As we take stock of this century of achievement, Ulster Unionists have every reason to feel proud.

I was organizing a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in October 1994 and I got a message that the Prime Minister would like a meeting. I went to the meeting. It was just me and John Major.What Major said to me was this: "If you were in my shoes, what would you do?". He wasn't asking me what a unionist should do, but what he should do. And I knew that I had to give him a sensible answer.

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.

We had a completely deniable exchange of papers - in the winter before the 1997 election - with [Tony] Blair, setting out what we thought were the realistic parameters for a solution: and we were getting reasonable responses back from him. That's what led to Blair's visit to Belfast on May 16, 1997 - two weeks after he became Prime Minister and his first official visit outside London.

It wasn't too difficult to see that [Ian] Paisley would never do anything positive.

During the 1996 Forum election my election agent, John Dobson, told me that at some stage down the line we were going to have to talk to the IRA and that I was the man to do it. And my reaction was not printable!

There are two traditions in Northern Ireland. There are two main religious denominations. But there is only one true moral denomination. And it wants peace.