UPDATE 11/3/21 A more recent update on this issue is here.
UPDATE 2/2/20 A new update on the subject is on the BBC site here.
UPDATE 4/5/17 For some more recent information on this, see this.
There's one recent event about N. Ireland that I want to briefly mention.
That is, the status of reforming the police. It’s been awhile since I took a close look at things like what has happened with Special Branch, how is the Justice Ministry is working, etc. I get the impression those things are going in the right direction. As far as I can tell, the policing boards were a good idea. On the other hand I have read credible reports and comments indicating that there is still a problem with how nationalists, Catholics, and republicans are treated by the police.
To one degree or another part of reforming the police was the effort to increase the representation of Catholics in the force. For 10 years starting in 2001 there was a policy where for each Protestant officer hired, a Catholic officer would have to be hired. I like to think that the growing number of Catholics (from a nationalist background) had some effect on the behavior of unionist sectarians still in the force, and it might have had some other positive effects (beyond the fact that more often now than in the past, Catholics are sometimes contacted by Catholic officers who aren't sectarian as many of their Protestant colleagues are).
So, I think it’s fairly important, and now that it is being ended, that might cause some problems for the Peace Process.
At this point (mid-2016 and at least the last couple of years) the percentage of the officers that is Catholic is about 31% (and civilian staff of the police are only about 20% Catholic). According to the 2011 census, the percentage of the population that is from a Catholic background is about 45% (41% identify as Catholic, 4% were probably raised Catholic and probably live in Catholic neighborhoods and probably are nationalists but are probably atheists. Now, the gap is less than it was 15 years ago but I think it might be partially explained by the likely continuation, here and there, of "political policing" of Catholics, nationalists and republicans. There have also been many republican attacks, two of them successful, aimed at killing police in the North. It has been said that this might discourage Catholics from joining the force.
UPDATE 8/10/12 Several months ago I read a BBC News article which said that the drop-out rate for Catholic officers is higher than that for Protestant officers.
UPDATE 8/31/12 Several months ago I also read some articles on the BBC about how former RUC officers, who retired as part of the reforming of police, have been re-hired as civilians. There are roughly 300 of them, and at one point recently, roughly half were in sensitive positions (63 Intelligence Branch, 59 in Serious Crime, and 19 in Specialist Operations). For the most part I haven't heard this explicitly stated, but these former officers are undoubtedly vastly disproportionately Protestant, and I would say roughly the same thing about them being sectarian. There is some more info about this here. (UPDATE 7/5/16 According to Irish News article in June, this was stopped about 1 and 1/2 years ago.
I often like to talk about the activism I’ve done in the past. I also like reading things I wrote back then. Below (below the asterisks) is a letter I wrote that was published in the Irish News, the main paper read by the nationalist community in N. Ireland. It was written and published somewhere around September 2002.
Tom
UPDATE 6/10/16
From a 06 June, 2016 article in the Irish News (average PSNI strength during this time was about 7,500 officers) :
"In December The Irish News revealed Police Ombudsman had recommended disciplinary action or sanctions against an average of around 300 police officers in every year since 2010.
At the time the PSNI described the figure as "concerning", but added that it was working to reduce the number of Ombudsman complaints, which have averaged at around nine every day since 2010."
I don't know how many of these are about hostility towards Catholics, nationalists, or republicans, but in any case it's fairly alarming.
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In a recent letter Patrick Clarke of the SDLP brings up something in relation to policing that I have wanted to comment on for a while. He says that if the SDLP hadn't signed up to the policing reforms then the RUC would remain as it was. I seriously doubt that would have been the case. If the SDLP had joined SF in demanding Patten (ideally minus the plastic bullets) as the absolute minimum acceptable to the nationalist community and anyone concerned about human rights, I think Blair would have had to go along with that. As much as I dis-like Blair, I doubt he would say no to both SF and the SDLP on an issue like this.
Also, I think the SDLP are somewhat mistaken when they talk about nationalists needing to take responsibility for their part in building a new police service. Sure, nationalists and their political representatives do have responsibilities at various stages of developing a new police service, and at a certain stage they should give it their support. But the SDLP vastly over-estimate the responsibility of nationalists and republicans in this project. The British government is the one with the power here, the one responsible for allowing, financing, and since 1972, running, the softcore version of the Nazi SS that was the RUC. They have the power to change the police to a large degree. I believe it is their responsibility to, through legislation and other moves, reform the police as far as possible before they expect nationalists and republicans to give their support by joining the police and the Policing Board. Ideally, I believe the government should, based on some criteria (such as Orange Order membership, suspected collusion, etc.) sack those officers who are the biggest part of the problem and replace them with Gardai, officers from Britain, or from other EU nations. This, along with other reforms such as those in the Patten Report, would create STRUCTURAL changes to the police sufficient so that nationalists and republicans could then participate in further developing the police service without worrying that they are simplying giving legitimacy to an un-reconstructed RUC.
Another aspect of the policing reforms has concerned me. The 50/50 recruitment effort doesn't greatly impress me. It's widely believed that the Catholic and Protestant sections of the population are almost equal, with both at about 47 percent. Without any sacking of unreconstructed sectarians and with a planned down-sizing of the force, it is unlikely that many recruits will be brought in. And if Catholics are to be recruited at roughly the same rate as they are in the general population, how long will it take to change the composition of the police from about 90% Protestant and 10% Catholic to something reflecting the general population? Decades is my guess, and I understand this recruitment policy is supposed to end after 10 years. If the police reforms are to work, this process needs to be speeded up to something like 75/25 Catholic/Protestant recruitment.
One last thing I think needs to be done as a matter of urgency is for the British government to put it's foot down and demand that the police crack down on loyalist paramilitaries. The police, as many other writers have pointed out, know who they are- they have much better intelligence on loyalists than on republicans because the former are less likely to kill informers, the history of collusion, and the fact that they largely come from the same estates and families. I'm not advocating they treat loyalists like they did republicans with internment and Diplock courts, but they are quite capable of arresting, jailing, prosecuting and convicting those who are involved in loyalist violence. And with the probability of a loyalist feud that will terrorize ordinary loyalists and probably lead to increased attacks on Catholics, it is even more urgent that this be done.
I have to admit, the SDLP do deserve credit for getting Hugh Orde into the Chief Constable's job, and I imagine he is pretty inclined to go after loyalists- the arrest of Andre Shoukri might be a sign of that. But that arrest barely qualifies as a good start- much more is needed. If Mr. Orde's subordinates drag their feet on this or continue turning a blind eye to loyalist violence, he needs to sack them without hesitation. Blair and Reid need to give him whatever support is needed in this effort.
As the Sinn Fein posters say about policing, nationalists and indeed all people in the North, deserve better. And the SDLP needs to join them in demanding this.
Tom Shelley
Boulder, Colorado USA
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