After the IRA came to shoot our (Catholic) neighbour, his dignified family members closed their door and grieved.
Us youngsters on the street in Derry were left bewildered but, as was the way in those close-lipped times, it seemed better not to ask too many questions.
Twenty long years passed, and many more were deprived of the right to hear the laughter of their children and grandchildren, before the Provisionals finally decommissioned their automatic weapons, explosives, detonators, heavy artillery and all the rest of their grisly arsenal.
By then, an international body had been set up to keep any ongoing paramilitary activity in the North under strict surveillance.
The final report of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) stated in 2011 that the Provisional IRA had "however slowly, transformed itself under firm leadership and has gone out of business as a paramilitary group".
The report contrasted this with the behaviour of loyalist groups which, “lacking comparable direction, have struggled to adapt”.
But a decade after decommissioning, there are dead bodies on the streets of Belfast again. And the suggestion from many of those in the know is that we were desperately naive to have ever thought the IRA would have liquidated itself or ideologically evaporated.
An inert IRA appears to have been permitted to continue in order to prevent a small but dangerous number of dissidents claiming its mantle and continuing the bloodshed. Put crudely, the idea was that an old boys’ network of hard men with credibility in the Republican movement would use their authority, and perhaps even the threat of their muscle, to keep a lid on any desire to return to the old ways.
Whether through wishful thinking or wilful ignorance, the implications of the presence of former paramilitaries in Northern Ireland have not received close examination in the Republic.
Huddled with other journalists under the imposing statue of Unionist firebrand Edward Carson on Thursday, I heard the cross-community Alliance Party's Minister Stephen Farry call for transparency about the continued influence of such groupings at community level and their subversion of the rule of law. "That has been very much crystallised over the past number of days. This is an issue not just in terms of the continued existence of the IRA and what that actually means today but also the continued existence of loyalist paramilitaries, including the UDA and the UVF," Farry said.
And while he conceded people were cynical about the performance of the Assembly, he cautioned against thinking the unthinkable, “conceding that this place is ungovernable and we’d have to have direct rule or joint sovereignty”.
Some kind of confidence-building measures were required to see Northern Ireland transition to a fully normal society, but walking away from the Executive was not a constructive strategy, he argued. But that is exactly what former newscaster Mike Nesbitt proposed this week, when he recommended his Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) pull its sole Minister out of the power-sharing Executive.
Pressure
Mr Nesbitt piled pressure on the DUP, when he said the revelations about the killing of Gerard “Jock” Davison, and apparent revenge killing of Kevin McGuigan, had shattered his party’s trust in Sinn Féin. The next move for the UUP was to “form an opposition and then offer the voter an alternative, as is normal in any proper democracy”, Mr Nesbitt said.
The SDLP opted to stick rather than twist. It ruled out backing a motion to exclude Sinn Féin – the party that has effectively cannibalised its vote from the Executive – on the grounds that it requires more evidence of IRA involvement in the murder of Kevin McGuigan.
Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness likes to tell a story of how the late DUP leader Ian Paisley told him, on their first day as First and Deputy First Minister, "We don't need any English Minster to rule us." Perhaps the anecdote will feature in the planned film about their improbable friendship, which will star Dublin actor Colm Meaney as McGuinness opposite Londoner Timothy Spall as Paisley.
But in Belfast this week, there was palpable disillusionment about the capabilities of those involved in the power-sharing arrangement involving ministers from the five biggest parties in the Assembly: the DUP, Sinn Féin; SDLP; UUP and Alliance. The troubled Northern Executive has failed to outgrow its peace-process infancy, and Northern politicians will continue to need external assistance for the foreseeable future.
Inevitably, this latest controversy prompted political opportunism on both sides of the Border. This will intensify as the general election approaches in the Republic.
Normal rules
A frustrating reality for Sinn Féin’s political opponents North and South is that the normal rules of politics appear not to apply to the party. Numerous controversies that would have cooked the political goose of any other political party have left Sinn Féin undamaged.
In any event, the Sinn Féin membership appears to thrive on an “us against the world” mentality. But with precious devolution under threat, the peace process is in a vulnerable position.
The assessment of almost everyone, except Sinn Féin, is that some sort of IRA organisation still exists. A euphemistic language that can be characterised as “peace process speak” has evolved in republican circles, but even the simple phrase “gone away” does not mean what we once thought it meant.
People are no longer afraid to ask questions. It is time for plain speaking on all sides.
Stephen Collins is on leave