RUC quango defends discrimination
By Mick Derrig
IN THE OPENING SALVO of the campaign to save the RUC ,the Northern Ireland Police Authority has said that changing the force's name will not lead to any significant increase in Catholic recruits to the force.
The authority chairman, Pat Armstrong, also criticised moves to redress the religious imbalance in the proposed Northern Ireland Police Service through the use of 50/50 recruitment quotas.
He warned this could ``stand the principle of appointment on merit on its head'' and alienate the Protestant community. The Authority outlined several misgivings about the findings of the Patten report on policing.
All of this is so predictable as to be less than newsworthy, other than to point out that the 50/50 spilt is exactly what unionist hero of yesteryear, Sir James Craig, agreed with Michael Collins in the ``Craig-Collins Agreement of1922. Among other things it agreed was ``an advisory Committee, composed of Catholics, to be set up to assist in the selection of Catholic recruits''.
Also, today's exclusively unionist Police Authority wouldn't pass muster in the Craig-Collins plan, which agreed ``a committee to be set up in Belfast of equal numbers Catholic and Protestant with an independent Chairman, preferably Catholic and Protestant alternately in successive weeks, to hear and investigate complaints''.
Isn't it amazing the way Six-County unionists just don't know their own history?
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