Policing Northern Ireland

Aogan Mulcahy

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134020027
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an account and analysis of policing in Northern Ireland, providing an account and analysis of the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) from the start of 'the troubles' in the 1960s to the early 1990s, through the uneasy peace that followed the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires (1994-1998), and then its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland following the 1999 Patten Report. A major concern is with the reform process, and the way that the RUC has faced and sought to remedy a situation where it faced a chronic legitimacy deficit.

Policing Northern Ireland focuses on three key aspects of the police legitimation process: reform measures which are implemented to redress a legitimacy crisis; representational strategies which are invoked to offer positive images of policing; and public responses to these various strategies. Several key questions are asked about the ways in which the RUC has sought to improve its standing amongst nationalists: first, what strategies of reform has the RUC implemented? second, what forms of representation has the RUC employed to promote and portray itself in the positive terms that might secure public support? third, how have nationalists responded to these initiatives?

The theoretical framework and analysis developed in the book also highlights general issues relating to the implications of police legitimacy and illegitimacy for social conflict and divisions, and their management and/or resolution, in relation to transitional societies in particular. In doing so it makes a powerful contribution to wider current debates about police legitimacy, police-community relations, community resistance, and conflict resolution.

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

The context of policing and legitimacy in Northern Ireland

In deeply divided societies where state authority is widely disputed, the question of police legitimacy dominates the social and political landscape. The absence of a prevailing consensus over constitutional arrangements ensures that state agencies face widespread dissension, opposition and resistance. This problem is compounded for the police given their embodiment of state authority and their centrality to its maintenance. Police involvement in state security and public order ensures that their actions are largely directed against those for whom the state is already viewed as illegitimate. Police actions in turn have the capacity to alienate large sections of the public, often adding fresh momentum to the dynamic of social conflict, and lending strong and compelling grievances to extant political opposition. Such a pattern is evident in the case of Northern Ireland where the disputed nature of the state, and the conflict to which this gave rise, created a legitimacy crisis for the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police force, while also posing fundamental concerns for its successor force, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The human costs of the Northern Ireland conflict – ‘the Troubles’ – have been immense. Since the late 1960s through to the present day, more than 3,600 people have been killed and many more thousands injured in Troubles-related violence (Fay, Morrissey and Smyth 1999; McKittrick et al. 2004; Sutton 2001). The conflict has also witnessed a deepening of political division, economic devastation and social polarization. While this is the backdrop against which policing developed and operated, this is a symbiotic process: policing itself constituted a major axis of division, and shaped the social and political landscape within which it operated. Policing was perhaps the single most emotive, divisive and controversial aspect of the conflict. The peace process from the mid-1990s onwards seemed to offer scope for a radical reconceptualization of how policing in Northern Ireland would be conceived and structured. In the wake of the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires, a far-reaching debate on policing ensued. Incorporating issues of state, security and safety, and affiliation and identity, the debate on policing paralleled broader debates underway about the future of Northern Ireland. Resolving the ‘policing question’, by creating a police service that would attract the support of nationalists and unionists alike, was central to any political settlement.

This book analyses the dynamics of the police legitimation process in Northern Ireland. It examines how the police seek to generate, maintain and enhance their legitimacy, in the broad context of the political division and violence in Northern Ireland. The key legitimacy crisis that faced the RUC, and latterly the PSNI, arose from the disputed nature of the state. Accordingly, it is among those who view the state as illegitimate – nationalists and republicans¹ – that police legitimacy is most problematic, and it is relations between the police and those communities that are the focus of this book. I address these issues by examining the RUC's efforts to improve its standing among nationalists. First, what strategies of police reform were implemented throughout the conflict in an effort to remedy the crisis over the RUC's legitimacy? Second, what forms of representation did the RUC employ to promote itself, and otherwise portray itself in a manner that might attract public support? Third, what form did nationalist responses to these various initiatives take? What histories of policing were constructed and celebrated in nationalist communities, and how do these engage (or not) with the accounts celebrated in the RUC's official discourse? Finally, how would the peace process impact on issues of policing legitimacy, through the reform agenda outlined in the 1999 Patten Report, and the establishment and operation of the PSNI and other organizations in the new institutional landscape of policing in Northern Ireland?

The remainder of this chapter provides a historical backdrop to these issues, and situates the issue of police legitimacy within the broader criminological literature. I begin with a discussion of the relationship between police and state in Northern Ireland.

