Through Irish Eyes
RUC key to sectarian state
The key to understanding the current battle around the RUC* is to look back to the siege of Ardoyne earlier this summer, where Catholic primary school children were threatened by Orange mobs and prevented from entering school (a threat that seems ready to resurrect itself as we go to press).
Only one reporter, Ed Maloney of the Sunday Tribune, reported the events correctly, saying that the children were prevented from going to school by the RUC.
Following the first day of intimidation, the loyalists were able to mount a token presence in the certain knowledge the RUC, as so often in the past, would do their job for them and barricade the road.
That’s the reality that supporters of the Good Friday agreement blind themselves to. The problem in the North of Ireland is not sectarian bigots but a sectarian state and a sectarian police force. The RUC actions in Ardoyne, followed up by a full scale attack on nationalist residents, is simply part of a long tradition where the state force supports orange intimidation and attacks anyone who objects.
To round out the picture we simply have to add that the latest wave of bombings and ethnic cleansing carried out by the UDA is spearheaded by the Shankill Road ‘C’ company, a creation of British intelligence.
Despite the murder of two young men, one a Catholic and the other a Protestant, the RUC and the British state confine themselves to a review of the UDA ceasefire and find themselves unable to decide if it is holding or not.
There’s a word for this sort of indecision. It’s called support, protection or state sponsorship of sectarian terror. The ‘socialist’ UVF attempt mass murder with a car bomb in Ballycastle and hold a demonstration celebrating sectarian murder – and the British exhibit a similar blindness and indecision.
The claim for the Good Friday agreement and for its expression around policing - the Patten report – was that it would reform the sectarian state and the RUC. However any serious analysis of Patten indicates that it at no point addressed the issues of sectarianism and state terror.
Instead it defined the problem as a cultural one. It was not the sectarian terror which was the problem, it claimed but rather Catholic perception of the RUC.
What it claimed therefore was needed was to change the symbols and thereby encourage Catholic recruitment and give well-off Catholics some influence at local level.
But even in its own terms this seems likely to fail. When applications were invited to the "new" RUC, it was predicted that 50% of these would be Catholic. But despite the fact that the British were able to write the definition of ‘Catholic’ so that it included people with no links to any republican or nationalist opinion, they still only managed to claim one third of the applications. But even this level of cosmetic change seems to be a step too far.
Sinn Fein claim that the British wish us well and that ‘securocrats’ were sabotaging the agreement. But it is the British that have consistently ensured their absolute control of the force, to preserve its overall sectarian character, to retain repressive laws and to re-equip the force with even more lethal plastic bullets.
In fact this absolute control has been a feature of the agreement for some time, enshrined in two Police Bills that have become law.
The latest lobbying by the nationalists and Sinn Fein have only been about implementation – essentially they have been looking for promises from the British that they will behave well in setting up new structures.
No one should be surprised that under these circumstances the Dublin government, the Catholic Church and the SDLP have declared their support for the new RUC. The briefest of glances at Irish history would indicate that these groups always act to defend imperialism and to win stability for big business.
In a speech in New York last year Bernadette McAliskey compared the republican support for the Good Friday agreement to a funnel. Once you went over the lip the only place to go was down and down to where the British wanted you. This is the situation that Sinn Fein find themselves in now.
They claim that they will build a campaign to bring back the Patten report. They claim that there is still time to negotiate reform, despite the British and their erstwhile friends telling them that the time for talk is over. A glance at one of the 20 points Sinn Fein has listed will say all:
"The oversight commissioner was tasked by Patten to oversee the operation of the Police Act, rather than the implementation of the Patten report as originally intended. His position has been undermined by the act. In addition the oversight commissioner has no powers of direction. He should be given the statutory powers and the role envisaged by Patten."
Can anyone imagine the masses facing down the police lines chanting that? Or that it would make any difference to the day to day reality of the sectarian state if they did?
This is not opposition to the RUC. This is Sinn Fein being a loyal opposition within the confines of the sectarian settlement.
In the meantime the real movement that is taking place in the discussions about policing comes from the fact that not enough has been done yet to reassure Trimble and the Unionists that they will retain their sectarian control when the dust settles.
The British will have to do even more to make the nature of the new RUC absolutely clear. Dublin and the nationalists will reluctantly agree and Sinn Fein will strike a few more shrill postures, holding on grimly in the hope of places in a coalition government with the southern capitalists.
Sinn Fein claim that their nationalist friends have settled for half a loaf. The truth is there is no loaf. Republicans and socialists don’t want an improved RUC. They want it disbanded.
The first step to smashing the sectarian police force is to force all the nationalist and reformist politicians – including Sinn Fein – out of Stormont. The issue is simple enough. If you don’t want a sectarian police force, don’t support a sectarian state.
*RUC - Royal Ulster Constabulary - the police force in the six counties of "Northern Ireland"; overwhelmingly loyalist dominated