There is one glimpse of hope on the horizon in Northern Ireland. The traditional march by the Orange Order to Drumcree Church in Portadown passed off peacefully yesterday. The local lodge, with a membership of 1,500, could only muster 600 marchers after it was joined by two other Orange lodges nearby.
There was no paramilitary presence. The security apparatus was adequate but light in touch. For the first time in the nine-year history of Drumcree, it seemed that local Orangemen came to commemorate the Battle of the Somme rather than to re-enact it.
Perhaps this is progress in a divided community still grappling to come to terms with the public manifestations of two different traditions. For another year has passed without consultation and agreement on the means to balance the conflicting rights of the Orangemen to assert their traditions and the rights of local residents to live peacefully without harassment or provocation. The Parades Commission, which rules on contentious marches through the North's marching season, clearly took that view. It prohibited the Orange Order from marching from Drumcree Church along the Garvaghy Road in Portadown - renewing the ban which it has imposed since 1998.
For all of that, yesterday's Drumcree march was a victory for good policing and common sense. Observers of other Drumcrees on the first Sunday of July detected a mood change this year. Whether that was based on a resignation to new realities or a war-weariness with the showdowns of recent years is a moot point. What is promising, however, is that most of the marches at key interfaces to date have passed off relatively peacefully in 2003.
The mood change on the ground, however, is not reciprocated at political level. As the Ulster Unionist Party digs deeper into the process of disintegration, the political mood has got harder, less compromising, less open to an accommodation of the two sets of loyalties which divide the people of Northern Ireland. Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, Mr David Burnside and the Rev Martin Smyth have gone to the High Court to contest the decision by UUP officers to expel them from the party. The two government leaders, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern, are doing all in their power to be seen not to stand idly by while the Belfast Agreement comes under the greatest challenge.
It is difficult to see how political progress can be made to bring acts of completion to the issues outstanding under the agreement without the solid support of the leader of mainstream unionism. Maybe the mood change at Drumcree is a start. For the impasse in which Northern Ireland finds itself was well-reflected by the former President of the United States, Mr Bill Clinton, in Derry yesterday. Marking Mr John Hume's appointment to the Tip O'Neill Chair of Peace Studies in the University of Ulster, he urged people to think long and hard before giving up on the Belfast Agreement.