Republican News · Thursday 30 November 2001

Why Sinn Féin opposes the current policing structures

BY GERRY ADAMS

The recent unprecedented move by the IRA leadership on the issue of arms liberated the peace process in Ireland. It freed it from the real threat of imminent collapse that had hung over it in recent months.

However, the peace process continues to be faced by many difficulties and there are those, especially within the British system and on the unionist side who deeply resent the change, which they view as a threat to their interests, that the peace process presents.

By and large these interests have been grounded in a system of privilege, or the perception of privilege, structured discrimination and political exclusion which the Good Friday Agreement aims to eradicate.

In recent years Sinn Féin has worked closely with the British and Irish governments, and with the other pro-Agreement parties to ensure the maximum implementation of the Agreement. It was this constructive working relationship that helped create the context in which the IRA move on weapons became possible.

The issue of weapons now needs to be left to the IICD. Politicians should not interfere in the business of that body. Those rejectionist unionists who harp on about, and try to bring the process down on, the issue of IRA weapons are really not concerned about the issue of weapons at all. Their silence or lack of consistent focus on the loyalist weapons now in daily use or their support for British remilitarisation, is proof of that.

So the process will continue to be a difficult one. The various moves spins and manoeuvers in advance of the latest round of UUP meetings may even produce a few more problems. The furtherance of the equality and human rights agenda, the reform of the criminal justice system, the obligation of the British government to demilitarise will also cause problems in the time ahead.

The creation of a new policing service is one which will cause particular difficulties.

Representative and accountable policing, free from partisan political control, must lie at the heart of any democratic society. These are the terms of reference set for the new beginning to policing by the Good Friday Agreement. This issue is of critical importance. It is vital that we get policing right. It is crucial that nationalists and republicans are part of the collective ownership of a new policing service.

Regrettably, the British government turned the policing element of the Good Friday Agreement into a political battleground.

London should have implemented the recommendations of the Patten report into policing. Specifically, it could have established a threshold for the democratic accountability of policing, with the Policing Board having the authority to hold the Chief Constable and Police Service to account. These and other crucial proposals were undermined by the British government's legislation last year. The work to get Downing Street to amend this is incomplete and despite all the efforts to correct Peter Mandelson's hatchet job, the current legislation retains partisan political control.

Instead of ending partisan control the current legislation ensures its retention!

These and other issues remain significant matters of contention that have to be resolved. For these reasons Sinn Féin has refused to join the new Policing Board.

Regrettably, some politicians and commentators have suggested that it's only a matter of time before Sinn Féin joins the Policing Board and accepts the current arrangements.

Let us be clear on this. Sinn Féin is opposed to the current policing structures.

The SDLP are wrong and have made a mistake by nominating representatives to the Board at this time. Up until the SDLP did this, the British government was under considerable pressure to row back from its inadequate position and to properly embrace and implement fully the Patten recommendations.

Until then those in the political leadership of the British establishment were having to face up to the need to go against their own securocrats, who wished to retain as much control over policing as possible and who are against civic and democratic control of policing as a public service. The SDLP's move has taken them all off the hook.

In place of the strategic push to get the British government to bring about a genuinely new beginning to policing there is now going to be diversionary and distracting Policing Board debates around issues, like symbols and emblems, and other such matters around which agreement is unlikely at that level.

It is also unnecessary. These issues should never have been the business of the Board. The British government should have implemented the Patten recommendations on these matters and made them part of its legislation.

At the same time as the Policing Board wastes time with these matters it has no power to remove past, current or future abusers of human rights, including those who have colluded in murder and torture. How valid now are the SDLP's protestations to the British government over the issue of collusion, especially over this week's court decision on Pat Finucane's killing?

The Policing Board cannot hold to account the secret police, that is, the Special Branch, described by Patten as a 'force within a force' and which has been condemned even by rank and file RUC men.

The Policing Board does not have the power to stop the use of plastic bullets which have been responsible for 17 deaths and countless multiple serious injuries.

In fact, the outgoing Police Authority, boycotted by the SDLP, bought a stockpile of these lethal projectiles to last at least ten years as one of its last decisions. And the new Police Board, including the SDLP can do nothing about it.

The Good Friday Agreement was about establishing a genuinely new beginning to policing. To achieve this a new policing service must include republicans and nationalists. But republicans and nationalists will not be part of anything that is second hand or which is less than our entitlement.

Sinn Féin is not going to give up on achieving the goal of a genuine new beginning to policing. We are not giving up on this issue. We are determined to get it right.

Towards this end Sinn Féin has held more private and public meetings with the British government on this issue, and produced more detailed assessments and proposals on policing than anyone else.

We have done this, and we continue our engagement because if the peace process is to be successful, there must be a policing service which young Irish nationalists and republicans can join and encourage others to join.

This takes on an even greater imperative in a situation in which Catholic families are nightly targeted by pipe bombers.

Sinn Féin is committed to bridging the gap between the proposed policing structures and what is required.

d what is required is a new civic policing service which is democratically accountable, and which works in partnership with all citizens. It has to uphold international standards of human rights. At this point for instance there is no plan, no goals and timetables for achieving the required community representation.

I believe we can succeed in achieving all of this.

At times, the search for a new beginning to policing has been bogged down through a necessary concentration on the minutiae of the Patten recommendations, British legislation and amendments, implementation plans, or rules and regulations.

In our involvement in this work, Sinn Féin has sought at all times to address these matters in the broader context - at the political, institutional, judicial, administrative, security and legislative levels in which policing has to be sited.

Others have failed to do this. They have failed to place the detail in the wider framework which is required to ensure that all related areas are free from partisan political control. But it is not too late. Because, of course, while a skewed half-baked slightly reformed policing structure may emerge from the premature move to embrace the British government's policing propositions, unless there is republican and nationalist support this cannot succeed in either the spirit or the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

So the terms have to be got right. Freedom from partisan political control is not optional. It is a necessity.

Breaking the logjam on these issues and dealing with the totality that this involves will also require addressing the context and the safeguards for the transfer of power at some future date on both policing and justice, from London and Dublin.

With appropriate safeguards and in the context of the correct institutional architecture and the Good Friday Agreement, the transition of powers and the establishment of a Justice Ministry is something which the political parties and the two governments will have to face up to.

Lift

The SDLP are wrong and have made a mistake by nominating representatives to the Board at this time. Up until the SDLP did this, the British government was under considerable pressure