The Cedar Lounge Revolution

I noted the other day that “Perhaps not coincidentally we’re now also being treated to the memoirs of Jonathan Powell”. The latest revelations on the Powell front came yesterday with the news that:

Powell reveals in his memoirs that 10 years later the DUP established its own secret channel to Sinn Féin when Paisley’s party won the elections to the Northern Ireland assembly of 2003. The channel was kept secret because the DUP refused to meet Sinn Féin at the time on the grounds that the IRA was still active. Powell says: “They [the DUP] were no different from the British government at the time of John Major or Margaret Thatcher saying they never had contacts with the IRA – but actually [they were] doing so as well. It did play an important role in making possible that extraordinary meeting between Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. They had never met, they had never spoken until they sat down for that photo-opportunity in March 2007. If you hadn’t had that back channel building confidence over time, it would have been difficult.”

How convenient that this should appear, legitimised by the former Prime Ministers advisor no less, just at the point that Sinn Féin appear to be suggesting that the PIRA Army Council will disband in the case that the DUP are willing to see policing devolved to the Assembly.

Is this an instance where pressure is now being put on the DUP, perhaps even implicitly pointing to the idea that further revelations might follow along the same lines from other sources if they don’t play ball? How very interesting.

On the other hand, reading this mornings Guardian perhaps a certain parity of … well, something or another creeps in, because we are told regarding the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that:

The inquiry cost the taxpayer around £200m that could have been spent on other things. It has still not reported as of the time of writing. And it has failed to give satisfaction to either side. The nadir for me was when Martin McGuinness said to me in a private conversation some years later that he didn’t know why we had done it: he thought an apology would have been quite sufficient. The aim had been to demonstrate to nationalists and republicans that we were even-handed and that the British government no longer had anything to hide. It had that impact in the short term. But we repented at leisure.

Accurate? Who knows. Helpful? Perhaps not.