As the force itself is about to be dismantled, despite unionist outrage, Chris Ryder's The RUC 1922-2000: a Force Under Fire has been reissued 10 years after it was first published. Ryder, a long-time Sunday Times correspondent in Belfast, was sacked from the Northern Ireland Police Authority in March 1996 after backing reforms which have since either been implemented or are among the 175 recommendations in the Patten report.
Ryder tells Quidnunc that when Chris Patten, whom he knew from his days as a minister in Belfast in the late 1980s, was appointed to chair the independent commission on policing set up by the Belfast Agreement, he sent him a copy with the inscription: "The next chapter is up to you." Patten then urged his seven fellow-commissioners and advisers to view it as their introduction to the study of future policing needs. One member, Ryder says, told him how useful it has been and that he should regard their report and recommendations as a vindication of what he had tried to do while a member of the Police Authority (now to become a police board).
The book is highly regarded, although some maintain it is too soft on the RUC. The force is soon to be renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland in the all-important effort to get nationalists to join.