The Base 2 report is difficult to relate to previous figures because other agencies previously helped those threatened to get out. But at least 683 people ordered to leave home last year from a population of one and a half million is a shocking indictment of a situation seven years on from ceasefires and three or four years on from a political agreement. Given that these cases are from both sides - and due to the IRA, UDA and UVF - it is not simply a case of policing still being unacceptable to republicans rather than of policing being a major issue, particularly in working class areas on both sides.

Paramilitaries justify threats and punishment attacks (of which the PSNI/Police Service for Northern Ireland records 331 such attacks in 2001, the highest ever recorded - nearly one a day) because current policing is unacceptable and local people demand action. And this is the case for some people. But if Northern Ireland is ever to escape from this trap, policing not only has to be acceptable to people in the kind of policing offered but it also has to be given a chance to work. If the two sides of the coin do not come together then these attacks will continue for many years to come. This requires bravery of a number of different kinds; bravery within the police by those who are trying to move forward, bravery by local groups and politicians in paving the way for policing to become acceptable, bravery by people in areas where policing is currently unacceptable or where the paramilitaries are seen as an alternative method of justice. Paramilitary or vigilante groups being judge and jury as well as executioner of an attack or threat is not a long term solution to anything. Restorative justice initiatives locally can be part of an answer but are not a complete answer in themselves.

There are not many bodies in Northern Ireland who can say they have their hands clean, and the police are not one of them. But they have also suffered through many murders and attacks which have left police officers injured and disabled. There are still ongoing concerns about the implementation of the Patten report but the PSNI deserves the benefit of the doubt in trying to work towards the acceptability of the police among everyone in Northern Ireland. Judgement needs to be suspended, not uncritically, but in the sense of a breathing period to get the policing house in order.

That will not have been helped by what happened in Castlereagh - and, who knows, that in a bizarre sort of a way could even have been part of the point. When the theft of documents was so obviously at least partly an inside job, it is difficult not to come out with one kind of conspiracy theory or another - when it certainly looks like there was a conspiracy by agents of the state to take the law, literally, into their own hands and get information which they could use for their own ends - political advantage or political blackmail, who knows. All sorts of such conspiracy theories have been aired in the media, and where the truth lies is impossible to say at this stage and may never be certain or not for years to come.

We have spoken before about the effect of public opinion on paramilitary activities. While paramilitaries swim in the sea of the people, the tide can turn. Various paramilitary practices have been discontinued during the Troubles - including no warning car bombs back in the mid-seventies - because of the effect on opinion and paramilitary supporters. There may be possibilities for various kinds of people to put pressure on paramilitaries over policing. And to ensure that the policing there is can be responsive and responsible. But moving forward in this most fraught of areas, a key difficulty which has had to be tackled following the Good Friday Agreement, is still problematic and likely to remain so for some time.

Margaret Thatcher, recently ordered by her doctors to stop speechifying following minor strokes, once declared Northern Ireland to be as much part of the United Kingdom (and thereby as British) as her constituency of Finchley (in London). Given the increase in street crime in London, and concern about that, we wonder whether this once, in relation to policing, her saying might just be nearly right.