Issue No.5 Summer 2001

Changing the Police

by Ann Shaw

     During the course of the past thirty years I have relied on the RUC to protect me, and my community from acts of terrorism and anti-state violence. Attacks on the social and economic infrastructure of Northern Ireland were regarded by me as attacks on my community¹s desire to maintain its British citizenship. Therefore attacks on the RUC, whether of a military or a political nature were, and still are, regarded by me as attacks on my community¹s resolve to maintain our citizenship within the United Kingdom.
     Therefore when a member of the RUC was killed or maimed while defending life and property, or because of his or her duty to defend life and property, I regarded that attack as an attack upon my community. Republicans may tell me that they merely attacked a uniform which they regarded as the symbol of British oppression. I looked at that same uniform and saw a British citizen who had a duty to protect my community against republican aggression. Whereas republicans de-humanised the police officer by reducing him or her to a mere impersonal object, I regarded that police officer as a human being and a fellow citizen. He/she was no different in my eyes than my husband, my parents or my children.
     As I see it, the real issue for Patten was not to recommend ways in which we could return to normal policing. We have never had normal policing to return to. Nor was the issue about how to establish a so-called neutral police service. No police service that is tasked to defend life and property against armed attack can remain neutral in the face of such attacks. Neutrality in the face of armed aggression would simply leave life and property undefended and at the mercy of the aggressor. Policing in a divided society can only be resolved by healing the divisions within that society. That was not something that Patten was tasked to do; nor indeed was it something that he was competent to do.
     Patten's response to the policing problem was to accept the broad nationalist analysis of policing in Northern Ireland and proceed to reverse traditional approaches to the RUC by replacing nationalist alienation with unionist alienation.
     Having said that, there is a great deal in Patten that I agree with. I believe that change is essential in many aspects of life in Northern Ireland, and in the changing political climate there needs to be radical change within the RUC. Those changes must be based on practical operational considerations and not 'change for the sake of change'. Patten has been fairly successful in this area. However, the proposed changes to the name, badge and uniform are politically motivated and are merely cosmetic. They will neither improve nor worsen the nature or the quality of policing. It is because they are cosmetic, politically motivated and wholly irrelevant to the quality of policing that they are regarded by many within my community as insulting.
     Even if Patten is implemented in full as nationalists demand, it will not resolve the issue of policing a divided society. I cannot conceive of any nationalist member of a new police service agreeing to arrest and convict another nationalist for offenses against the (British) state. That would be tantamount to treason and would probably be a capital offense in the eyes of republicans. On the other hand, I cannot see any unionist member of a new police service remaining neutral in the face of anti-state violence. That would leave my community vulnerable to unhindered attack and would be a gross dereliction of police duty. So what will change?
The bulk of Patten will no doubt be implemented and we will have a new police service. It will be established by an act of the British Parliament and will receive the Royal Assent. In short, it will remain a British police service tasked to implement British law in Northern Ireland. That is something that I as a British citizen can live with but is not something that I can see nationalists living with. So what will have changed?
     Like the RUC, it will have a duty to defend life and property against armed aggression and that will mean having to arrest and detain those who break the law, including those who engage in offenses against the state and its citizens. If the new police service can deliver on this, then I will be happy. However given the zero-sum nature of Northern Ireland politics, because I will be happy it follows that other people will not be happy. Thus Patten will have solved nothing in terms of policing a divided society. Again, I ask – what has changed?
     In the absence of a new way of doing politics in Northern Ireland and in the absence of opposing communities recognising the humanity of each other and rejecting violence as a political weapon, the issue of policing will be as fraught as ever with problems.

Ann Shaw served fourteen years ³waiting time² as a single parent while her husband served out a prison sentence in Long Kesh. She is not, and never was, a member of any loyalist organisation or political party but would be sympathetic to the Progressive Unionist Party. Ann is totally opposed to violence as a means of resolving conflict.

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