Thirty-two years ago my friend, Bruce Arnold, who was then editing Hibernia, suggested a piece which could be called Taking the Gun Out of Irish Politics.
It seemed an odd thought for the time. We'd just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising and elected the octogenarian Eamon de Valera, who liked to be known as its last surviving commandant, to a second term in the Presidency.
RTE's fine series on the Rising had helped stimulate debate, mostly on our failure to live up to its leaders' expectations. But taking the gun out of politics wasn't one of the issues raised.
Public attention was on poverty and emigration.
Bruce Arnold's sights, though, were on the republican movement, which had been quietly undergoing its own minor revolution since the IRA's Border campaign petered out in the early 1960s.
Now, under the influence of left-wingers like Roy Johnston, Sinn Fein members were engaged in very different campaigns, echoing some of the concerns of the 1930s when, for a time, there were signs of unity among Protestant and Catholic workers and unemployed.
Not all republicans welcomed the change of direction. Sean Mac Stiofain, later one of the leaders of the Provisional IRA, refused to sell the movement's paper, the United Irish- man, because of a decision to stop reciting the Rosary at commemorations.
The majority had no such qualms. They saw the new emphasis on social conditions, housing, unemployment and the ownership and exploitation of natural resources as a return to the origins and inspiration of republicanism.
More to the point, when it came to taking the gun out of politics, they favoured supporting the civil rights movement with its fresh demand for equal treatment within the United Kingdom, a realistic alternative to harping on about partition.
Others arrived at the same position by different routes. What was important was that the demands of their joint campaign, supported by old and new republicans, old and new left, as well as many who'd simply seen the logic and justice of it all, seemed as undeniable as those of the civil rights movement in the United States.
Indeed, by the autumn of 1969, many of the demands had been met. Local government had been reorganised. One-man-one-vote now applied. The Hunt report had led to the reform of the RUC and the replacement of the B Specials.
But by the autumn of 1969 there had also been bitter, often forceful, resistance to change, most (though not all) of it led or inspired by Ian Paisley.
He and his friends occupied the centre of Armagh simply to prevent a peaceful demonstration.
Unionists battered members of People's Democracy at Burntollet on a march from Belfast to Derry.
And then there was August 1969 . . .
Changed times called up a changed vocabulary, as political programmes gave way to riot, siege and ambush, as clubs and stones were replaced by petrol bombs, car bombs and casual, murderous assaults on civilians.
Then the headcounts, not of crowds at rallies to measure support for this or that cause, but of casualties, to measure strength, ability to control.
Injuries at first, then deaths, and new phenomena - punishment beatings, rackets, turf wars.
The descent was terrifying but, once it began, soon seemed unstoppable. Republicans divided between Official and Provisional wings, then splintered again with the formation of the INLA.
And, later, as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) strode from the shadows and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), masked and carrying cudgels, swaggered through the streets, the echoes of the 1930s were back, but not of unity among workers.
There are three reasons for returning now to that moment in the mid-1960s when it seemed the gun might have been taken out of Irish politics.
First, because it still seems important to point out what a huge mistake was made by the unionists who refused to recognise the justice - indeed, the modesty - of the civil rights demands.
At a time when change was gathering pace in the wider world - and outsiders in turn had begun to take an interest in events in Ireland - they could hardly have hoped to hold out for more than two or three years.
As it happened, they managed to make the worst of their case by seeming to grudge the changes they made lest their colleagues, and especially Dr Paisley, accuse them of being soft on their fellow citizens.
Secondly, I'm convinced there is now, once more, an opportunity to take the gun out of politics. And it's an opportunity which must not be lost.
This is not to compare present conditions with those of the 1960s. Comparisons with different times or places - South Africa, the Middle East or Ireland 1968 - are invariably incomplete and often misleading.
But it's necessary to remind ourselves that when the mistake was made 30 years ago, no one had more than the vaguest inkling of the dreadful decades ahead.
Even those who warned of civil war could hardly have imagined the sheer bloodymindedness of La Mon or the Shankill Butchers, the incitement of Widgery's bland response to Bloody Sunday. Darkley and Teebane were barely visible on the map.
People called to the Droppin' Well for a drink, watched football in the pub at Loughinisland, placed their bets at Sean Graham's on the Ormeau Road. The third reason for looking back is to say that now we know how these places lost their innocence. And there are no excuses for holding out in the hope of advancing another inch, regaining an inch lost in negotiations. (No ship should be spoiled, let alone lost, for a lick of green paint.)
IT'S because of the past 30 years that the Irish Times/Guardian poll this week showed heavy majorities, North and South, in favour of the agreement negotiated by the governments and parties in Belfast.
It's why David Trimble, who has shown courageous leadership, merits the wholehearted support of those, North and South, who want the agreement to succeed: he has changed his own mind and challenged the unbending minds of many around him.
Like members of the smaller parties who played heroic roles in the negotiations, he has shown that he recognises how stubbornness let his predecessors down and damaged the cause of co-operation and modernisation in the community.
Politics changed, in some respects radically, in the past 30 years. We've witnessed the splitting of the isms, unionism and nationalism, and this weekend may see another step in the direction of what John Hume calls post-nationalist Europe.