Politics & Power Quote by Peter Hain

The sentence performs a political magic trick: it makes the unimaginable sound inevitable. Hain is narrating a transformation from outright warfare to procedural normalcy, and the verbal pivot is doing the work. “Bombs and bullets” lands first because it’s visceral, morally clarifying, and hard to relativize. Then he swings to the almost banal mechanics of democracy: “talking,” “sat together,” “sharing government.” The contrast is the point. He’s selling peace not as a warm feeling but as an institutional discipline.

The intent is partly celebratory, partly instructional. Hain isn’t only praising a settlement; he’s defending the principle that legitimacy can be rebuilt by forcing enemies into the same room until coexistence becomes routinized. The subtext is aimed at skeptics of power-sharing: if you’re uncomfortable watching former militants govern, remember the alternative. “Quite literally” is a subtle rhetorical insurance policy, preempting any attempt to reframe the past as merely “political tensions.” No, he insists: this was war.

Context matters: Hain is closely associated with the Northern Ireland peace process era, when “sharing government” meant asking communities to accept that peace would be negotiated with, not delivered over, those who had justified violence. His phrasing also carries a warning about fragility. A “period of parties” implies seasons can return; the achievement is real, but not irreversible.

What makes it work is its unsentimental realism. Peace, in this framing, isn’t purity. It’s proximity. It’s the daily, grinding choice to replace weapons with procedures and to let the state absorb conflict rather than explode from it.