The murders of three children by loyalists in Ballymoney at the weekend have brought Northern Ireland back to its essential reality. Once again, as between 1969 and 1972, the world can see the true nature of the problem. If it is possible to talk of such obscene occurrences in terms of advances, the most striking aspect of events is the extent to which the success of the republican peace strategy is now manifest. It is a long time since we have witnessed the Orange monster in such full gallop without a significant violent response from the nationalist community.
It is essential that the republican movement does not again descend to the level of its enemies. From a tactical viewpoint, republicans are now close to undoing the strategic damage done to their cause by 25 years of armed struggle.
It is a persuasive idea, in the wake of the barbarism of the past week, that the IRA's place is in defence of the nationalist community. But this time the IRA must leave the defence of its people to the security forces. It is not so much that nationalists must rely on the institutions of what remains a sectarian state, rather that they must test the resolve of the Blair government before the watching world. It is not thought proper to speak in this way about republican tactics. The fact that Sinn Fein activists are engaged in leading nationalist responses to Orange marches in beleaguered communities like Garvaghy Road is supposed to be a matter deserving of the deepest disapproval by right-thinking citizens. But even if these annual carnivals of fascism were not indeed a deep source of fear and resentment in such communities, the generation of organised opposition to them would be a perfectly legitimate political recourse.
I would have thought that any form of political activity might be thought preferable to bombing and assassination, and yet the critics of republicanism apply the same condemnatory logic to the involvement of Sinn Fein activists in orchestrating opposition to Orange marches as they do to the slaughter of children in their beds.
BUT you can now see, just below the surface of public discussion, the changes happening virtually by the minute. The most important of these has been the beginnings of the restoration of the moral claim of Irish republicanism, which for 25 years had been caught in the vice created by IRA violence and the official and public response to it.
Now we can observe the gradual but accelerating decontamination of the nationalist cause, which in turn has altered the paradigm in which the conflict is viewed internationally. For many years, the situation was interpreted by one of its principal participants, the British government, with Irish administrations providing back-up to the British propaganda version of the conflict and the correct approach to its resolution.
The change that has occurred relates primarily to the enhanced role of Irish-America during the Clinton years. Heretofore, the world looked to London for its cues and clues; today, London looks to Washington, which in turn looks to Dublin. This in itself would not have been effective were it not for the remarkable changes occurring in Southern attitudes to the North. Previously, the innate, acute perception of the reality of Northern society which existed, for example, in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, had been buried under an icy mass of guilt and shame as a result of IRA violence and years of bullying by revisionists and neo-unionists.
But the thaw that set in with the ending of the Provisionals' campaign has caused the perceptions of this society to drift back to where they lay at the start of the conflict. One of the most interesting studies is watching commentators who have made careers out of denouncing republicanism as they squirm and wriggle aboard the peace train.
I am fascinated by what I call the Teletubbie syndrome, whereby those who had become trapped in demonising Irish nationalism and uncritically defending unionism take a look around the post-ceasefire landscape and go "Uh-oh".
ONE interesting exchange recently spilled over into this very space, when the temporary incumbent, Ruth Dudley Edwards, engaged in public wrestling with the former Progressive Democrat TD Mr Michael McDowell. Mr McDowell had written a rather sensible article in the Sunday Independent, in which he made the unexceptionable observation that Orange marches are sectarian.
In consequence, he and Ms Dudley Edwards ended up squabbling in print and on national radio about which part of Ireland is the most unwell. Mr McDowell claimed that Northern society was "sick", and Ms Dudley Edwards retorted with a moving account of her efforts to defend Southern society "against those Ulster Protestants who believe it is a corrupt banana republic where paedophile priests prey on the young".
What both worthies overlooked is the extent to which the undoubted sickness of both societies has a common cause - British interference and occupation - which Mr McDowell and Ms Dudley Edwards have not merely refused to acknowledge but actively sought to conceal and deny. Up until recently, they were the cosiest of bedfellows. Ms Dudley Edwards has for years engaged in rabid attacks on republicans past and present, and Michael McDowell will be remembered as one of the unpardonably rude posse which ambushed Gerry Adams on his first post-Section 31 Late Late Show appearance.
But Mr McDowell, as the grandson of Eoin MacNeill, most pertinently remembered as the man who tried to stop the 1916 Rising, comes from an honourable if occasionally misguided tradition in Irish republicanism. That the IRA ceasefire has liberated people like him to speak what is in their hearts, rather than what they feel obliged to say for moralistic effect, is no minor achievement.
We have a long way to go on our journey back to truth and health. Even as late as last week, we had to suffer the many mealy-mouthed politicians and churchmen, columnists and leader-writers who would have us believe that the intractability of the parades issue is a question of intransigence on both sides.
It took the deaths of three innocent children for this dishonesty to be abandoned. It is a terrible price, but perhaps these deaths will not have entirely been in vain if their shocking reality can be allowed to linger long and loudly in the arena of world opinion, exposing once again the fundamental truth that what is at stake in Northern Ireland is that there can be no yielding to fascism, that the core of the sickness is Orangeism, and that this so-called "cultural tradition" which we are enjoined to respect consists of nothing at all besides dressing up to denigrate Catholics.