Tony Blair's daring initiative in Northern Ireland is already bringing results

Throughout its history, the IRA has split into groups who proceeded to murder each other's members in industrial quantities

Once again, Mr Blair has been lucky in his timing (this time, perhaps, with some help from British intelligence). No sooner does the PM make a speech urging the IRA to disband than the Real IRA's prisoners announce that they are taking his advice. It does not matter if this is moral implosion due to guilt over the Omagh bombing, or a bid for an amnesty. Nor does it matter that Messrs Adams, McGuinness and the rest will be unmoved by the response of a breakaway faction, for which they deny all responsibility. The Real IRA's collapse adds momentum to Tony Blair's initiative.

It was a daring initiative. The 19th century historian Leopold von Ranke said that history was past politics. In Ireland, it is more a matter of politics being past history – or rather, of the impossibility of history ever receding into a sterilised past. Over the last 34 years, a large number of mainland politicians have involved themselves in Ulster's affairs, with greater or lesser knowledge and enthusiasm. Up to now, however, all of them have shared one characteristic; an absolute refusal to embroil themselves in Irish history.

They all appeared to have concluded that this would be as wise as playing with lighted matches in a dynamite factory. Instead, they adopted the part of the Anglo- Saxon pragmatist, constantly urging the locals to forget the past and focus on the future, and constantly failing. Now, Mr Blair has broken with precedent.

It is paradoxical that he should have done so, for there has rarely – if ever – been a Prime Minister with less interest in history, less knowledge of history, or less patience with history. It often seems as if he believes that everything which happened until 1997 is BT, "before Tony'', a dark age when the Labour Party used to lose elections while no one even tried to run the public services properly.

When HG Wells published A Short History of the World, one academic reviewer sniffed that Mr Wells had written rather more history than he had read. Apropos of the recent speech, the same charge could be levelled at Tony Blair. There are some dubious assertions, and some even more doubtful moral equivalents.

"Who could not understand the anguish of the families of the victims of terrorism when they saw their dearest ones' murderers given a rapturous welcome as they were released. Or those who were prepared to die [for] ... a united Ireland who saw their representatives take their place in the partitionist assembly.'' Does the PM really equate the grief of an RUC widow with the frustration of those who believed that they could achieve a united Ireland by murdering her husband and his colleagues?

Mr Blair has also bought the Hollywood version of pre-1968 Ulster: an apartheid state in which Catholics were treated as second-class citizens. Ulster certainly had its difficulties between 1922 and1968. What more would one expect when more than one third of the population would regularly vote to deny the state's legitimacy, while its nearest neighbour claimed its territory, and it was regularly menaced by campaigns of terrorism?

Yet many of Ulster's problems could have been averted, but only if there had been a British government with foresight or an Ulster Protestant statesman of genius. Back in 1922, the majority of Unionists did not want a parliament in Stormont. They would have preferred full integration with the rest of the UK, which was denied them. Most mainland politicians were determined to keep the Ulster problem at several barge poles' length. By so doing, they perpetuated it.

Had there been integration, it is possible, over time, Ulstermen might have voted according to their views on tax rates, nationalisation or nuclear weapons. As it was, however, the existence of the Stormont parliament ensured that in large part, every Ulster election became a referendum on the province's status. In Ulster, the UK model of adversarial politics regularly spilled over from parliament to the streets.

But Stormont might just have worked, if there had been a Unionist leader capable of raising his vision from the potential battlefields of a near civil war to distant prospects of peace and harmony. Only such a paladin might have been able to convince his tribal followers that, as they had succeeded on the one – big – point, the Union, they should now try to consolidate their position. This could only be done by winning a measure of acquiescence from their Catholic fellow-subjects. On all subsidiary points, therefore, the Unionists should have been willing to compromise.

Compromise is not naturally an Ulster characteristic, nor was it encouraged by the cockpit of Stormont. But, as history is transmuted into mythology, the grievances of Ulster's Catholics were greatly exaggerated. Take gerrymandering; the manipulation of electoral boundaries for partisan advantage. In the recent biography of Willie Whitelaw, two reputable authors peddled the falsehood that the old Stormont parliament was gerrymandered, a belief widely shared even among those who ought to know better. Yet it is untrue; Stormont elections were always fair.

There was gerrymandering in Londonderry local government, where the city council wards were rigged to ensure a Unionist majority in a Catholic city. But Londonderry, the province's second city, was on the Irish border. Though they were wrong to do so – as London was wrong to allow them – it is easy to see why the Unionists wanted to keep the council chamber in safe hands. This was not motiveless malice, nor will it register in a league table of 20th century oppression, yet it was the Ulster Catholics' worst grievance. Neither it, nor any other supposed wrong, justified terrorism.

That brings us back to the present. Tony Blair is right: "There is no parallel track left. The fork in the road has finally come.'' The PM hopes that Sinn Fein will continue to participate in the democratic process, but if they are to do so, they must honour their commitments in the Good Friday Agreement. The IRA must decommission, demilitarise and disband.

It will be interesting to see how the IRA responds. It has long been clear that Adams and McGuinness would like to make their future contribution to a united Ireland from the first-class compartments of transatlantic airliners and the drawing rooms of Manhattan and Massachusetts. But those luxuries will not be available to their lesser followers in west Belfast. As long as the IRA exists, it provides a large number of ill-educated and unqualified youths with status and an identity. If the IRA were to wind itself up, such persons would be relegated to the dole queue. It is unlikely that all of them will agree to this. Throughout its history, the IRA has regularly split into competing groups, which promptly proceeded to murder each other's members in industrial quantities. There could well be another such outbreak before peace is achieved in Ulster.

Yet the PM was right to confront the IRA. In doing so, he may have indulged in some bad history, but it was good politics.