Republican News · Thursday 4 April 2002

Insulting our intelligence

What an auspicious start to Colin Cramphorn's tenure as head of the RUC/PSNI. The last major operation before the retirement of his predecessor, former Special Branch supremo Ronnie Flanagan, saw republicans arrested amid massive media spin that they were being questioned in connection with the Castlereagh raid.

As if to underline their unaccountability, Special Branch acted to deny the logical conclusion that the raid, if any raid even occurred, was an inside job, The notion that republicans could stroll so easily into the heart of Special Branch intelligence is almost flattering but patently absurd. The whole arrest operation smacks of one final act of vindictiveness on the part of Ronnie Flanagan, who himself admitted after the event that it had to have been the work of insiders.

Gerry Adams has already slammed the arrests as an outrageous smokescreen to try to cover up the British intelligence community's dirty tricks. "Republicans will not be scapegoated and will not accept responsibility for the working out of the British agenda," he told the Easter commemoration in Dublin.

So, last weekend we had this clumsy black propaganda exercise, accompanied by heavy-handed tactics in making the arrests, not forgetting the candid camera footage of PSNI/RUC assaults on nationalists in North Belfast.

These exercises in political partisanship only serve to underline the distance there remains to travel before we secure an acceptable policing service in the North.