politicians on both sides of the Irish Sea. It also serves to remind us that this year the people of Britain and Ireland will have to make momentous choices about their future. The prospect of not one but two general elections will undoubtedly influence what happens in Northern Ireland. But these polls, what the people decide, will also determine the direction of each society into the next millennium.
In Britain the last possible date for a general election is May 1st. Last weekend, an editorial in one newspaper described the poll as "the most decisive in post war British history". The writer made the point that it goes far beyond the electoral contest between John Major's Tory party and Tony Blair's New Labour. In effect, the British have to make a choice about democracy itself.
The Conservatives have now been in government for almost 18 years. In that time they have demonstrated a single minded determination to put the selfish interests of their own supporters above the common good of British society. If the voters decide to re elect Mr Major it will say something profoundly depressing about how deeply the traditional virtues of tolerance and social responsibility have been eroded in the neighbouring island.
THE ODDS are steeply against a Conservative victory, but it could still happen. Unemployment is falling, real incomes are rising. Those who believe that that the only thing that matters in a election is "the economy, stupid" are hedging their bets. It does not help that many people are deeply sceptical about Mr Blair, mist rusting his apparent willingness to jettison so many of Labour's traditional beliefs and policies.
It's a view which many Irish people, who have observed New Labour's excessive caution on, for example, the North, probably share. So it's important to stress that there is a crucial political choice facing the British people and one which matters to Ireland as well.
Tony Blair and his party still represent the best hope that Britain will take a different political road more friendly to Europe and its social ideals, more committed to real constitutional reform, to the decencies and tolerance of its own past, to caring for the poor.
We cannot afford to be indifferent to all this. It isn't just that the lives of so many of our people are intertwined with what happens in the neighbouring island. It is also that what happens in Britain inevitably has a spillover effect here.
We may congratulate ourselves that we have outgrown our psychological dependence on Britain and are poised to outstrip it economically. But the relationship is far too complicated and close for this ever to become completely true.
The date of our own election is more problematical. The Coalition could survive into 1998, but our own political soothsayer (aka Denis Coghlan) believes there will be an election this year, possibly as early as March. The choice that laces us will be presented in less ideological terms than the contest between the major parties in Britain.
In theory, at least, there is a high level of agreement on the need for social cohesion and policies which provide a proper safety net for the poor. Yet, having watched Britain embrace the principles of free market capitalism and the social inequities that go with it, it seems to me that there is now a serious danger of Ireland going down the same road.
ANYBODY who has been reading the newspapers and watching television recently must have been struck by the self congratulatory, at times almost gloating, coverage of our "Emerald Tiger" economy. Of course, our political leaders are entitled to point out to us, over and over again, how well Ireland is performing.
Most of us who are lucky enough to have jobs and will thus benefit from Ruairi Quinn's tax cuts, are properly appreciative. But there is also a serious risk that this media hype about the booming economy serves to deepen the gulf in understanding between the haves and the have nots.
There's a growing temptation to think that anyone who doesn't have a job is lazy, or worse still, probably cheating the social welfare system. We saw these attitudes hardening perceptibly in the recent highly publicised "crackdown" on relatively small numbers of welfare fraudsters.
It's an all too easy step from that to believing that the poor are primarily to blame for their poverty, and thus for their increasingly hopeless exclusion from the rest of society. It's a view which Ireland has resisted for a whole lot of reasons, of which by far the most important has been historic, that most people were not very far removed from the experience of poverty them, selves and knew that they might fall into it again.
Now that experience has changed. The young, middle class graduates who move confidently between the US, Europe and high tech plants in Ireland have no economic uncertainty and are less likely to feel a sense of sympathy for those who do not share in their apparently effortless success.
There is still, just about, a consensus that issues of poverty and social exclusion do matter and that it is our duty as a society to address them politically. The fact that the Government invited several groups representing the poor and underprivileged to take part in the national negotiations on a new pay agreement is a striking example of this. But, as members of the Community Platform emphasised, the past decade of economic growth in Ireland has not solved the problems of the communities they represent.
On the contrary, it has created a deeper gulf and a more profound sense of exclusion from the benefits of prosperity so visible in the busy shopping centres. Being, invited to Dublin Castle to talk about poverty is a fine thing, but solving the problems of the poor will require a high degree of political determination. In Ireland, as in Britain, that should be at the centre of the election debate.