The core of the speech was a warning, again an echo of countless speeches Hume made, a warning that, in McGuinness’s words, “the real threat to the political institutions is stagnation and the absence of progress”.

Repeatedly in the 1980s John Hume used to warn the British government that Mrs Hacksaw’s[Maggie Thatcher] tunnel vision intransigence made matters here incomparably worse. Her refusal to address any of the fundamental problems tended to bolster support for the IRA who were able to say there was no route to political progress.

It wasn’t all Thatcher’s fault however. Anyone reading the recently released public records from 1985 can see clearly the reactionary role the Northern Ireland Office played. Overwhelmingly unionist in outlook, the NIO constitutionally is an emanation of the Home Office. Indeed the whole extravagant, Ruritanian playhouse at Stormont is just a twig on one of the large branches of the Home Office. The NIO permanent secretary is the grand panjandrum of Norn Irn[ Northern Irealand]. English civil servants seconded to the NIO always regarded the problem here are purely an internal UK one, an attitude that was manna from heaven for the local species of unionist civil servant.

It wasn’t until matters were taken out of the ambit of the NIO and transferred to the Cabinet Office that any progress was made. There’s absolutely no doubt the NIO would have put the kibosh on the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. If they’d been involved there would have been no agreement. The Irish officials and Garret FitzGerald were able to persuade their British counterparts that the Anglo-Irish Agreement signed by both governments would prove the IRA wrong and that there could be political progress without armed struggle.

Until that point, as you can read in the official documents, any representation by the SDLP was rejected, even a request to remove the loathsome UDR from south Armagh. This was refused despite the fact records show senior civil servants and military officers knew the UDR was ‘heavily infiltrated’ by loyalist terrorists. For years they had known that up to one in six of the UDR was a member of the UVF or UDA. They were also fully aware of the RUC/UDR/UVF murder gang based at Glenanne in Co Armagh. Still, you couldn’t accede to any SDLP request in case it offended unionists. Vexation for nationalists didn’t matter.

What the deputy first minister didn’t say explicitly in his speech was that over the past four years we’ve moved back towards that position namely the British government regarding matters in the north as a purely British concern. Proconsuls appointed since 2010 have listed heavily in the direction of Unionism. The best recent evidence for such bias is that, incredibly, our clueless proconsul has given weight to the blathering about an inquiry into marching in north Belfast, a demand which appears to pay lip service to Billy Hutchinson and his close friends in the UVF.

Not even the mildest encouragement emerged from the NIO that dialogue with republicans about flags and marches and the past might be the only way forward for Unionism. No reference to the self-evident truth that Unionists are going nowhere without republicans.

No wonder Martin McGuinness renewed his appeal once again for Dublin and London to take the lead in driving political progress.

Fat chance with a British general election next May and David Cameron’s party falling asunder around him.

Add that to Enda Kenny’s complete indifference to the North and it looks as if ‘stagnation and absence of progress’ will continue to encourage people opposed to political dialogue.