A STRANGER listening to public discussions about week might have supposed that the principle of consent was a cherished value in Irish politics.
Not yet, I fear, though even in these depressing days, when everyone seems to have taken a step backwards from optimism, there have been advances worth noting.
The Apprentice Boys agreed to meet the Bogside Residents' Group which, like the related groups in Portadown and Belfast, is led by a former republican prisoner, Donncha Mac Niallais.
The significance of this may be judged by recalling the fuss made about David Trimble's meeting a former UVF prisoner, Billy Wright, at Drumcree.
Or the refusal of the Orangemen at Portadown to meet the Garvaghy Road residents led by another former republican prisoner, Brendan Mac Cionnaith.
The best efforts of John Hume and Derry's church leaders, Catholic, Church of Ireland and Presbyterian, failed to find an accommodation for the Apprentice Boys' march.
They still managed to have last night's republican march rerouted.
But the rhetoric of consent seems too often intended for public consumption while, barely hidden but ready to surface at the least provocation, the integrity of the ancient quarrel is maintained.
Unfortunately, consent like compromise or, for that matter, good sense is what's expected of the other side.
A sign of political maturity and confidence.
Compromise by one's own side, party or tribe is taken for a sign of weakness and chalked up as a victory for the others.
FOR THOSE who believe that they alone hold the key to truth and right thinking on Irishness, Britishness, religion, politics or life on Mars this obviously makes sense.
To allow any deviation is to admit the possibility of error. Anything that falls short of a full blooded assertion of orthodoxy is an invitation to heresy.
And it doesn't matter whether the issue is marching, in Drumcree or Derry, traditional celebrations or habitual slights, when tempers are up, too many behave as if their lives depended on having their way.
Take Peter Robinson's response when the church and government committee of the Presbyterian Church proposed honourable compromise on the issue of parades.
The committee's statement, 10 days after Drumcree, a fortnight in advance of Derry, did what political and community leaders of all shades ought to be doing all the time it challenged its own side.
It acknowledged how Catholics must have felt when the threat of greater violence at Drumcree led to the RUC's U-turn.
And it offered a reminder of a Reformation principle that tradition must be modified or reformed.
"Failure to do so," it said, making a point that everyone would do well to heed, "turns tradition into a false god."
Mr Robinson promptly denounced the committee as "pathetic and weak compromisers" and called their comments "an outrage and a disgrace".
ON THE nationalist side, another false god of unreformed tradition is alive and kickin a former Fianna Fail minister and founder of Aontacht Eireann, Kevin Boland, returned to the fray with his own brand of fundamentalism.
Mr Boland and friends, among them Councillor Tony McPhillips of Roslea, emerged with the promise (or threat) of yet another legal action to prevent the Government from pursuing the multiparty talks, lest they achieve a settlement which fell short of unity.
This is one of Mr Boland's old complaints.
In an earlier action, his target was another coalition's role in the Sunningdale agreement which set up a power sharing executive in 1973.
And Mr McPhillips echoes the current proponents of pan nationalism when he says. "There is a serious onus on the Government to act for the first time in years on its constitutional imperative."
The imperative, as defined by the Supreme Court in the McGimpsey case, obliges the Government not merely to aspire to unity but to pursue it, actively.
The judgment made Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution sound more threatening than ever to unionist ears, well tuned to nationalist talk of unfinished business.
It also led one of Mr Boland's seasoned adversaries, the former TD and senator, Jack McQuillan, to propose an amendment which would expressly forbid the use of violence in the pursuit of unity.
He found a good deal of interest among unionists but no takers in the Republic.
Here, it's accepted all round that any change in the status of Northern Ireland could only be decided by a majority of the people in the North.
Consent in this sense features in the policies of all of the major parties and politicians point to the Anglo Irish Agreement as evidence of their pacific intentions. But Articles 2 and 3 and the Supreme Court decision stand.
The idea of consent, as we've seen this week, sets off other, more urgent, demands in the North.
It is, after all, the key to healthy relations between the sides in a divided community. As important as trust between unequal partners in a coalition.
But those who spoke most emphatically of consent this week were largely concerned with the right to march or the rights of those through whose territory parades might pass.
Like most features of public life on this island, marching is an issue which trails clouds of history.
Indeed, as Chris McGimpsey said on Prime Time on Thursday, if you could solve the marching problem to the satisfaction of all sides you'd be well on the way to solving everything else.
But to solve the marching problem would mean getting everyone to accept that the principle of consent applied to much more up to and including the status of Northern Ireland.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the Orangemen and Apprentice Boys who insist on the right to march would have to accept that a divided community may be judged by how it deals with its minority.
It's a point already acknowledged by the Presbyterian committee to which Peter Robinson took such exception and, indeed, by Kelvin McCracken and his Presbyterian friends who wrote to the Irish News seeking the forgiveness of Catholics for what happened at Drumcree.
For their part, the Sinn Fein led residents' groups, who refuse to allow marches through their territory, must accept that consent also applies to wider issues and Northern Ireland's constitutional status can be changed only with the consent of a majority.
Sinn Fein refused to acknowledge the principle of consent when it was among the conclusions reached by the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
Now, with its emphasis on the right to resist marches, the party is trying again to have it both ways.
As for the members of the Oireachtas travelling North as observers, Senator Sean Moloney of Labour explained the independence of their mission the other day when he said that, after all, Declan Bree had been welcomed with open arms in South Africa.