We have learned some les-sons during the past thirty years. One is that any people who can invent ten different solutions for one political problem must be political geniuses. Another is that political differences should never again be allowed to destroy friendships.

The first of these lessons may seem just a pleasant joke but it is not - the really skilled approach to problems is to look not only at all the reasons why the problem exists but at all the possible ways of solving it. Recognising all the possibilities and treating all the solutions with respect leads on to the second lesson we learned, that profound differences and deep friendships can co-exist.

For a very long time we were told that if we disagreed with people we should not be friends with them - political differences lead to isolation, economic differences to ghettoisation, religious differences to segregation. This was a propaganda ploy used by our opponents who knew very well that decent people do not want to lose friendship and may even be forced to hide their opinions in order not to lose it. But once people realise that differences of opinion not only need not destroy friendship but can actually enrich it, then life becomes more free and more satisfying for us. And more dangerous for our oppressors.

People become even more creative and self-confident. And in the long run there will probably be a fusion of the best of our ideas provided we express them. We risk defeat when we believe we cannot express different ideas to each other lest we risk the friendship we built up through so much pain and hope. A free people will always create ideas and try them on for size. And we have never been short of ideas.

The Eire Nua four provinces idea is a good one, so is the idea of a unitary Irish republican state. Add 'socialist' to each of them and the idea becomes better still although not all republicans will heartily agree with that. But however good an idea, the really good part comes when you have an opportunity to try it on for size among people who know that the only valid reason for getting rid of an idea is having a better one.

Decades ago in some terrible times, including the seventies, a lot of people were trying hard to accommodate each others' ideas - they got little credit for it - and some of them talked about creating an independent northeast where one-time unionists could feel secure and all of us could get rid of the burden of London misgovernment. The Eire Nua proposal recognised why people had this idea and tried then to provide a solution for unionists who were afraid of a United Ireland and yet disgusted with the London government which had done such damage to all of us.

For all republicans the vital question was the future shape of a democratic Ireland, unitary or federal, best able to satisfy the needs and potential of us all. Even John McKeague used to say 'Yes, a united Ireland could be, but we would have to enter it as a free people, even if we are only independent from twelve midnight to five past, it has to be a free choice…' But the propaganda, widespread, well funded and ruthless, said that Irish people and especially Catholics and Protestants could not live together in peace and therefore they could not work out a solution around the negotiating table. Those who put forward the idea of an independent northeast did not insist that that was a perfect solution - indeed given the history of the near independence of the previous fifty years it could be a highly dangerous one - but they did say that the discussion which this idea would give rise to could eventually lead to an honourable compromise between people courageous enough to bring their own ideas to the table and respect all others who did the same.

The trouble always was that we were not allowed to discuss our own solutions - this is one of the strangest aspects of the situation in the northeast, we are never negotiating about our own solutions. The London administration said a united Ireland, unitary or federal, was not to be discussed, neither was an independent Ulster nor integration with Britain nor a return to the old Stormont regime. Yet these were solutions, good or bad, that we, the people in the area, had suggested. The only plan allowed on the table was the solution proposed by the London administration - which none of us had asked or voted for! - namely, London control with devolved government and contrived partial responsibility sharing.

Unsatisfactory for all us, it was the only solution on the table. London's solution not ours, not the solution of any of us. And with the money, arms and propaganda of the London administration behind it there was no alternative to trying to make the most of it, relatively satisfied that if this much could be wrung from London against its will then more would inevitably follow. Provided of course that London was faced with people determined to be free citizens, and united and competent enough to achieve it.

As long as London could keep on inventing initiatives which could not work because they belonged to London and not to us, it was satisfied that it could fend off international public opinion and keep us taking about how we could administer their plans for our government. Meanwhile our plans for our government would never be on the table. So, what the London administration is afraid of is that our plans should be the only ones on the table and should stay there until they are either fulfilled or replaced by better ones also invented by ourselves.

That being so, the best plan for us, and for them, is to put all our solutions on the table, respectfully proud of them, and discuss together how we can make the honourable compromises that our people deserve. The London solution can be, if they wish it, on the table among the rest in any such future negotiations. The present political process can be seen as an operation to clean up a corrupt regime which the London administration is primarily responsible for. We are right to do that. No matter who is in power the regime must be cleaned up. Many of us believe the regime cannot bear cleaning up - once you clean up a regime like that of the northeast you thereby dismantle it. While we get on with that political, economic and judicial cleaning up we can also be getting our people together to negotiate all the solutions that we - and not only London - have created for discussion.

We can be proud of those two things - one, our inventiveness, and two, our respect for each other which can and should lead to workable solutions which we can be proud of and London will have to learn to live with.