WILLIAM Waldegrave, one of the Prime Minister's extensive collection

of crash dummies, has been experimenting with logic this week: he has

told the truth about lies. Ministers are liars, says the Minister

cunningly designed to crumple on impact with reality, and that's the

truth. Take a Minister's word for it.

Oddly, the clever younger son of the 12th lord, in whom centuries of

breeding have instilled the ability to say the right thing at the wrong

time, was crucified for stating what most people already knew. All

governments lie and this one has been lying like Baron Munchausen in a

fibbing contest.

Lord Justice Scott has been hosting one event (''And our next

contestant is Willy Waldegrave. Willy's wearing a scanty little

statement he stitched together all by himself!'') while MPs dirty their

hands in the backwash from the Pergau dam. But the trail of ministerial

deceit is now so long it might almost be called, in a post-modern sort

of way, Britain's own misinformation superhighway, on which every

turning is the wrong one.

Thus, everything Waldegrave had to say about untruths was true, and

all who attacked him for it were liars. Indeed, you get the impression

they were more appalled by an outbreak of honesty about dishonesty than

by the dishonesty itself. Someone, perhaps even the public, might have

heard. But if you believe that will change anything you'll believe

William Waldegrave.

Take -- and the workers at Heathrow wish you would -- the Irish peace

process. Conventionally, any suggestion of peace for Ireland means that

someone, somewhere, gets killed. It is therefore a situation in which

truth and lies are interchangeable, in which promises mean the opposite

of what they seem to mean, and in which what participants say they are

doing bears no easily recognisable resemblance to what they are actually

doing. Diplomacy, they call it.

Thus, we now know that the Government lied about secret contacts with

the IRA. We know, in part, because Ian Paisley, regarded universally as

a pillar of rectitude (according to my notes), said so, but mostly

because the Government made a horrible botch of covering their tracks.

They talked to the Provisionals, denied it all, were found out, and

then stopped the contacts just as almost everyone else was beginning to

grasp that talks might not be a bad idea. Gerry Adams was then able to

go off smiling to the United States and flaunt these facts. The

Government (Minister for ''Openness'': W. Waldegrave) responded by

censoring his broadcast remarks lest the British public get the wrong

idea.

ALL this was passing strange. In order to separate the Provisionals

from their guns it seemed merely sensible to bring them into the

democratic process. That meant talking to them.

Instead, the Downing Street Declaration was turned into an ultimatum.

Republican requests for clarification were rejected. Such debate as

survived was conducted through the media. And the IRA's active service

units went back, as we saw at Heathrow, to the kind of dialogue they

understand best, as though to remind Britain of the alternative to

talking.

One piece is missing from the jigsaw, however, thanks in no small

measure to Her Majesty's Auxiliary Media. Just what did the Republican

movement, depicted everywhere as merely obstructive, mean by

clarification? What are the questions the Government refuses to answer?

Try these.

Does Britain intend to stay in Ireland forever or does it not? How can

Britain maintain that it is neutral in the Irish constitutional debate

when Amnesty International maintains there has been significant

collusion between Loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces?

If the northern Loyalist community has a veto over British policy,

what rights are offered to the communities of Fermanagh, Tyrone and

Derry, where the majority are Nationalist? If Unionists have a right to

''self-determination'', what are the rights of people in those counties?

Is British policy towards the north influenced in any way by the

precedent real ''self-determination'' might set for Scotland? Equally,

if the Six Counties are to be demilitarised, how is policing to be

carried out? How will Nationalists be protected from Loyalist killers if

the IRA lays down its arms and the UVF does not? By the mistrusted Royal

Ulster Constabulary?

Finally -- a question, in effect, for both sides -- if the IRA cannot

defeat the British Army and yet remains, as Heathrow showed, undefeated

itself, what is the alternative to politics and dialogue? Why are there

now no contacts with the Republicans? And if the Provisionals are

bluffing over clarification, why not call their bluff by answering their

questions?

Obviously all of this would involve the Government in what Douglas

Hurd might call a temporary entanglement with truth. It would be a new

experience, but a useful one. Lying to the Commons is one thing, but

lying to the British public, which foots much of the bill for Ireland's

troubles, is quite another.

It is obvious, of course, that the Republicans are looking for an

advantage in all this. So are the Unionists; so is the Irish Government;

so is the SDLP and the British Government. It may be, however, that

simple honesty now contains the best prospect of John Major winning that

advantage.