Inside Politics:It is hard to avoid LP Hartley's dictum that the past is a foreign country, in the context of the newly released government files for 1976. The murder of the British ambassador in south Co Dublin, the resignation of president Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, a government struggling grimly to bring the country through an economic recession - all seem such distant historical curiosities in the confident, booming Ireland of today.
There are uncomfortable parallels lurking beneath the surface that resonate down the years. Sinn Féin's latest effort to inch towards acceptance of the PSNI hopefully represents the faint, final echo of the republican movement's long and violent campaign.
The looming energy crisis of the 21st century brings back memories of the first oil crisis of 1974 that dented the early optimism of Liam Cosgrave's Fine Gael-Labour coalition. The ultimate tribute to that government is that it brought the country through a security crisis that had the capacity to destroy the State and a world economic crisis that could have permanently crippled the Irish economy.
The tough action taken on the security and economic fronts made the government highly unpopular and it lost power in the Fianna Fáil landslide of 1977. The truly scary feature of the archives is a document in the British release that shows how things could have been far, far worse. If prime minister Harold Wilson had his way, the island of Ireland would probably have descended into unimaginable violence on the scale of the Balkans, following a complete British pull-out from the North.
In a memo headed "Apocalyptic note", the then prime minister raised the question of Northern Ireland becoming totally separate from Britain. "All in all, therefore, the apocalyptic situation envisaged in this note raises frightening prospects, frightening above all for Northern Ireland . . . but it might involve Britain in very serious consequences, including some of an international kind," he wrote. "I think we should be prepared to consider these implications, since a situation could arise very quickly in which action has to be taken. Should it do so, we should not shrink from taking that action." In the event, Wilson's senior colleagues firmly discouraged him from pursuing this line, with foreign secretary James Callaghan the most emphatic in ruling it out. The Irish government knew that Wilson was considering withdrawal and ministers had prepared their own "doomsday scenario" memo, which was included in last year's archives release.
What the Irish archives only hint at is just how terrified senior ministers were at the prospect of a British withdrawal and how hard key politicians worked behind the scenes to ensure it did not happen. Former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, who was minister for foreign affairs in that government, recalled his role in those events in an article in the journal, Irish Studies in International Affairs, earlier this year.
"Looking back on that fraught period 30 years later, what remains most vivid in my mind about that time is the terrible sense of virtual impotence that I and others immediately involved felt in the face of the dangers which a British withdrawal would have created for our island and our State. Neither then or since has public opinion in Ireland realised how close to disaster our whole island came during the last two years of Harold Wilson's premiership," he wrote.
FitzGerald recorded how he and the Fianna Fáil leader, Jack Lynch, had dinner with Callaghan at his daughter and son-in-law's house in Glandore, Co Cork, in the summer of 1975.
Both senior Irish politicians emphasised to the foreign secretary just how dangerous the situation was, with Dr FitzGerald pointing out the potential threat to Irish democracy that would ensue if it spun out of control.
Callaghan's response was that Britain "would not abandon its responsibilities" and he followed through on that by arguing strongly against the Wilson proposal at meetings of the British cabinet committee on Northern Ireland. The role played by FitzGerald and Lynch in influencing the foreign secretary's opinions at private meetings in Ireland should not be underestimated.
It might have been very different if Irish politics had taken a different turn a few years earlier and Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney had come out on top in the power struggle within Fianna Fáil in 1969/70.
Far from discouraging a British withdrawal they would have been likely to encourage it and have pushed Wilson in a direction he was already going. After all he had held a secret meeting with the IRA through the agency of Dublin TD John O'Connell in 1971. He might well have responded to the combined pressure of a more militant nationalist Fianna Fáil in alliance with the republican movement.
It is impossible to know precisely what the outcome of a British withdrawal would have been, but going on all the evidence communal violence on an unprecedented scale for Ireland would have been almost inevitable. This would in turn have led to the mass movement of populations, which in more recent times has become known as "ethnic cleansing". Repartition, political instability and severe economic recession would have followed.
Instead, events took a different turn and while republican and loyalist violence continued for almost another two decades the Irish and British governments muddled along, gradually drawing closer and closer in their analysis of what had to be done to settle the problems left by history.
What the archives show, however, is that it was a much closer run thing than people imagine.
Mr Wilson's willingness to capitulate in the face of violence proves that it was by no means inevitable that sane politicians like FitzGerald, Lynch and Callaghan would prevail over the wild men screaming through the keyholes. We should be thankful that they did.