The unresolved questions arising from the murder of Pat Finucane 10 years ago and of Rosemary Nelson one month ago are making it increasingly difficult for the Patten Commission on Policing to formulate a package that would be acceptable to nationalists, including moderate nationalists.
The RUC Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, was offered a fair wind from most SDLP supporters when he took office, but the fallout from the murders of the two solicitors has been swinging that breeze into a raw and bitter easterly. Sinn Fein, which makes up most of the rest of nationalism in the North ideologically, could never be generous to the RUC. Sir Ronnie and his supporters in establishment bodies such as the Police Authority complain of unfair criticisms being levelled against the RUC in its handling of the two cases. Mr Pat Armstrong, of the Police Authority, suggested that some of those seeking the removal of the RUC from the Nelson murder inquiry were more interested in denigrating the force than seeing the killers convicted.
On the other hand, local and international human rights groups complained of a rearguard action from the Chief Constable and his supporters. The tendency of the policing establishment, according to the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), was to attack the messengers rather than face up to a real problem in the RUC.
A case in point, according to the CAJ, was the response of Sir Ronnie, and elements within the Police Authority, to the hard-hitting report from the Independent Commission for Police Complaints (ICPC) on the conduct of the police inquiry into allegations of police officers issuing death threats against Ms Nelson.
The ICPC barrister who was statutorily charged with directing the RUC inquiry detailed a catalogue of complaints about the RUC officers under investigation showing ill-disguised hostility to Ms Nelson and being unable or unwilling to distinguish between the solicitor and the clients she was representing, as one would expect from any professional officer in any professional force.
The barrister was so unhappy with the conduct of the actual inquiry that Sir Ronnie felt compelled to take the inquiry away from his officers and hand it to Commander Niall Mulvihill, of the London Metropolitan Police.
The ICPC report was an opportunity for the Chief Constable to act swiftly, but no officers were suspended. Sir Ronnie instead, while offering total co-operation and professing total support for the ICPC, spoke of the barrister's "subjective" viewpoint. "Well I am certain that is what the independent supervisor felt," he said of the barrister's findings, "and these are subjective feelings as expressed, and I have no doubt that they were very sincerely felt by the independent supervisor." Curiously, at the same time two members of the Police Authority were also anxious to make the point that the barrister's findings were "subjective", and that Commander Mulvihill took a far less critical view of the conduct of the original inquiry - even though he was not involved directly in the original inquiry and his view had no statutory basis, as had the barrister's findings. Interestingly, there was no mention of Commander Mulvihill's comments being subjective.
The Police Authority sources were keen to claim that what was really at issue was a personality clash between the RUC chief inspector effectively charged with leading the inquiry into the allegations of death threats against Ms Nelson under the direction of the barrister, and the barrister herself. "Something seems to have gone wrong in terms of their working relationship, and it ended up in some type of bust-up. It was all extremely unfortunate," said one of the sources.
Coincidental with these developments was a whispering campaign against the barrister, who, it was pointed out in political and journalistic circles, was a Catholic, a woman, young - aged 28 - spoke Irish, had a human rights interest, and was a member of Amnesty International. In certain quarters in Northern Ireland this is sufficient to damn anyone as irredeemable, no matter how high their qualifications or their integrity. It must be stressed here that there is no suggestion of the Chief Constable or anyone in the Police Authority being party to this whispering campaign.
There can be no doubting the barrister's competence. She has supervised over 100 cases, she has dealt with complaints against scores of RUC officers, covering charges made by Catholic and Protestant, nationalist and unionist, agnostic and political centrist.
There have been no complaints about how she supervised these cases. Some of them have involved her dealing with hard-boiled, difficult police officers, and again never have there been complaints of her being professionally unable to handle a clash of personalities. Not until, that is, she was invited to venture into the case of alleged police death threats against Ms Nelson. What is particularly ironic here is that the barrister entered into the system because she believed she could do good work that would benefit both the policing service and help develop general and cross-community confidence in that system. Rather than being a woman who would be flustered by a hostile police officer, the evidence, according to her colleagues, is that not only is she self-confident, but that she is pretty hardboiled herself.
The Bar Council of Northern Ireland and the new Human Rights Commission were quick to express public support for the barrister. Mr Brian Fee, of the Bar Council, described her as a "respected barrister who, with other members of the profession, was encouraged to provide this type of community work".
He added: "While not wishing to stifle legitimate public debate, we would ask commentators to bear in mind that attaching labels to individual lawyers in this jurisdiction may put those lawyers at risk."
The general manner in which the barrister was treated tends to support the CAJ argument that the gut establishment response is to safeguard the institution of the RUC, even if that could mean denigrating the lawyer concerned. "Why couldn't they just deal with the central point and not muddy the waters?" said one close associate of the barrister.
This leads to the special UN investigator, Mr Dato Param Curamaswamy, who met the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, this week to repeat his allegations of RUC harassment and intimidation of defence lawyers. Like the barrister, Mr Curamaswamy is hard-hitting in his criticisms. He accused the RUC of showing "complete indifference" to the allegations of intimidation made on behalf of defence solicitors to organisations such as the CAJ, Amnesty and the British-Irish Rights Watch.
He also said there was "at least prima-facie evidence" of "military and/or RUC collusion" in the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Mr Pat Finucane. He did not disclose what this evidence was but repeated his call for an inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder, similar to the new inquiry into Bloody Sunday.
"Only such an inquiry could finally lay to rest the lingering doubts about this brutal murder which had a chilling effect on the independence of the legal profession in Northern Ireland," Mr Curamaswamy said.
HE welcomed the RUC Chief Constable's move to invite senior British officers, with FBI assistance, to oversee the RUC investigation into the murder of Ms Nelson. "Yet I hope the involvement of the RUC in the investigations would not affect and taint the impartiality and credibility of the investigations," he added.
"I say this because the late Rosemary Nelson lodged several complaints against RUC officials and expressed no confidence in the RUC investigatory mechanism," said Mr Curamaswamy.
The Chief Constable and the Police Authority strongly rejected the complaint of RUC "indifference" to the allegations of police intimidation of lawyers. The authority said it welcomed Mr Curamaswamy's "important contribution" but expressed reservations "about the extent to which evidence has been produced to support the conclusions" in his report. As is so often the case in Northern Ireland, it is back to a conflict of opinion on the way forward. Following from Mr Curamaswamy's latest report, the calls will continue for independent public inquiries into the murders of Ms Nelson and Mr Finucane.
Dr Mowlam, after meeting Mr Cumaraswamy in London, "ruled no options out" in relation to addressing the allegations of security force collusion in the killings of Ms Nelson and Mr Finucane and the claims of police intimidation of defence lawyers.
It seems likely that this issue will remain as a running sore right up to the publication of the Patten report on the future of policing, expected in late summer. The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly supported a motion calling for an independent inquiry into Ms Nelson's death. A US House of Representatives sub-committee has also passed a motion calling for independent inquiries into the Nelson and Finucane killings.
Sir Ronnie Flanagan, with the Authority's support, is continuing to argue that the only way of tracking Ms Nelson's murder is with RUC involvement in the investigation. But in the past two days there is some evidence of an attempt to find middle ground on the issue. Of the 50strong police team involved in the Nelson inquiry, 10 are now English officers, "with that number increasing every day", according to the RUC.
So it seems at last there is a growing acknowledgment of a nationalist concern about who should police the police, notwithstanding the establishment's natural inclination to mount counter-offensives in the face of detailed criticism.