The pilot with a fuel problem, who has to choose between crash landing now, on level land, or crossing the mountain hoping to make it to the airport on the far side – that pilot cannot pass the buck by consulting cabin staff or calling a mass meeting of the petrified passengers. He cannot delegate, dither or debate. To do his duty by the people put in his care he must make his move, fly down or fly on, in a lonely exercise of fallible free will. In short, he must act with arbitrary authority if he is to save the plane and its passengers. That is why Aquinas, after Aristotle, says that authority is a service to the people.

A civil society is a temporary tent in time, whipped by the winds of history, whose rents and ragged ropes must continually be repaired by countless acts of arbitrary authority. Telling the lager lout to let the lady alone, leading a lost child to its mother, letting the timid L-driver into the lane without leaning on your horn, these are all such acts. But the steel pegs and solid foundations of the tent are acts of good authority by public figures carried out when history is blowing a gale and sometimes in the teeth of protest by people in the tent.

Since 1969 the tent of Irish society has been threatened by the storms unleashed by Sinn Fein. We have survived so far because between 1969 and 1994 a handful of honourable men and women went out into the wind to check the ropes and pegs, returning to calm the passions of the panicking crowd inside. Thanks to these heroes and heroines, often reviled as revisionists, in these 25 years we created the thing that Germany lost in the 1930s, and without which a society descends into savagery. We created a public conscience.

If that were a 25-year war, and parties were regiments, then the three regiments that fought with distinction were the Cosgrave government 1973-77, which steadied the South; the Workers’ party, which steadied the working class; and the Gerry Fitt group of the SDLP, who stood their ground in the North. If medals were handed out to individuals, Conor Cruise O’Brien and Professor John A Murphy would be the top contenders. But there is a slightly longer list of those who deserve honourable mention – the trade unionist Denis Larkin, the politician Jim Kemmy, and the journalists John Feeney, Con Houlihan, Liam Houricane and Hugh Leonard.

Dermot Morgan deserves a place on that roll of honour. Morgan despised the virulent and violent side of Irish nationalism, and never shirked putting the boot into Sinn Fein and its supporters. This needs to be said because, apart from Pat Kenny, most commentators seemed anxious to conceal this crucial aspect of his comic genius. Intensely proud of being Irish, Morgan had no time for ideological Irishness. Anyone who heard his Alsatian Once Again (a satire on the Wolfe Tones), or heard his constant cuts against “the boys” on the Live Mike or The Pat Kenny Show, or his steely send-up of Eamonn McCann evading an invitation to condemn the Provisional IRA – nobody who had half an ear could miss where his sympathies lay. And where his lampoons of Charles Haughey, Michael Noonan or Michael D Higgins were largely affectionate, there was nothing affectionate about his Scrap Saturday send-up of the Adams family.

Speaking as someone who once worked with Morgan as a scriptwriter, who talked politics with him over the years and who is interested in the sharper edge of his satire, I believe that he was a political idealist, the kind of person who could have become a radical politician or perhaps even one of the priests he portrayed with an accuracy that denoted a hidden affection. This idealism made him easy to hurt. Because he genuinely believed in public service broadcasting, he was doubly devastated when RTE rejected him. The least Bob Collins, the director-general of RTE, could now do, in memory of Morgan, is to review RTE’s relations with those outside the magic circle of Montrose to make sure they are not subjected to the whims of petty tyrants.

Good authority comes in many guises. Morgan cocooned his acts of authority in comedy.

Damien Trainor and Philip Allen bore witness too, in their own way. What can give greater good example than to continue with a steady friendship while sectarian fangs snap on every side. And who can say that the death of these two men had no meaning when it caused David Trimble to make a ringing denunciation of the foul deed as a blot on Unionism, and when it caused him and Seamus Mallon to walk down the street of the Poyntzpass, shoulder to shoulder, in the single most significant TV image of good authority we have seen for a long time.

The thing to remember about an act of good authority is that it often runs against the grain of current thinking. Which is why, as my own small act of good authority this week, I want to give the British and Irish governments a bit of good advice about building on the positive aspects of the Hearts and Minds poll and on dealing with the fanatics on the fringe. Lock them up. Lock up the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the republican renegades now. Lock them up as quick as legislation can be rushed through. Lock them up while they are numerically small, before they become engorged with blood, before they become as big a problem as the Provisional IRA. Call that lock-up internment or selective detention or preventive incarceration or whatever pap political correctness insists on. But lock them up now or you’ll rue it.