THE events of the summer Drumcree and its aftermath, the situation in Derry this weekend have brought re partition back on to the political agenda. Few people are willing to talk about it openly yet.
The idea is alarming and the obvious intractable difficulties remain. Special provisions would have to be made for Belfast with its growing and disaffected nationalist population. But already it is possible to detect what one might describe as variations on the theme of re partition.
Expect to hear a lot in the coming months about "cantonisation" as a practical way forward for the North. This would allow each community to exercise political control in areas where it formed the majority, while ensuring that there were safeguards to protect the rights of the minority community, whichever it happened to be. There have been reports that the British Labour Party is dusting down the files containing proposals along these lines.
The fact that such ideas are being discussed is dramatic evidence of how the policies pursued by both the British and Irish governments are seen to have failed. In essence, their objective has been to devise an accommodation which would "settle" nationalists in the North, to the extent that they would agree to accept a state to which the overwhelming majority of them owe no political allegiance.
This policy has been based on the consensus, first enshrined by nationalist Ireland in the report of the New Ireland Forum, that there can be no change in the constitutional status of the North without the consent of the unionist majority.
Both governments agreed that the only way to make this work was to ensure Northern nationalists should have cast iron guarantees of equality of treatment and parity of esteem. The hope was that unionists would come to see these as a reasonable price to pay for the maintenance of their constitutional position within the United Kingdom. It now seems that hope may have been unrealisable all along.
IT is this argument which has exploded across the North in the wake of Drumcree. The occasion of the Orange marches coincided with the growing suspicion that the Stormont talks had become mired in all the old, irreconcilable antagonisms and were going nowhere.
Sinn Fein's absence had put a question mark over the enterprise from the start. Nationalist politicians say that the main unionist parties have not been prepared to engage seriously in the kind of negotiations necessary to bring about the settlement envisaged in the Framework Document.
Unionists, understandably, take a different view. They suspect that the talks are part of an ongoing conspiracy to draw them into a united Ireland. Even the absence of violence is seen as part of this. I am told one unionist at the talks referred to "the nightmare of the IRA ceasefire".
That the talks will resume next month is a tribute to the high regard which is felt for the chairman, George Mitchell. Many people in Northern Ireland do still nurture the hope that, once the marching season is over, it may be possible to talk about compromise once again. But there is also a growing view that the debate has moved on.
Drumcree provided the imagery to illustrate the text. It was not just the decision by the RUC to allow the marchers down the Garvaghy Road and all the scenes that followed from that. The Orange Order argued that the right to march along its traditional routes is unconditional, an integral part of the citizen's contract with the state. But there is an opposing argument that, in a society as polarised as Northern Ireland, there must be some consideration of the balance of rights.
What nationalists saw at Drumcree was that the Orange Order, backed by David Trimble and substantial sections of the unionist population, was not prepared to discuss any such balancing of conflicting rights. On the contrary, with the backing of the forces of law and order, they were fully prepared to deploy the threat of greater numbers to get their way.
Against this background it was never on the cards that the Apprentice Boys march in Derry would be dealt with as a purely local issue. Nationalists in Derry feel a particular responsibility to those living in Belfast and elsewhere for a number of reasons, including guilt. The current phase of "the Troubles" started in the city, but Derry nationalists, in a comfortable majority and living close to the Border, know they have had it easy compared with some of their compatriots.
DERRY is different. If this had been a purely local argument it would probably have been resolved relatively easily. There have been bad patches in the relationship between the two communities, some of them due to tribal insensitivity, others like the recent decision to strip the young unionist mayor of his privileges for taking part in a protest - supporting the Orangemen at Drumcree - to immediate pressures of real politik.
But these should not detract from the fact that, despite the bitter history of discrimination and gerrymandering prior to 1968, the nationalist political community, led by the SDLP, has tried to hold out the hand of friendship and cooperation to its opponents. On the particular subject of the Siege, for example, the nationalist dominated council funded a spectacular celebration of the 300th anniversary in 1989.
This year, though, it has proved impossible to ignore the broader political context in which the march takes place. The leaders of the local Apprentice Boys in Derry are almost certainly right when they say they are unable to deliver the agreement of other loyal institutions and clubs in Belfast to abide by the principles of dialogue and consent.
They might have been wise to express regret on this point and to pledge to work for it in the future. Whatever the mood of the talks, the representatives of Derry's nationalists have responded by saying that, if that is the case, they will withhold their consent from the Apprentice Boys on the city walls.
This failure to agree reflects the much more serious political impasse in the province. That is why so much importance has been attached to what happens in Derry this weekend. If the scenes of the RUC's behaviour at Drumcree and the Garvaghy Road raised political questions about whether the institutions of Northern Ireland were in fact capable of being reformed, then Derry still offered a hope that it might be possible to resolve difficult problems through dialogue and mutual respect.
If the two communities in Derry cannot manage it people are already asking, what hope is there of reaching political agreement elsewhere? It is not just the institutions of the state that have been called into question, but whether it is any longer realistic to keep trying for a settlement which demands a degree of political compromise from both communities.
That is why we can expect to hear more about policies like re partition and cantonisation. If the state cannot be made to work, then perhaps the time has come to examine more radical solutions.