Bigotry

NO momentous party-going followed the Northern Ireland vote last Saturday. For lots of folk that soaring cheer had reached the rafters on too many sobs, and no-one is fooling themselves now. The easy part is over; the people's imperative is clear but that means nothing to the troglodyte separatists so practised at the bully's push and shove and the rhetoric of gibberish.

If so much wasn't at stake the bigot's language would be farcical. Ian Paisley calls Guinness ''the devil's buttermilk'', and his stony-faced side-kick, Peter Robinson, speaks of being delighted by the No campaigners' overwhelming victory. ''Forgive me,'' says a journalist from Le Monde, ''but the Yes vote was 71%, Mr Robinson, and the No's only 29%. Are you living in denial?'' Robinson snaps back: ''I'm telling you, I'm delighted.'' And he walks away, a man ecstatic as an undertaker.

Not far away Robert McCartney, leader of the UK Unionists, and another No supremo, is telling anyone who will listen that: ''Democracy, decency and justice have been sacrificed for an agreement which has not excised a belief in violence.'' Is he drawing from his own particular knowledge? As McCartney entered the counting hall on Saturday, the bunch of hyperactive heavies who often surround him on public occasions shamelessly jostled the SDLP's Seamus Mallon almost to the ground. Men like this have now more than four weeks to derail the election on June 25, and they will exploit all the obvious difficulties - RUC reform, prisoners' releases, weapons decommissioning - to strangle the infant power-sharing Assembly at birth.

What they choose to ignore, though, is that RUC reform will go ahead anyway because it is part of Government policy. As for decommissioning, that estimable moderate and former Irish prime minister, Garret FitzGerald observes that even here there can be grounds for optimism. ''We are long past the time when Sinn Fein's ambition is confined to the simple pleasure of wrong-footing Unionists.'' All the intelligence confirms that Sinn Fein will co-operate with the decommissioning sub-committee of the Mitchell Commission, he says, and the ever-careful words of the party's chairman, Mitch McLoughlin are highly significant here:

''People understand that it will, when it happens - and it will happen - be a voluntary process.'' Put another way, decommissioning for both sets of paramilitaries will only take place without the public ignominy of defeat. So, is Adams right when he claims the

people on each side of the conflict, are ahead of the politicians in comprehending this? Once again the full burden of initiative may rest with David Trimble, for only his direct and authoritative engagement with Sinn Fein will convince doubters that the politics of violence has gone forever.

On the matter of prisoners, Northern Ireland's new future will not be served well by the incarceration lobby: the rehabilitation of terrorist inmates, no matter how distasteful and hurtful to those who have been maimed and bereaved, has to be one of the cornerstones in building a civic society. ''The war is over,'' says David Ervine, leader of the grassroots loyalist Progressive Unionist Party. ''We have now to get our hands dirty and deal with people who perhaps we don't like, in order to achieve something better.''

There is a reference here not just to Sinn Fein but to Trimble himself, for many believe that his Ulster Unionist Party would not have backed the agreement so swiftly if the party hadn't seen the pressure for peace being intensified by the PUP and the Ulster Democratic Party with their insights into loyalist paramilitarism. Despite their smallness these parties are challenging the status quo, and changing the Unionist landscape.

But how will the little parties fare in the election against the big battalions? On the basis of proportional representation, Ervine, already a Belfast councillor, is almost certain to win a seat in East Belfast. The UDP leader, Gary McMichael will contest Lagan Valley, the constituency of that lapsed Unionist dissident, Jeffrey Donaldson. His aura of piety, of course, will be much in evidence during the next month. Donaldson first came to the world's attention by publicly tearing up the interim agreement after the Lancaster House talks earlier this year. But according to insiders there was calculation in that ''spontaneous'' gesture: beforehand, Donaldson had allegedly prepared a nick in the document to ensure it ripped easily before the cameras.

That kind of thing will be the least of this election's shabby tricks. The effectiveness of McCartney's old sneer tactics might have to be reassessed, however. These badly rebounded on him during one of Tony Blair's walkabouts when he failed to ruffle the Prime Minister, but was booed by a crowd for his bad manners. He then retaliated by calling them a rent-a-mob. ''How dare you insult us like that,'' one woman challenged. She hardly looked like a rabble rouser. In fact she was a senior anaesthetist at a nearby hospital.

Against all this, though, there is a new language on the tongues of both the North and South of Ireland and it flows like honey: the principle of consent, a mutually agreed Ireland, the healing process, a spirit of partnership . . . these are the phrases

now used openly and unselfconsciously. The decommissioning of minds is underway.