Republican News · Thursday 30 November 2001

Policing remains crucial

With the approaching Ulster Unionist Council meeting this weekend, and the familiar sense of impending attack on the peace process such gatherings invariably entail, it is important to remember the real issues that remain to be resolved.

It is important, also, to keep in mind that those members of the UUC who will attempt to place yet another impossible veto on change, or rush the process into yet another cliff-walking expedition, are the same people who have consistently opposed anything aimed, even vaguely, in the direction of political progress over the past seven years.

If past trends can be relied upon, the UUC meeting this weekend will, with the acquiescence of a sympathetic media, attempt to deny and further frustrate the significant outstanding areas of concern that are crucial to the fulfilment of the vision of the Good Friday Agreement. One of these issues is policing.

Some commentators have thus far chosen to dismiss Sinn Féin concerns on the policing issue with the assertion that the party will, inevitably albeit reluctantly, join the Policing Board of the RUC/PSNI as it currently stands. As is evident from Gerry Adams' article this week (See page 9), nothing could be further from the truth.

Sinn Féin will not accept a half-baked, derisory, ramshackle, tokenistic role in policing for nationalists or unionists. This situation may be acceptable to the SDLP, but Sinn Féin will not accept a name change as a substitute for the widespread, sweeping changes envisaged by the Good Friday Agreement and Patten. The retaining of the Special Branch (a body that many former RUC officers have themselves publicly castigated), the valorising of human rights abusers and the continued, glaring, unaccountability of the Chief Constable and the entire force are all inimical to the democratic rights of the people of the Six Counties.

While the RUC/PSNI, unaccountably, has just procured enough plastic bullets to last it another ten years, the SDLP, unaccountably, say they are part of a new policing service. Clearly, this is not the case.

If policing is to be successful then it must be representative of the people, and accountable to the people. Anything less is simply a sham.