IT IS SAID that a sure sign of an insecure man is when he uses both a belt and a pair of braces to keep his trousers up. If this is so, it looks a fair bet that First Minister Trimble is now also fastening a safety pin through his shirt tail and pants for good measure.
Apart from chronic insecurity there seems to be no other explanation why he continues to refuse the prize that is currently on offer to him. The Good Friday Agreement has not only guaranteed fundamental unionist tenets. It has also gained for them the endorse: ment of an All-Ireland referendum, prime-ministerial approval in London and Dublin and the acquiescence of the main nationalist parties in Northern Ireland.
Unionists have been resoundingly successful in having the constitutional issue settled to their satisfaction. So much so that Tony Blair was moved recently to express his astonishment that the threat to the union is hardly mentioned any longer.
The reality is that all parties in favour of the Agreement accept that the Northern Irish status quo will remain unchanged until a majority in the area vote otherwise. That this arrangement will endure is acknowledged by all who take office in Stormont. Accepting administrative positions of state allows government to function. In contrast, the iron law of revolution is to destroy the state apparatus.
Even the maligned cross-border Many steps left to the power he covets: Trimble institutions should be reassuring to the thinking unionist. A frontier can hardly be threatened by something designed to function because of its existence. After all, nobody buys a dog-box if they intend to sell Rufus.
Of most significance to all but the purblind is the ending of an armed campaign designed to break the union. Not just a sullen conclusion as with previous IRA campaigns but an end where guns are to be decommissioned as well as "The Boys" sitting in parliament. Against this, David Trimble argues that he cannot simply accept a promise to disarm. The UUP leader claims that there is no incontrovertible evidence that undertakings will be honoured. In a legalistic sense he is right. There is no signed and written statement pledging to surrender weaponry. No republican has appeared on television to announce an agenda for destroying guns.
A reasonable examination of the facts indicates however that such theatricals are unnecessary.
In the first instance it would make no sense whatsoever from a Sinn Fein point of view to irretrievably alienate their new voters at home and recent allies abroad by being deliberately misleading on such a crucial issue. A photo opportunity while taking cabinet position would be overshadowed by ignominious defenestration the following month.
And that embarrassment would be as nothing in comparison to the angst and disarray at grassroots and leadership level as a ten-year strategy crumbled in ruins. Sinn Fein has no alternative to its current strategy if only because it has invested so heavily in this process. Contemporary thinking in the organisation is predicated on gaining office - not returning to conflict. The most convincing testimony to the sincerity of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness is the confidence Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern demonstrate. Some unionists have attempted to misinterpret the Blair-Ahern position on decommissioning. To recycle a phrase from the eighties, they are accused of being "wet" on the arms question. Nothing could be further from the truth. Blair and Ahern are elected heads of government and they look on armed republicanism as a threat to the authority of their states. Laws governing the use of state power are primeval. None but government has the discretion to use force. Neither premier would make space for any party which preserved an option of armed revolution.
Trimble need not fear Sinn Fein reneging on their promises. The republican leadership will deliver what even the most cynical of us felt impossible only a few months ago. This insecurity is not based on concern about Gerry Adams' behaviour. It has everything to do with rebels in his own party. His final words on decommissioning may not be directed against Sinn Fein. He is more likely to croak "Et Tu Taylör, Donaldson, Weir" etc.
John North T hirty years on from the Civil rights movement in the North of Ireland, one might be forgiven for a sense of deja vu all over again at the sight of the RUC batoning defenceless demonstrators on the Ormeau road.
The bizarre sense of life in a time warp is compounded when the demonstrators are arrested in dawn raids and charged with demanding civil rights on a public highway and sitting obstructively in a public place.
And these are actions by the same force that watched Robert Hamill beaten to death before their eyes in the centre of Portadown, and who have been willing to turn a blind eye to countless sectarian assaults by the orange mob during the demonstrations at the Gervaghy road and at the Harryville church in Ballymena.
The Ormeau Road demonstrators were beaten when they protested the decision by the parades commission to allow a sectarian parade by the Apprentice Boys to proceed through the area.
This followed a declaration by the commission of a policy of "you talk, you walk ".
Andrew Wiard The British government has defined the issue as one of communication between communities rather than one of sectarian harassment. Just how false that definition is can be seen by the actual actions of the Apprentice Boys. Having marched in triumph through the area, they boarded a bus for a demonstration in Derry which again was forced through in the face of protests. The Ormeau march, and a whole series of "feeder" matches, are simply demonstrations of sectarrights over a second-class Catholic population.
The parades commission, seen as a an instrument of the peace process that would gradually desectarianise the North, is now clearly an instrument in asserting the continuation of sectarianism.
Brendan McCoinnaith, leader of the Gervaghy road residents group, warned of this reality at the beginning of the marching season.
Speaking to a support group in Belfast, he warned of an agreeJ00 CO embracing sectarianism. Around this understanding he has built a coalition to oppose the sectarians.
The problem is that it is based almost entirely on Sinn Fein members and supporters and that throughout the summer they have been blind to the need of the Sinn Fein leadership to remain within the peace process and their resistance to mass mobilisation that might destabilise it.
So, built in to the resistance are serious weaknesses. The worst of these is the residents committee structure which prevents broader united front organisation, leaves little room for pressuring political parties and trade unions and leaves the committees isolated and largely dependent on Sinn Fein.
Another weakness is A the "no talk - Phoblacht appeared with the headline "Nationalist residents Betrayed", one is tempted to believe that the Republican leadership are indulging in post-modernist irony.
It is widely believed that Tony Blair bought peace with the Orangemen at the beginning of the summer