Police and state in Northern Ireland

Conflict and coercion: Northern Ireland and ‘the Troubles’

Since its formation in 1921–22 under the provisions of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, the state of Northern Ireland has functioned, if not always through outright coercion, then certainly in the absence of consensus (Rose 1971). The clearest historical divisions in Northern Ireland relate to the legitimacy of the state. Unionists and loyalists² – overwhelmingly Protestant – assert that the state is a legitimate political entity that properly expresses the political outlook of the majority of the Northern Irish population. Nationalists and republicans – overwhelmingly Catholic – claim the Northern Irish state is a malign and artificial creation based on the political expediencies of imperial retreat, and dependent for its survival on the dominance of the unionist community.

As Irish nationalism developed from the 1916 Easter Rising through to the widespread hostilities of the 1919–21 war of independence, unionists voiced their commitment to Britain and expressed their willingness to fight rather than be subsumed into an independent Ireland. Britain's response was to partition Ireland into two states – the Irish Free State (which became the Irish Republic in 1949) comprising 26 of the 32 counties, and Northern Ireland comprising six counties in the northeast of the island in which unionists were concentrated. The nature and ethos of the state was by design explicitly unionist, but nationalists comprised one-third of its population. While this minority group was certainly governable, profound unionist suspicion of nationalists’ disenchanted and potentially threatening presence within the state ensured that few steps were taken to accommodate them (Bew, Gibbon and Patterson 1996; O'Leary and McGarry 1996). From 1922 to 1972, Northern Ireland was governed by one political party, the Ulster Unionists. Proportional representation, more favourable to minority parties, was abolished in favour of the majority-friendly ‘first past the post’ electoral system. Local government boundaries were manipulated to establish unionist control in areas where nationalists formed a majority of the population, and housing provision and public sector jobs were heavily skewed in favour of unionists. In spite of these various measures – supplemented by a considerable array of coercive powers – the events that unfolded during the late 1960s demonstrated the inherent instability of a state whose legitimacy had never been fully established.

The Civil Rights Movement emerged in the 1960s to address these discriminatory practices. The demands of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) included an end to electoral gerrymandering, the repeal of emergency legislation and the abolition of the ‘B’ Specials (a part-time militia force). The initial civil rights demonstrations were low-key affairs, but the hostility they met from loyalists and the security forces (who tended to view the civil rights movement as a republican-inspired plot to undermine the state) greatly increased the momentum of the campaign. During the 1960s, the Unionist Prime Minister, Terence O'Neill, began promoting a more liberal and less exclusive unionism than that advocated by his predecessors. While this increased the expectations of nationalists, O'Neill had difficulty in delivering even the modest reforms he had advocated. As political demonstrations escalated into widespread disorder, violent clashes between nationalists and unionists increased. During the ensuing conflict the RUC and ‘B’ Specials were overwhelmed, and British troops were sent to Northern Ireland on 14 August 1969. Initially viewed largely as the defenders of Catholics from Protestant attacks, their role in support of the Northern Irish state soon became apparent. Republican paramilitaries³ launched a ferocious campaign of violence, and the army and RUC focused their attention on the nationalist population. Stringent security measures such as internment (detention without trial) alienated nationalists still further from the state, strengthening their conviction that the state was incapable of reform and could only offer a security response to the deteriorating situation. Shortly afterwards, the British government stepped in: the Stormont parliament was suspended and direct rule from Westminster was imposed.

Successive political initiatives, from the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, proved unable to generate a political solution. During the late 1980s secret talks took place between the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the republican Sinn Féin party, and in turn with the Irish government. The thrust of these discussions was to build the foundation for a political settlement that would resolve the conflict. In February 1993, the British and Irish governments published the Downing Street Declaration in which they outlined their position regarding Northern Ireland and the issues arising in any political settlement. Intense negotiation and speculation followed this, and on 31 August 1994 the IRA announced a ceasefire. Six weeks later, on 13 October 1994, the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC, a body representing the main loyalist paramilitary organizations) also announced a ceasefire. After 25 years of violence, it seemed that the conflict was finally over.

