This edition of Fourthwrite is going to press before the Ulster Unionist Party meets to decide whether or not to resume its position in the Executive. Few commentators are willing to forecast what the result will be and this magazine is not in a position to guess the intentions of UUP delegates. What may be said though is that whatever way the dice falls at the meeting the six will still belong to Britain and Unionism with the reactionary wing of the latter dictating the political pace for the foreseeable future.

The Provisional IRA has taken an enormous step by offering to put its arsenal verifiably beyond use. The magnitude of this concession has only been exceeded by the Sinn Fein party's acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement with the implicit recognition therein of the Union and Partition. Unionism, nevertheless, has not responded to this situation with anything resembling magnanimity.

Predictably, the DUP is self-evidently hostile to any settlement that includes non members of the Free Presbyterian congregation. In greater need of explanation, however, is the degree of opposition from the seemingly more strategic UUP to what, for them, is surely an excellent deal.

Yet their resistance to an accommodation is formidable. The young and academically brilliant Peter Weir, the still young and popular Jeffery Donaldson and the respected elder grandee William Ross are all fundamentally opposed to the concept of cohabitation in Northern Ireland. Nor are they isolated and lonely figures in their party. They enjoy significant support among the grass roots and their popularity has the potential to grow. Coupled with the DUP, they form a major and almost unappeasable constituency within the unionist heartland. In reality, this community is what makes Northern Ireland an unmanageable and unworkable entity.

For British ruled Northern Ireland to function, the Good Fri-day Agreement has to be able to work. And for the Agreement to work, republicans have to recognise and operate within the state on one hand while the British and unionists have to encourage republicans to participate within that state on the other hand. Any reneging by either side on the spirit and practice of the entente renders the whole project inoperable.

With the exception of a resolute handful, the majority of republicans in the form of Sinn Fein have, for the present at least, agreed to make Northern Ireland work. Indeed the party went so far as to organise street demonstrations demanding the return of Stormont institutions following the suspension of the Executive.

Unionists, however, show no similar enthusiasm for partnership in the governing of Northern Ireland. A protracted squabble over decommissioning unused weapons is followed by an endless wrangle about flags, emblems and the RUC makeover. It appears that the unionist appetite for absolute power is as strong now as it was in the first fifty years of the northern state's existence. It also seems clear that many unionists view any substantial reform as intolerable capitulation.

For Northern Ireland to have a long-term future as a separate entity, substantial reforms must be enacted and every constituency must be welcomed into the management of the region. By remaining incapable of accepting this logic and by frustrating its accomplishment, hard-line unionism provides us with one of the most amazing of paradoxes - they reinforce the claim that the 6-County state has not got a long-term future as a separate entity.

It is important though that this fact does not become a cause for inertia. The northern state will not dissolve by itself nor through republicans working it. Republicanism, because it is about something radically different from any of that, still faces the task of breaking the political connection with London and establishing an island wide democracy in Ireland. For republicanism, this remains the historic task and one which remains uncompleted.