The President, Mrs Robinson's role as a roving ambassador for this State, shaping its moral profile on world issues and carrying abroad the image of a vibrant and changing society, has rarely been more apposite than in her visit to Britain, which starts today. Last week, the North had its election for the Forum. Today the Tanaiste and the Northern Secretary meet in London in the continuing process of completing arrangements for all party talks. Fresh efforts will be made this week as well to ensure that all parties are represented and Sinn Fein does not continue to disqualify itself. And next Monday, in Belfast, the historic attempt to negotiate a political settlement is scheduled to begin.
This is an unprecedented and somewhat crowded set of events, which the Forum election got off on the right foot. President Robinson's visit will draw attention to a consideration which can easily be forgotten in the onrush of meetings and the highly publicised differences of opinion in Dublin and London. She is, of course, already a familiar figure in Britain and the North, and her warm espousal of the underlying sense of commonalty that binds together the people of these islands, in spite of politics and history, has helped to keep the positive side of current processes firmly in view. As much as anyone, she conveys the spirit of self confidence and constructiveness in which this State seeks to build relations with its nearest neighbour.
It is important that this fundamental change in attitudes, compared with the position barely a generation ago, has become fairly widely recognised abroad. The simplistic portrait of events in this island that was usual until the 1980s in most of the media of France and other continental countries, the analogies made with grossly different situations, the glib misunderstandings of the complexity of the real state of affairs, have never served the majority of citizens well, and have helped to feed the culture of violence. Symbols still count in the continual process of eroding preconceptions, if only to show how matters stand at any given moment. President Robinson is visiting a country which is home to many hundreds of thousands of Irish people, who have lived there, often for generations, in harmony and friendship, and have helped by their presence to counter the bitter effect of the killing and the bombs. Their role, and that of the large number of Britons, in all their diversity, who have made their home in this State, has obviously been a steadying one in spite of occasional provocations. How much this is the case can be seen on President Robinson's visits to Britain, or when a member of the British royal family, such as Prince Charles, comes here: they test the current maturity of attitudes, and show not only the irrelevance of the stereotyped view of Anglo Irish relations but also how far a new relationship has evolved.
Differences of political, legal and social culture have been highlighted in the slow progress of the two governments along the way to all party talks and in more regular contacts, in relation to extradition, for example. These are normal between two different states. What matters more is that the capacity to handle such issues is no longer distorted on both sides by the influence of history on psychology or false perceptions of the problems that need to be solved. The likelihood, after President Robinson's visit to Britain, of a reciprocal one here by Queen Elizabeth is a perfectly logical sequel that will be widely welcomed as a further opportunity to bury the tormenting ghosts of the past.