We received a call this week from Ian Richard, an independent
nationalist city councillor in Swansea, South Wales. He pointed
out that the RUC is the only police force in these islands with
Royal in the title.
He suggested that it should be renamed `The Ulster Regional
Defence Service', or TURDS for short. Anyone fancy getting a
petition together to support this name change for submission to
the policing commission?
#160;
Isn't it strange that the RUC are opposing the mandatory
declaration of members' interests - that is, membership of the
Orange Order or other such bigoted bodies?
A look at the history of its forerunner, the Royal Irish
Constabulary, from which the RUC founding and guiding principles
were taken in 1922 shows, according to ATQ Stewart (Michael
Collins, The Secret File), that applicants had to ``keep the
peace, and not join any political or secret society unless the
Society of Freemasons''.
The new requirement would therefore be no more than a reversal to
founding principles coupled with an exposure of Freemason
membership.
#160;
While on the subject of the RIC, Alex Maskey, Sinn Féin's guru on
policing, should consider the character criteria sought of
applicants to the Irish Constabulary (1836) and later Royal Irish
Constabulary (1867). They were to be ``under the age of 40, fit
and able-bodied, and able to read and write. They had to be of
good character, possessing qualities of `honesty, fidelity and
activity'. Gamekeepers, tithe collectors, owners of public
houses, and certain other occupations were ineligible.''
David Trimble should take note, former freedom fighters or
demolition experts are not amongst the occupations listed.
#160;
I've heard of blowing one's trumpet, but Kathy Johnston takes the
biscuit. Imagine reviewing your own book.
As author, sorry collaborator, ghost writer, whatever, of MI5
puppet and darling of anti-republicans Sean O'Callaghan's she
would probably be in a better position than anyone else to review
the book, being well-versed in its every word, yet she has
doubts.
While saying ``I have no doubt that his revelation are absolutely
true'' she repeats O'Callaghan's assertion in court recently that
``he had not told the truth to one person consistently in the last
10 years''.
Kathy, the partner of arch story-teller, journalist Liam Clarke
who works for MI5's favourite paper the Sunday Times, does not
explain why her collaboration with O'Callaghan ``ended before the
book [The Informer] was published''.
#160;
Kathy has toned down her writing a bit from the days she wrote in
flowery language about Volunteers ``whose phallic finger is
destined to stroke the clitoral trigger of his phallic rifle''.
In a review of Danny Morrison's book West Belfast in the Stickies
theoretical magazine, Making Sense, disguised as a discourse on
``semiotics (the study and decoding of signs)'' Irish republicanism
was to her:
``Superficially an ideology of liberation, the roots of its
imagery are both deeply conservative and deeply pessimistic: the
supreme icon of the heroic IRA Volunteer is the hunger striker
Bobby Sands, who, in a distorted mirror image of Christian
asceticism, lived without clothes for four years before starving
himself to death rather than submit to his oppressors.''
Yes, the perfect collaborator for the bould Sean.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)