I tweeted a few days ago: ''I have no animus towards George Mitchell or Bill Clinton but I really don't think they deserve the Freedom of Belfast.''
Within minutes I was accused of being anti-Good Friday Agreement (which I supported); of being a bigot (which I'm not); of opposing power-sharing (which I don't) and of being just a 'typical unionist' (which even unionists don't accuse me of being).
As it happens I also expressed concerns when David Trimble and John Hume were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, arguing: ''They should turn down the prize or, at the very least, ask for the award to be held over until it has become clear that the people of Northern Ireland have bought into the deal, that all parties and paramilitaries are honouring their side of the bargain and that a new political/societal era has kicked off.'' In other words, don't give out peace prizes and honours in mere hope; give them when there is measurable delivery and palpable change.
Not long after Trimble and Hume accepted their prizes it became clear that the SDLP and UUP were not going to be able to build a new - let alone hold the existing - centre ground. And a couple of years later it became obvious that the British/Irish/American governments had decided to abandon the UUP and SDLP and switch their efforts to the DUP and Sinn Féin.
In his Nobel acceptance speech Trimble noted: ''The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind - a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish. But both communities must leave it behind, because both created it.'' He was/is right.
Yet almost 20 years later - Trimble delivered that speech on December 10, 1998 - and that dark sludge threatens to engulf us. The DUP and Sinn Féin continue to grow, continue to gobble up the UUP and SDLP, continue to entrench us more deeply into opposing, irreconcilable camps. The progress towards peace for which Trimble and Hume earned their prize in 1998 is very hard to see today. Indeed, the progress seems to be in the opposite direction.
It is good - in every sense of the term - that we don't have armed terrorist gangs on both sides waging something which they imagine to be a legitimate war. But we mustn't confuse the absence of terrorism with a normal, consensual, progressive, genuinely power-sharing society: which we don't have.
Senator Gordon Wilson, Peter Brooke, Martin Mansergh, Rev Roy Magee, Fr Alec Reid, George Mitchell, Bill Clinton, Lord Eames, Senator Edward Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith, Mary McAleese, and Richard Haass have all been awarded the Tipperary International Peace Prize. Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976; Trimble and Hume 22 years later. And yet the fact remains that Northern Ireland remains a divided, cantankerous society.
We haven't had our own government (centred, lest we forget, on the Good Friday Agreement) for 15 months; and don't look like having one in the near future. Much of the previous decade involved stand-offs, show-downs, crisis summits and a briefings war from both press offices. The institutions crashed in mutual contempt.
I'm not saying we shouldn't recognise the work of those who have tried to make a difference; including those unknown thousands who, as Wordsworth put it, carried out "those little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love." Nor am I blind to the possibility that we could be in a much darker place had it not been for their collective efforts. But I am saying that we should be cautious when it comes to handing out prizes, awards, baubles, honours etc: because each award sends out a message which, more often than not, is based on a false premise. Based on hope rather than reality.
Which brings me to the decision by Belfast City Council to award the Freedom of Belfast to Bill Clinton and George Mitchell. Both men played an important - in Mitchell's case, crucial - role in our peace process: a role for which they have already been recognised and rewarded. Yet the very fact that we're back to talking about bringing in another mediator to help us out of the latest mess means that it's too early to be handing out yet another honour.
Both men are due here in a few days and both would have been keen to be celebrating the ongoing and expanding success of the Good Friday Agreement. Yes, they deserve to be thanked for the help they gave us - and I'm sure they will be over the next two weeks - but it would be a monumental nonsense to honour them again for their contribution to a process which is now stalled and in continuing crisis. We fool ourselves if we think that handing out an honour will make things better.
