In 1969 13 people died as a result of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In 1970 that figure rose to 25. These deaths were tragic, but the total was very small compared with what was to come.
The numbers are particularly hard to square with claims that actions taken by Jack Lynch's government, including the prosecutions that led to the Arms Trial of 1970, were necessary to avert a sectarian civil war.
There were times in the ensuing 25 years when the possibility of a conflict that might engulf the whole island loomed ominously. Bloody Sunday raised emotions in this State to a high pitch. The 1981 hunger strikes were even more potent. I remember a respected, rather conservative journalistic colleague saying to me grimly, as we watched Margaret Thatcher on TV: "We're all Provos now."
That wasn't the mood in 1969. For a start, the Provos didn't exist. The IRA had been powerless to defend Catholic houses burnt out by loyalist mobs in Belfast. But the scenes on television galvanised Westminster into sending the British army to restore peace.
To the majority of Catholics it seemed obvious that their arrival had changed everything. Stormont had met its match and the Westminster government would now ensure that this part of the United Kingdom was made to accept the law as it applied in Britain. If there is to be a full-scale inquiry into the events surrounding the 1970 Arms Trial and the political context of the times, one question that needs to be asked is this: Why did Jack Lynch and his colleagues fail to put adequate pressure on the British government to press ahead much faster in Northern Ireland? In particular, why were they unable to impress on Westminster that the British troops deployed in the North must be seen to be scrupulously even-handed?
At first, there was reason for hope. The Labour government in London seemed genuinely committed to achieving an end to discrimination. As important, those groups pressing for change, like the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, were relatively uncluttered by the past. The IRA was not a serious force, nor would it become so for some time. Those who had marched for civil rights wanted reasonable reforms and Jim Callaghan, a shrewd and ambitious politician, was of a mind to listen to them. The Home Secretary visited the Bogside in August 1969 and told the cheering crowds "I am not neutral. I am on the side of all people deprived of justice." Measures to end discrimination in housing and employment were introduced. Tribunals of inquiry were set up to look into the violence. The B Specials were disbanded. The heavens did not fall. Many unionists did not like what was happening, but a considerable number of them accepted that there had to be change. The Protestant backlash failed to materialise.
What most people in the nationalist community wanted was the right to live as equals. They did not want a war with their unionist neighbours. If the reforms were to work, then speed was of the essence. The officer commanding the British troops noted the welcome that had been given to his soldiers and remarked "the trouble with honeymoons is that they last for a very short time".
There were shadows waiting in the wings, most ominously the heavy weight of history. The Provisional IRA, formed in January 1970, had a different vision of the future than the reformers. But it was events on the ground, crucially the introduction of internment in 1971, which set Northern Ireland on the course which was to result in the loss of 3,000 lives over the next 25 years.
Could that tragic period have been different if Jack Lynch and his colleagues had been able to engage seriously with successive British governments in those crucial early years?
There is a popular view that this State simply did not have the clout to influence British policy. Another school of thought believes that the primary objective of this, and successive Irish governments, was to ensure that the violence did not spill over into this State.
It is still difficult to understand why the Irish government at that time did not push harder for a greater say in what was happening. Lynch had a good relationship with James Callaghan. It was clear that both he and Harold Wilson had grave doubts about the capacity of the unionist leadership to deliver change. Yet Lynch appears to have stopped short of any radical advice and the decision to suspend Stormont was taken only after Bloody Sunday in 1972.
At that time, too, the Heath government recognised that any new arrangements for Northern Ireland "should, in so far as this is possible, be acceptable to and accepted by the government of the Republic of Ireland." By then it was too late. Given all that had happened between 1969 and 1974, the hardening of views in both communities, the first power-sharing executive never really stood a chance.
It has taken a very long time for the people of Northern Ireland to be given a second opportunity to replace the gun with politics. Some commentators believe that that the violence of the ensuing 25 years was inevitable, that it was only after it all that the two communities could agree to live together. That task still has to be completed.
The nagging question is not whether there was an official plot to import arms (fascinating though that is), but why there was no government strategy to push the British further and faster along the road to equal rights.