Shortly after the election of Mary Robinson as president in 1990 one of her key campaign strategists explained that the winning tactic had been based on the idea of a train. Various irreconcilable elements of Irish society had been squeezed into separate compartments - conservative Catholics in one, D4 liberals in another, and so on - without anyone being aware that their sworn enemies were in another carriage further up.
The Northern Ireland peace process operated along similar lines, except that the carriages were made of glass: everyone knew who else was on the train, but each grouping insisted on separate compartments as a matter of principle. To ensure that no group became alarmed to the extent of jumping from the train, the locomotive was fuelled with lead-free fudge.
The Belfast Agreement was the ticket-issuing process, but everyone ignored the injunction to read the conditions on the back. At the end of last year we faced the prospect of a derailment, because one of the more self-important passengers, Mr David Trimble, having discovered that the train was not an express to his preferred destination, was hanging out of the communication cord.
The train driver, Mr Blair, was determined to move as fast as possible to prevent anyone getting off. Pausing only occasionally to revise the timetable, he ignored signals, speed limits and level crossings in an effort to keep the train on the tracks. From time to time, he would issue messages of stern encouragement to the passengers via the public address system: this train, he said, would terminate at New Norn Iron, and nowhere else. Mr Blair's fireperson, Dr Mo Mowlam, scooped the fudge into the flames for all she was worth.
The tour guide, Mr Bertie Ahern, went through the carriages dispensing information on the basis that all passengers should be told whatever they wanted to hear. In the Sinn Fein carriage, he said that unionists had better behave themselves or they would have manners put on them, and in the unionist carriage he said that republicans had better watch their step or they'd be made get out and walk.
In the guard's van, Gen John de Chastelain had the job of baby-sitting the considerable body of excess baggage which some passengers had taken with them, including armaments, Semtex, empty coffee jars, agricultural products and other incongruous but everyday items. The alleged owners of these materials claimed they would be required only in the event of the train failing to reach the agreed destination; once it got to New Norn Iron, nothing would be triggered with the exception of d'Hondt.
Other passengers maintained that the excess luggage would have to be jettisoned before the journey could be completed. The finely-typed regulations on the backs of the tickets were said to allow for a degree of ambiguity as to whether such luggage was permissible at all. Some interpretations held that the rules allowed such items to be retained so long as all passengers undertook to "use their influence" to ensure they were dumped at the other end.
THANKS to the high-octane quality of the fudge, this fundamental disagreement did not threaten the train's progress until Mr Trimble, having appointed himself Ticket Checker and Fat Controller, started refusing to issue tickets to certain other of the passengers until they agreed to dispense with their excess luggage. Nobody seemed to notice that this function was not within Mr Trimble's job description, or indeed that he was not, strictly speaking, a railway operative at all, but a representative of a minority of the passengers, albeit those who had traditionally occupied the first-class saloon.
The occupants of this compartment soon made it clear that they wanted to go back to Old Norn Iron, preferably ditching the Sinn Fein carriage on the way. This is not, however, exactly what they said. What they said was that they would only be willing to proceed to New Norn Iron if the guard's van and its contents were jettisoned.
It would become clear that they adopted this position because they believed that, even if the alleged owners of the merchandise could be persuaded to relinquish it, there was no safe or acceptable way in which the guard's van could be detached from the train and its contents enabled to slip backwards into the decommissioning siding.
Two weeks ago, however, the wily train driver came up with a proposal that, with the train still moving at top speed, and with the hitherto unforthcoming permission of those holding tickets for excess baggage, the guard, Gen de Chastelain, would climb on to the roof of his van, reach his shunting pole down in the space between the two carriages, and uncouple his van from the rest of the train.
Almost everyone was agreeable to this proposal. The train driver, obviously, was deeply enthusiastic for his own plan. Sources close to the owners of the armaments indicated they would be willing to forgo their hardware in the interests of moving on to the agreed destination. The tour guide said: "Whatever you think yourself, Tony."
Only the Fat Controller and self-appointed Ticket Checker balked at the plan on the grounds that the guard could not be guaranteed to effect the manoeuvre, that the Sinn Fein passengers were not empowered to sanction the jettisoning of the guns which he and his fellow travellers had earlier insisted were for their own personal use, that some passenger might hold armaments other than those in the van, that . . . well, any old grounds that he could think of, really, since he had been getting away with such tactics for 15 months and did not expect to be challenged now.
BUT something had changed. At long last it had become clear that, of all those on the train, one group had never wanted the train to reach New Norn Iron with all its passengers intact. At last it had become clear to all and sundry that, of all the passengers, Mr Trimble and his followers depended on the retention of the guard's van and its cargo far more than anyone else.
They sought to cling to the excess baggage even more than did its alleged owners, because only by ensuring that the van was not jettisoned could they be confident of the train ending up in the destination preferable to them: Norn Iron As It Used To Be (in the Good Old Days when Sammy ruled and Paddy rued). For most of last week, the Fat Controller was stretched between the guard's van and the rest of the train, now detached from one another save for the connection achieved by the fact that the Fat Controller's tie was tied to the coupling mechanism on the guard's van and his shoelaces to that on the remainder of the train.
In due course he succeeded in making himself redundant in this role by tying together his tie and his shoelaces and rolling open-necked and shoeless down the embankment, where he was soon joined by his fellow travellers. The Peace Train moved on, its lethal cargo still attached.