The bail, to paraphrase the Government last night, is now at the feet of the republican movement. What matters most is that talks should start and prevarication, by all sides, should cease. The republicans must take aboard the fact that as far as the unionists are concerned, the game of peace or war is one that two can play. If the current state of quasiceasefire with occasional acts of savagery turns into a resumed full scale onslaught, it will merely confirm, for unionists, the intransigence of their opponents. It will not shift them out of their bunkers.
There is nothing to be gained in this direction for those whom Sinn Fein and the IRA purport to represent. On the other hand, a ceasefire, and participation in talks, offers a viable way forward. That is, or should be, one of the implications of Mr Mitchel McLaughlin's statement last night, after Mr Major's session in the House of Commons, that "Sinn Fein will not walk away from this project" (the effort to secure peace). But the language is equivocal because. Mr McLaughlin was accusing Mr Major of failing to focus on the things that are important to Sinn Fein.
It is up to Mr McLaughlin and the people he speaks for, to tell the public in this island and in both the main communities, why a renewed ceasefire should not have credible guarantees, and why ancillary activities by the IRA, like punishment beatings and surveillance of possible targets, should not end. He deludes himself if he imagines that these are issues that matter only to unionists. In practical terms, the refusal to comply has alienated many people who support some elements of the republican agenda.
In the Government's statement, there was impatience with the present impasse, solidarity with London on the paramount necessity to establish peace in order to enable the parties to negotiate on democratic terms, and a commitment not to permit "any exclusion of Sinn Fein once these conditions are fulfilled". Behind the careful words of Mr Bruton and Mr Hume last night, there was deep uncertainty about the wisdom of the British statement, centring on how to determine the genuineness of Sinn Fein's commitment an issue that was bid up by the IRA, in British eyes, by the Manchester and Thiepval Barracks bombs. Mr Major, without specifying a time limit, outlined steps after a ceasefire, including exploratory contacts and a joint meeting with the Irish and British governments to secure Sinn Fein's "early, total and absolute commitment to the Mitchell principles
Is the whole edifice to fall apart on acceptance of these proposals, which must be a minimum for the other political parties involved in the process? Sinn Fein is on shaky ground if it insists that it is being asked to accept "the British government's terms", because, before and after the IRA ceasefire was ended the ground rules were changed at Sinn Fein's specific demand. The process it appears to require is as unrealistic and meaningless as one hand clapping.
The unionists, in the meantime, have been playing out their own internecine quarrel over whether the loyalist paramilitaries should disarm before the two loyalist parties enter negotiations. Does anyone want peace, or is the common objective a good moral position in the post peace situation to whose inevitability everyone seems determined to contribute? There is much to be done in the Christmas break. In that month there is time for common sense to break through. At least, last night, no doors banged.