Sir, It is almost an impertinence to comment on the letter (January 12th) from Monsignor Faul. It is immensely to his credit that he can write objectively after so many years of cataloguing the faults of the Northern Ireland security forces.
We must remember that change in the RUC can only come slowly. The old style peeler (and if there are any left after 25 years they must be rare) started in times of peace. He went from training to Ballybackothebog, where he spent some years under an elderly sergeant checking lights on bicycles and watching sheep being dipped. After that he was moved to a county town, and perhaps finally into the hurly burly of Belfast.
After the start of the Troubles a police recruit, coming usually from an embattled community went through his training and was sent instantly out on to the streets in the back of an armoured Land Rover with rifle and body armour. Small chance he had of learning to become a policeman.
All Monsignor Faul's suggestions have value, even if some of, them are not strictly police matters and some are pie in the sky. The most important thing is that the sterile, unconstructive propaganda of some ossified republican elements recently evidenced by Donegal Celtic and by certain elements of the GAA in Counties Down and Antrim must be argued down.
Like the IRA, the RUC won't go away. Half the future is the RUC changing itself into a normal police force without shedding its traditions the other half is the nationalist community forcing itself to accept, in a positive spirit, that this transition depends largely on itself. Yours, etc.,
Magherydogherty Road, Markethill, Co Armagh.