Another round of talks started this week, aimed at restoring home rule to Northern Ireland. After so many failed starts, the doomsayers will be in full swing.
But to those of us who remember the carnage of the Seventies and Eighties, the present peace is little short of miraculous. Those atrocities are etched on our memories. I remember where I was when I heard Airey Neave had been murdered (in a car driving past Heath High Level station in Cardiff, since you ask). I've similar memories of Lord Mountbatten's assasination, and the Harrods and Hyde Park bombing. Thirty years ago, it took a particularly awful crime to break through British indifference to the insanity of Northern Ireland terrorism.
That time has passed. Ulster is overcoming its past, slowly but surely. Ireland and Britain are very different countries now: more diverse, more prosperous. We can celebrate the relationships within these islands. When Ian Paisley sits down with a Catholic bishop you know the past is another country.
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