Sinn Fein has good reasons for objecting to the PSNI as as it currently stands. Denis Bradley's recent analysis failed to acknowledge this, writes Gerry Kelly
A deeply flawed and simplistic analysis of Sinn Féin's perspective and approach to the issue of policing in the North is presented by Denis Bradley in "Memory is still the main reason why Sinn Fein is boycotting the PSNI" (The Irish Times July 6th).
Not only does he fail to even acknowledge the concerns of Sinn Féin and, indeed, of many nationalists and republicans, he also manages to ignore the deep-rooted problems that remain within the police service which are directly influenced by those within the system so implacably opposed to change. And these are not problems that will improve with time or through minor legislative change, as he suggests.
Denis Bradley is the vice-chair of the Policing Board. He would hardly be expected to say anything else.
Sinn Féin's position on the issue of policing is very clear and has been set out in many documents, including a detailed response to the Patten report, the British government's Police Act and amendments to the legislation, which we believe are required if we are to fulfil the threshold of Patten.
Put simply, in accordance with the Good Friday agreement and as endorsed by people across the island in referendums, Sinn Féin seeks a police service which is representative of the community, fully accountable to that community, free from partisan political control and which respects and upholds human rights.
The Patten recommendations - themselves a compromise - were intended to give effect to this. They have not been implemented in full and Sinn Féin, the Irish and British governments and the SDLP all agree that this is the case.
The proposals from the two governments at Weston Park in 2001 included a review of the British government's policing arrangements and a commitment to legislative amendments to their Police Act. Since then, the British government has spelt out 14 amendments it intends to make. Some of these incrementally nudge the seriously flawed legislation in the direction of Patten but overall they fall far short of the Good Friday Agreement's requirements for policing. The British government, however, has made clear that it has no intention of fully implementing Patten.This failure to close the gap between the Police Act and the threshold of Patten and the requirement of the Good Friday Agreement is the reason why Sinn Féin is refusing to nominate to the Policing Board.
And in the interest of clarity, I believe it is important to outline some of our key concerns, particularly in relation to human rights, and the need for a service representative of the community it serves and free from partisan political control. Patten recommended that all officers take a human rights-based oath as a sign of their allegiance to a new policing dispensation.
This has not happened. Only new officers are obliged to take this oath. The vast majority of the PSNI still consists of those who transferred en masse from the RUC. Patten recognised that human rights abusers should be rooted out, yet there is no mechanism to fulfil this or to expunge a militarised, counter-insurgency policing culture that is the antithesis of human rights. Legislative change is required to entrench a human rights framework.
The Patten Commission recognised that one of the several major problems of policing was that the RUC was not part of the community and did not reflect the community. Denis Bradley correctly points out that a greater proportion of Catholics are among the new 450 recruits but he ignores the reality that the PSNI remains wholly unionist and almost exclusively Protestant.
If it is the wish of the British government to attract officers from all political persuasions, including nationalists and republicans, into the Police Service, then a convincing strategy for fulfilling this wish is required.
I believe it is entirely reasonable to ask the British government and the new Policing Board to provide information on matters such as:
what are the targets and timetables for change in respect of composition?
what will be the effect on composition resulting from phasing out of the full-time reserve, golden handshakes etc?
what effect will "lateral entry" and other fast track devices have on representation in the senior ranks and how many people are they trying to recruit in this way?
The balance of power between the Policing Board, the British Secretary of State and the Chief Constable (the "tripartite" arrangements) must return to that set out in Patten, which envisaged that the principal function of the board would be to hold the police service to account. At present, both the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Chief Constable can ignore or countermand board decisions in the areas of reports, inquiries and in terms of setting objectives for policing.
Events on the ground since the RUC became the PSNI last autumn and the black propaganda exercise of the PSNI in the run-up to the July 12th Orange marches show that we still face unacceptable policing. Recent experience also demonstrates that the Policing Board cannot hold the police publicly to account, as Patten required. Issues they have been unable to deal with include:
the near-fatal PSNI assault on Paud Devenny, the chairman of Belfast Sinn Féin;
the continuing use of plastic bullets, in contravention of guidelines, causing serious injuries to civilians in north and east Belfast;
ongoing attempts by Special Branch and British intelligence to coerce and recruit young nationalists as informers;
politically motivated raids by the PSNI on the homes of republicans in Belfast, Derry and South Armagh;
politically motivated media briefings against Sinn Féin by security sources, including Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan recently;
the running of agents by PSNI and British intelligence inside loyalist gangs, which have prosecuted a four-year long bombing campaign against the nationalist community.
Denis Bradley is attempting to mislead when he says that the Policing Board has initiated a thorough investigation of the Special Branch. In fact it has commissioned a review of its operation.
This review will recommend that intelligence and information is shared between the PSNI Special Branch and CID.
Sharing information is already a strong point of the Special Branch - over 3,000 security montages were liberally shared among all shades of loyalism in the 1980s and no one has ever been held to account for it. Those responsible remain in the PSNI. The problem with Special Branch is not procedural, it is political. It remains untouchable and the Policing Board can do nothing to reverse that under the present legislation.
The Policing Board also had an opportunity to show leadership in dealing with the Special Branch when Nuala O'Loan, the Policing Ombudsman, published a critique of Special Branch malpractice in the context of the Omagh bomb inquiry. The Policing Board demonstrated it was unable, or unwilling, to hold the intelligence community accountable for what the Ombudsman defined as "failure of leadership".
Instead, it commissioned a review of the powers available to the Ombudsman solely on the basis of unionist demands that her powers be curtailed.
More disturbingly, the Policing Board issued a public statement exonerating the RUC leadership and Special Branch of any act of omission or intent contributing to the Omagh bomb and represented the Ombudsman's report as supporting that position. That is not what the Ombudsman's investigation found and defies the belief of the rest of society.
Some of the unacceptable consequences of this are:
RUC Special Branch officers involved in collusion with loyalist paramilitary groups in the killing of people such as human rights lawyer Pat Finucane transferred en bloc into the PSNI. The only thing they changed was their name. They continue to run Special Branch agents in the loyalist paramilitary groups who were involved in collusion and continue to be involved in sectarian violence;
the uniform branch of the PSNI and CID continue to be a filter for the recruitment and protection of these Special Branch agents. That is, they cannot arrest or charge anyone without approval from Special Branch;
... the Weston Park proposals for legislative amendments will entrench this situation;
the Policing Board cannot hold Special Branch and Special Branch agents to account. They do not have the power to do so.
Denis Bradley, in reducing Sinn Féin's contribution to the search for a new beginning to policing to little more than something based on our memory of the RUC, does a disservice to what is a crucially important and contentious issue. The historical relationship between the RUC and Irish nationalists is characterised by repression, violence and coercion and this is precisely why the issue of policing was so central to the Good Friday agreement. And that is why there is a historic responsibility on all of us now to get the issue of policing right.
Republicans do want a policing service, a service representative of and acceptable to the entire community. Denis Bradley would do better to direct his energies to achieving that sort of service, as promised by Patten, rather than waste his energies trying to shrug off Sinn Féin's legitimate concerns.
Gerry Kelly MLA is Sinn Féin's spokesman on policing