For some five decades senior civil servants in Belfast had served indigenous government ministers.
Suddenly, from the 29th of March 1972, permanent secretaries headed departments lacking individual ministers and were answerable to a parachuted-in British Secretary of State. Comfortable assumptions and well-established routines were rapidly eroded.
Leading civil servants were placed in committees to guide the Secretary of State William Whitelaw, and the most important of these was the Future Policy Group.
Whitelaw had not been slow in constructing his road map to peace. He intended phasing out internment, repealing the Special Powers Act, bringing to birth the Council of Ireland named in the 1920 Act, implementing the 1970 Macrory report on local government, creating a legislative Assembly and forming a power-sharing regional government.
In January the Future Policy Group commented on the devolution plans laid out in Whitelaw's White Paper. The civil servants drew "attention to the risk of serious unrest among the majority if the White Paper should appear to provide for the imposition of an unacceptable settlementIt should take account of the mood of the Protestant communityand making it clear that arrangements for a Council of Ireland will not be made over the heads of the people of Northern Ireland". And what about a power-sharing executive in the White Paper?
The group cautiously advised that the White Paper "should not propose any particular form of Executive, but leave it for discussion with elected representatives"
Whitelaw did not like that timidity and replied on January 22nd: "I have some difficulty about paragraph 10 of the meeting with the Secretary of StateI do not think it would be appropriate that the form of the Executive could be determined by any Act of the local Assembly."
The 1970 Macrory report, recommending an overhaul of Northern Ireland's local government, still had to be implemented at the start of 1973. Macrory had recommended 26 District Councils with 526 single-member electoral wards having dismissed proportional representation, as Whitelaw put it, "as irrelevant (Paragraph 43) and (I am advised) foresaw the confusion and delay which would ensue if he lent any support to the idea".
Back in May 1972 the Secretary of State thought PR to be "not a political or practical proposition". However, the "minority parties are now asking for PR to be introduced to the local electionsI myself have therefore given it most earnest and sympathetic attention". Whitelaw changed his mind and both the local elections of 30 May and the Assembly elections of 28 June 1973 were conducted under the system of PR.
Senior civil servants and the Advisory Commission wrestled with the problem of attempting to correct the imbalance created by decades of discrimination in public employment. On January 29th "some minority members of the Commission" advocated "the compulsory retirement of a number of senior protestant officials and their replacement by catholics". They were told that the "official view is that binding commitments to existing staffs would not permit this".
The Interim Staff Commission, however, was considering "the possibility of creating redundancies by inviting early retirements".
"The situation is particularly difficult in the local education authorities," it admitted - there were only four Catholics in the Fermanagh Education Office out of a total staff of 120.
The continuation of promotion in the usual way "must inevitably deprive Catholics of any real opportunities of employment for upwards of a generation because at the moment there may be no Catholics in the third, fourth or fifth levels of employment". Posts had been advertised for the newly-created Housing Executive but "it will be seen that virtually no Catholics will be able even to apply for any of these 70 posts".
It was not until the Fair Employment Agency was replaced by the Fair Employment Commission in 1989 that effective measures were adopted to tackle catholic disadvantage in employment. Today Northern Ireland has the most comprehensive fair employment legislation anywhere in the world.
Jonathan Bardon is author of A History of Ulster and is a lecturer in the School of History, Queen's University Belfast