Most law-abiding people in Northern Ireland believe that anyone who committed a crime should be brought to justice – and that the terrible events of Bloody Sunday were inexcusable. What is causing enormous distress is the completely disproportionate treatment of the security forces.

Sinn Fein will inevitably respond to the news that one soldier has been charged with murder and attempted murder by encouraging the bereaved to feel angry that more aren’t being brought to court. As further evidence of the wickedness of the British government they will cite a stupid remark, made by the Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley last week, that security forces killers were not committing crimes “but fulfilling their duty in a dignified and appropriate way.”

What isn’t being much quoted, though, is her accurate remark that “over 90 per cent of the killings during the Troubles were at the hands of terrorists [and] every single one of those was a crime.”

The figures speak for themselves. During the three decades of the Troubles, more than 3,600 people were killed, 60 per cent by republican paramilitaries (mostly the IRA), 30 per cent by loyalists and only 10 per cent by the security forces. Yet only 16 per cent of the victims of violence were paramilitaries, while 52 per cent were civilians and 32 per cent police and soldiers – the security forces who saved Northern Ireland from civil war. Except in a very few cases, which occurred mostly during the mayhem of the early 1970s, police and soldiers exercised extraordinary restraint.