Change in policing in NI must be root and branch

"So many deaths have occurred here in north Belfast. There is great pain in this room

"So many deaths have occurred here in north Belfast. There is great pain in this room. But there is also the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness. What you have to recognise, Mr Patten, is that you must rise above your past and become part of this process." The grey-haired man, his voice shaking with a mixture of nerves and emotion, was speaking at a meeting last week of Chris Patten's commission, set up under the Belfast Agreement to inquire into policing in Northern Ireland.

The scale of the challenge facing the former governor of Hong Kong and his fellow commissioners was evident in the anger and the urgency of those people who spoke at the meeting in a church hall off the Cliftonville Road last Thursday night. This was one of series of public gatherings which have been organised in nationalist and loyalist areas of Belfast. Mr Patten is well aware of the suspicions voiced by many of the speakers in St Silas's Hall, that his commission is just another PR exercise, designed to reassure public opinion in Britain and Ireland. He told me: "I'm absolutely determined that nobody will be able to say that they didn't have a chance to tell their story or put their case."

In north Belfast those stories were harrowing. The area has suffered from the most vicious sectarian violence of the past 30 years and the people who came to last Thursday's meeting believe passionately that the RUC has, at the very least, completely failed to protect this vulnerable nationalist community. They spoke of sons, brothers shot by the security forces, of loyalist attacks carried out with police collusion, and said, over and over again, that they would never trust the RUC. It must be disbanded and replaced with a new force.

One woman, neatly dressed in tweed skirt and mac, said her 15-year-old blind brother had been dragged from the house during internment, while another had been so harassed by the police over the years that he had ended up "a physical and nervous wreck". She said: "I try not to be bitter. But now these same policemen are coming round trying to chat to the children and saying they want to be part of the community. That sticks in my throat."

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An elderly woman told the audience that her father had been a member of the RIC and that for years she had suffered taunts for being a policeman's daughter. Then, over the past 30 years, it was enough that she was a Catholic living in a nationalist area for her "to be abused and tormented by the RUC".

We know that this isn't the whole story. There is deep anger too in the unionist community over what has happened during the past 30 years. The RUC itself has suffered terribly in the conflict, with 300 of its members killed and thousands injured. In loyalist areas, whatever the criticisms of the police, there is also a passionate determination to defend it as "our RUC". That is one of the contradictions that Mr Patten must try to resolve.

At last Thursday's meeting there was a strong Sinn Fein presence. But what was also evident, amid the demands for disbandment, was the deep yearning for change. A woman made the point that what people want is a new police force, not paramilitary justice. It was no answer to beat young people up or break their legs. The members of the commission sat at a long table and listened, which is why they were there. Chris Patten tried to meet the audience's suspicions head on: "We are here as part of the peace process, as part of the attempt to re-establish local democracy in Northern Ireland. We are here tonight in good faith to try and do a good job."

Of all the issues facing Northern Ireland at present the problem of what to do about the RUC is by far the most difficult. It is crucially intertwined with the current issue of decommissioning, since the strongest argument which the IRA has for not handing over any of its weapons is that there is still no police force capable of protecting the nationalist community.

Gerry Adams has said that the success, or otherwise, of the peace process will be judged on the progress that is made on such issues as policing. But the difficulties are equally apparent. Unionist leaders have repeatedly warned against any attempt to disband the RUC. The debate on "our forgotten heroes" was by far the most emotional at last month's Unionist Party conference.

Past attempts to deal with the problem of the RUC have been largely a matter of tinkering around the edges. There have been commissions of inquiry, changes to the oath of allegiance and much discussion of what symbols might be appropriate in a police force designed to win the confidence of both communities. But, as a former minister in the Northern Ireland Office, Chris Patten knows that the problems go far deeper than flags and symbols.

The RUC is a force of 13,000 members, of whom less than a thousand, or around 8 per cent are Catholic. The hard political reality behind this is that it was set up to protect the unionist state and the unionist community and, for all the efforts at reform that have been made in recent years, it has never escaped from its partisan beginnings.

Chris Patten is a political heavyweight. He knows the importance of the job with which he has been entrusted, both for the future of Northern Ireland and for his own political ambitions. In an interview which he gave to this newspaper earlier this year, the former governor of Hong Kong warned against the temptation of always looking for a cleverly drafted compromise to deal with intractable problems, something which has often been a necessary and legitimate part of the Northern Ireland peace process.

Mr Patten said: "Sometimes in order to make progress and to get around obstacles you have to allow for a bit of grey, for a bit of fudge, for a bit of imprecision. But you can't do it for too long. And you can't allow it to be a long-term answer to really fundamental questions."

The Patten Commission has already received close on 2,000 written submissions and has held meetings with political parties and local interest groups. There will be more public meetings in towns right across the province before it makes its final report next summer.

The Belfast Agreement states that the participants believe it "provides the opportunity for a new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland with a police service capable of attracting and sustaining support from the community as a whole". A new beginning cannot, and will not, be achieved by fudging around with failed structures. There will have to be root and branch change.