THE Bishopsgate bombing will be seen as a great success by the IRA. It killed no children and only one adult, provoking less outrage than the Warrington bombing. It inflicted heavy damage on the City of London, financial institutions and the Government, all of which arouses less emotion than the loss of a single child. In IRA terms it was well conceived and well executed.

The price for Britain will be heavy in three areas: the cost of repairs, the purchase of better security and the further loss of freedom. The repair bill will fall partly on the taxpayer, diverting resources from more useful purposes, even if it creates jobs in the glazing business. It will also raise insurance rates.

The cost of greater security will be high in terms of cash and the further erosion of personal freedoms. It is hard to remember the days when cases left on stations would be handed in to lost property, when vans could be parked overnight near government buildings without arousing suspicion, when there were no security checks at airports and no bags opened in public buildings.

The changes were not caused only by the IRA but also by Palestinians and other international terrorists. All modern societies accept some safeguards against terrorism as a fact of life if their governments are not to give in to extremists and extortionists. Germany had its Baader-Meinhof group, Italy its Red Brigades, Spain its Basque separatists, France its Corsican Nationalists. The United States has had more trouble from deranged killers and individual hijackers than from organised political movements, but its embassies abroad have long been exposed and the recent bombing of the World Trade Center has jolted its sense of domestic invulnerability.

The response to such threats is, in theory, a matter of public choice. We can have high risk at low cost or low risk at high cost. If the will were there we could rebuild the walls around the City of London. In reality we muddle along, accepting slow changes in the way we live without fully counting the cost. If the bombings continue we shall slowly become more willing, perhaps eager, to have more phones tapped, more roadblocks, more random checks, more security officers, more cameras, metal detectors, X-ray machines and body searches.

More worryingly, we shall perhaps become less critical when authorities bend the law. If the Warrington or Bishopsgate bombers are gunned down by the SAS, like the IRA suspects in Gibraltar, will there now be as much concern about their legal rights? If suspects are arrested, how much rigour will we demand in the scrutiny of evidence and the methods used to acquire it, if we are really angry?

Most disturbing of all, maybe the British people, despite their historic courage, will start to ask whether our responsibilities in Northern Ireland are quite so central to the national interest as to be worth the cost in lives, resources and civil liberties. That is the distasteful question the IRA is trying to make them ask. The electorate will require the Government to respond robustly to this act of terrorism. The Government should also explain that what is at stake is the rule of law and the preservation of democracy itself.