The game is up
Most of them were grim, awful, frightening. One obvious one that came in the backwash was this: that, for the first time in 35 years, the organisation striking terror into the heart of Britain is no longer the IRA.
Terror has moved on a generation. The new wave has ratcheted savagery and indiscriminate killing to unthinkable levels.
It was a strange experience this weekend to hear Sinn Féin figures express moral outrage at what happened. In an eerie echo of the honourable Old IRA condemning the bloodthirsty tactics of the Provos, senior Sinn Féin spokespeople voiced their shock and horror at the "savagery".
"There were no warnings. There is no strategy or political project. All they seem to want to do is slaughter," said one.
And so, a new era of terror arrives to Britain just as another ebbs into nothingness. Before Thursday's atrocity, it was widely anticipated that sometime this week, a statement signed with the IRA imprimatur, P O'Neill would appear in An Phoblacht or would be passed on to a Belfast or Dublin newsroom.
What is certain is that it would have been long on rhetoric, on self-justification, on self-righteousness. Certain too that, in the thicket of prose, would be contained a simple and unmistakable message. The game is up. The war is over. The IRA is standing down. Permanently.
The British and Irish Governments were led to believe that it was going to happen this week.
Sinn Féin have been past masters of statements that can be open to two or more interpretations. (Its version of the decommissioning 'requirements' in the Good Friday Agreement is a classic case in point. It took three and a half years before the first gram of semtex was put beyond use).
But expectations were raised this time for two reasons. The first was that the language of fudge and prevarication seemed absent from the appeal Gerry Adams made to the IRA in early April. His key lines were unambiguous.
"I want to use this occasion therefore to appeal to the leadership of Óglaigh na hÉireann to fully embrace and accept this alternative. Can you take courageous initiatives which will achieve your aims by purely political and democratic activity?"
The second was that, very quickly, both governments responded by saying that the development was one to be taken seriously. In Bertie Ahern's words, it was "significant and has potential", though he added a rider that deeds must accompany words.
There was cynicism, of course, and a lot of it. Detractors pointed out the Siamese Twins linkage between Sinn Féin and the IRA. Internal consultation essentially meant talking to the mirror, they said.
But it is over-simplistic to talk of the Republican movement as a puppet to be manipulated by Adams at his whim. Any worthwhile analysis of its evolution from armalite to ballot box will show that, at certain critical junctures, the Sinn Féin leader had to go out on a limb to convince the hard-liners to buy into his strategy.
And a few times, the politicos came within a whisker of failure to military-side hawks, suspicious of a peace process that fell far short of a United Ireland.
The failures of December and the fallout from the Northern Bank robbery and the Robert McCartney murder had badly dented Republicanism and backed the Sinn Féin leadership into a cul-de-sac.
In so doing, they crystallised the outstanding issues. The Irish and British Governments (and the Irish in particular) were negotiating from a position of strength. Ergo, the clarity of their demands: destroy the guns; stand down the army; stop all forms of criminality; put an end to all punishment beatings and shootings.
After all the bitter mutterings and denials of February and March, Adams's appeal to the IRA was tantamount admission that the game was up. Or would be once the IRA had its say.
Sinn Féin said the consultation period within the IRA would not be complete until at least six weeks after the May 5 elections.
That was to be expected. The IRA including all members, active and retired comprised some 1,500 members.
Has what happened in London last week impinged upon the endgame?
Yes, but in only one respect. The IRA will want to ensure that there is clear water put between the London atrocity and its own statement, so that one can not be perceived as a response to the other.
The statement, which was expected this week, will be delayed. But the prime reasons are local. Major difficulties have emerged in the wake of the violence that flared around loyalist marches in North Belfast last month.
In particular, republicans were incensed by the decision of the British authorities to return Shankill Road bomber, Sean Kelly, to prison. They claimed he was one of the republican 'community workers' who helped defuse violence at the interface area.
"It's true to say that there are difficulties with ex-prisoners and IRA people in Ardoyne over putting Kelly in jail," a senior Republican figure told me this weekend.
"That has led to problems and has definitely delayed everything. As of now, it's hard to know when a statement will be issued."
British Government sources agree that the Kelly jailing has put the statement on temporary hold. But they also claim that he was imprisoned for taking part in a punishment beating and not for his prominent intervention in flashpoint areas, as Sinn Féin has claimed.
"He was involved in a punishment beating," one British source says bluntly. "A year ago, both governments would have turned a blind eye to that. But not any more. There can be no more fudge. We need a statement that is unambiguous.
"And we need to know that there is no ambiguity when it comes to backing it up with deeds. We would have been inconsistent if that had been left go unchecked."
Nearly 10 years ago, Bill Clinton, at a rally in Belfast, described terrorists in Northern Ireland as "yesterday's men".
If that was their status then, it has certainly been a long goodbye. There may have been a ceasefire but a huge cache of weapons and a secret army remained in existence, both of which gave Sinn Féin powerful leverage to gain the maximum political advantage.
"St Gerry and St Martin of the perpetual process," has been SDLP leader Mark Durkan's portrayal of how Sinn Féin have played their hand.
The clever hand that Sinn Féin was playing so adeptly was badly bust by the Northern Bank robbery and McCartney murder. For such astute and calculating strategists, they handed the propaganda initiative to the Irish Government (and to Justice Minister Michael McDowell) on a plate.
It's an unfortunate metaphor to use, but for the first time Sinn Féin shot itself in the foot.
The governments were not above a little chicanery of their own. In January and February, there was a bit of rewriting of history going on.
Criminality and punishment beatings were only adjuncts to the substantive talks in December. Neither Tony Blair nor Bertie Ahern uttered a word about them.
You could not help sensing that if a deal were struck then, the IRA might have very well got away with its version of restorative community justice, all its nefarious sidelines, and the occasional punishment beating.
But after January, retrospectively, they all became deal-breakers as far as the two governments were concerned. So much so, that the fundamental obstacle that scuttled the December negotiations visible decommissioning vanished completely from the radar screen of the peace process.
The Provisional movement is masterful at hyping the historic nature of its every concession and move.
It's a strategy that has worked well. It has made huge political advances on the back of them.
But then, when you look at it, the actual gains made on the back of its ambitious strategy have been somewhat more modest than Sinn Féin would admit. The SDLP, as Westminster showed, is far from written off. Sinn Féin's electoral incursion in the South might not bring the bonanza it expects.
The fork-tongued nature and selective victimisation of Republicans have been badly exposed this year. Denuded of its sulphurous appeal, it may well be that Sinn Féin may struggle to live up to its own sense of destiny.
The London atrocity will have reminded of past IRA atrocities. But it also reminded us that those are firmly in the past. The IRA is finished. It's not a question of if. It's only a question of when. Only the most craven anti-republican would deny that the statement, when it comes, will be historic.
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