GERRY Adams traces his interest in politics back to September 1964 when, as a 16-year-old on his way to school, he spied a flag in the window of a Belfast shop. In school, he and his classmates discussed it “with the kind of breathless enthusiasm usually reserved for alleged sightings of Sputniks”, because “this was the Irish flag, the display of which was illegal” in Northern Ireland at the time.

That evening, as Adams recalls in his autobiography, “at a meeting in the Ulster Hall, a sectarian anti-Catholic demagogue named Ian Paisley threatened that if the tricolour ... were not removed within two days, he would himself lead a march to remove it”. A day after the threat from the churchman, who “at rallies bellowed forth a message of virulent religious hatred”, an officer of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) led a party of 50 men to break into the premises in question — which turned out to be a Sinn Féin election office — “and seize the flag which had so offended Mr Paisley”. When, four days later, Sinn Féin raised the flag once more, the RUC repeated its action.

Adams gradually drifted into Sinn Féin, while Paisley steadily built upon his reputation as a turbulent priest. Each of them was uncompromising in his own way. Although Sinn Féin, as the non-military wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), participated in political activities, it believed armed resistance was crucial to the nationalist goal of a reunited Ireland. The unionists, on the other hand, were adamant that Ulster must indefinitely remain British.

The divide was effectively sectarian: the unionists were synonymous with Protestantism, while the republicans were mainly Catholic. This aspect of the situation in Northern Ireland inevitably proved conducive to bigotry — and on the unionist side no leader was more bigoted than the rabble-rousing Paisley, who earned the nickname Dr No on account of his propensity to shoot down any political proposal that was even vaguely conciliatory towards the Catholics, many of whom wished for no more than equal rights.

This background is crucial to understanding why so many people in Britain and Ireland could barely believe their eyes last month when Adams and Paisley made a joint appearance in Stormont, the home of Northern Ireland’s parliament, and pledged to work together in running the province. Although their encounter wasn’t unplanned, there was a certain amount of scepticism about whether it would occur. After all, Paisley had in the past pledged many a time never to sit down with the Sinn Féin leader. Adams had some time ago accepted cooperation with Paisley as inevitable, but he wasn’t about to demean himself for the purpose.

In the event, both of them behaved in a broadly genteel and civilised manner. Although they didn’t go as far as to shake hands, at least not in front of the cameras, both of them struck amicable notes. “Today we have agreed with Sinn Féin...” began Paisley. Not long ago, the likelihood of these words leaving his lips was infinitesimal. Adams opened his remarks “by welcoming the statement by Ian Paisley”. That was another first.

“We must not,” noted Paisley, “allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future ... for all our people.” This from a man who for decades upheld the cause of discrimination against Catholics. Adams reciprocated with: “The relationships between the people of this island have been marred by centuries of discord, conflict, hurt and tragedy ... Sinn Féin is about building a new relationship between orange and green and all the other colours, where every citizen can share and have equality of ownership of a peaceful, prosperous and just future.”

The upshot is that from May 8 Northern Ireland will have a new government, with the octogenarian Paisley at its helm. His deputy will be Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, reputedly a former IRA commander. What’s more, the two of them have pledged to hold regular consultations. How on earth, one may justifiably wonder, did it come to this? And whatever the future may hold, is this indeed an unequivocal triumph for Tony Blair, who can now leave No.10 Downing Street safe in the knowledge that in his legacy the preponderant negative of Iraq will be mitigated to some extent by the positive outcome in Belfast?

Blair would like nothing better than to be remembered exclusively in the context of the consolidated peace in Ulster. Unfortunately for him, Iraq, Afghanistan and his shockingly submissive relationship with the Bush administration cannot be deleted from his record. And questions about his behaviour have been raised even in the context of Northern Ireland.

For instance, former Northern Ireland secretary and Blair confidant Peter Mandelson — one of the sleazier personalities associated with New Labour — claimed in an interview last month that Blair had once asked him to offer Sinn Féin completely untenable concessions. (Mandelson, mind you, was prone to a pro-unionist bias, while his predecessor, Mo Mowlam, was accused of the opposite.) Meanwhile, it has also emerged that during the past year Blair has assiduously cultivated Paisley by discussing confessional matters with a man who once denounced the pope as the Antichrist, and borrowing Christian texts from him. According to Lord Bew, the professor of Irish politics at Queen’s University Belfast, “This is the most amazing love affair, the last great Blairite romance ... You have to hand it to him ... his capacity to seduce, politically speaking, is phenomenal.”

A less complimentary judgement about the British prime minister comes from Seamus Mallon, who negotiated 1998’s Good Friday Agreement on behalf of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP): he says he “came more and more to the view that this man’s word was worth nothing.” In the run-up to the agreement, says Mallon, “we all came to the conclusion this guy would buy anybody — and if he will buy anybody, he will sell anybody.”

Mallon’s statement deserves to be viewed in the context of the SDLP’s decline: it was once considered the main nationalist political force in Northern Ireland, while Sinn Féin was dismissed as a terrorist front. In the past few years, the tables have been turned. A remarkably similar process has occurred on the other side of politics, with David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists being supplanted by Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which had long been decried as the extremist alternative. Although there is merit in the argument that success would have eluded any peace process that excluded Sinn Féin and the DUP, yet the marginalisation of the moderates over the past decade does not necessarily bode well.

In the March 7, elections that paved the way for last month’s historic compromise, the DUP and Sinn Féin consolidated their position as the largest forces on opposite sides of the sectarian divide. Their respective platforms were remarkably similar: one of the biggest issues in both cases was vehement opposition to London’s proposed imposition of new water rates. It has been suggested that this proposal was part of an attempt by the current Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Hain, to make himself so unpopular that the DUP and Sinn Féin would be propelled towards tolerating each other simply as a means of undermining his influence.

If so, the strategy appears to have worked, at least in the short-term. Northern Ireland is at peace, and within reach of prosperity. The latter, as London is happy to concede, involves closer economic integration with the Republic of Ireland. If all goes well, there is a reasonable chance that the logic of a united Ireland will in due course become irresistible, the IRA’s goal ultimately being achieved by the lure of lucre rather than the force of arms.

That is still a big if. As Adams and Paisley both hinted in their statements, Northern Ireland carries the burden of an exceedingly bitter and bloody past, and putting it behind them won’t prove an easy task. Not only is there plenty of guilt on both sides, there are also cupboards full of skeletons.

Earlier this year, a report by Nuala O’Loan, the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, provided evidence of collusion over many years between the RUC and unionist terrorists belonging to the banned Ulster Volunteer Force, involving the murder of Catholics — many of them perfectly innocent civilians — with the full knowledge of the police. This hardly came as a revelation for republicans. O’Loan’s inquiry was restricted to a small part of Belfast and as such her findings represent only the tip of the iceberg: for decades collaboration between extremists on the unionist side and organs of the British state helped to sustain the bloody conflict.

The IRA, too, has much to answer for, not least in the eyes of those who sympathised with its cause but deplored its violent methods — which included assassination attempts against two British prime ministers. Margaret Thatcher opted for deepening the confrontation. Her successor, John Major, displayed considerably greater wisdom in embarking on the course that the Blair government had the good sense to sustain.

Things could still fall apart, but the likelihood of a return to violence has been substantially diminished. That in itself is quite an achievement, comparable in some ways with the peace process in Nepal, where five Maoists took oath this month as ministers in a coalition government. Those involved in seemingly intractable conflicts in other parts of the world will, one hopes, pause to analyse both these paths to peace. And perhaps conclude that, ultimately, violence is self-defeating.

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