Despite the grounds for optimism laid by the paramilitary ceasefires, the political divisions endemic in Northern Ireland soon reasserted themselves. Three strands of relationships formed the essence of the peace process: relations between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland; between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic; and between Ireland and Britain. The concerns of the British government and the unionist parties immediately focused on the status of the IRA ceasefire, and assurances were sought that its ‘cessation of hostilities’ amounted to a ‘permanent’ ceasefire. None were forthcoming. Demands were also made for paramilitary organizations to decommission their considerable arsenals, but they refused outright. Following further stalled political negotiations, on 9 February 1996 the IRA announced that it had abandoned its 17-month-old ceasefire and would resume its campaign. That evening, a massive IRA bomb exploded in London's Canary Wharf, killing two people, injuring hundreds, and causing up to one billion pounds worth of damage.

Political negotiations dragged on, and the British government announced a date for an election for all-party talks. In July 1997 the IRA renewed its ceasefire. Discussions were now underway at a furious pace, and in April 1998 the negotiators produced the Belfast Agreement (known generally as the Good Friday Agreement) as a blueprint for a comprehensive political settlement. This proposed an elected assembly in Northern Ireland, all-Ireland bodies with executive powers, a council of the Isles to discuss matters relevant both to Ireland and the UK, and other measures such as the release of paramilitary prisoners. On 10 May 1998, in separate referenda in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, the agreement was ratified, one aspect of which was the establishment of an Independent Commission on Policing. In peace as during the conflict, there was no escaping the significance attached to policing.

Securing the state: policing in Northern Ireland 1922–68

Up until the 1920s, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) policed the island of Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland, it was replaced by the Civic Guards (renamed An Garda Síochána, ‘the guardians of the peace’) in the Irish Free State and by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland. From the outset, the Northern Irish government conceived of the RUC as a paramilitary police force that would play a direct role in the maintenance of the state and its unionist character. In addition to the RUC, an auxiliary police force called the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC, or ‘B’ Specials) was set up. The legislative framework under which the security forces operated also proved contentious, especially the extensive powers available under the 1922 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act.

A committee established in 1922 to examine the organization of the new police force recommended that Catholic recruitment to the RUC should be proportionate to the Catholic population in Northern Ireland (which then stood at one-third of the total), and it called for 1,000 of the RUC's establishment of 3,000 officers to be allocated to Catholics, although these were to be recruited from within the RIC rather than from the population at large. The remaining 2,000 officers were to be recruited from the USC and from Protestant members of the RIC (Farrell 1983). Catholic recruitment never reached this level, peaking in 1923 when it reached 21.1 per cent, and from then on declining gradually, if steadily. In 1969, approximately 11 per cent of the RUC were Catholics, and, as the Hunt Report observed (Hunt Committee 1969: 29), of these ‘the great majority are probably men whose fathers had served in the police.’ Within the ‘B’ Specials, there was not a single Catholic (p. 40).

Although 50 years of one-party rule ensured that Northern Ireland was in many ways a comparatively tranquil society, the RUC's relations with nationalists remained problematic. Ellison (1997) notes that while former RUC officers who served during this period described relations with the broad Catholic community as ‘generally very good’ (p. 162), they nevertheless retained a strong interest in containing political dissent, even in the complete absence of paramilitary activity. Thus the police would ‘keep an eye out – in a nice way mind you’ (p. 162) on ‘the politically motivated Catholic’ or ‘families that displayed an anti-police attitude’ (p. 167): ‘It was good crack in them days … like you'd maybe pull a few boys in and give them a bit of grief … or the Specials would give them a bit of a rub over when they met them out one night’ (ex-RUC sergeant, quoted in Ellison 1997: 163). One celebrated case in 1957 involved Frankie Meehan who, when RUC officers stopped him and asked him his name, replied in Irish. For doing so he was arrested and detained without trial for seven months in Belfast's Crumlin Road jail (McCann 1980: 10–11). Criticisms of the RUC were generally dismissed by the Unionist government as ‘sinister’ attacks against the police ‘which the entire law-abiding population of our country knows is doing a splendid job’ (quoted in Weitzer 1995: 56). In truth, the force was doing entirely what its role entailed: broad service provision and the control of political dissent. Police hostility towards the burgeoning civil rights movement in the late 1960s generated enormous criticism, and inquiries into those events confirmed the precariousness of the RUC's relationship with nationalists. During periods of political calm, acquiescence with police authority was often evident, but during periods of crisis, the rapidity with which this could be replaced with widespread suspicion and outright hostility reflected the underlying difficulties facing the RUC.

Policing and the Northern Ireland conflict

Although police forces are key state agencies in any political context, in Northern Ireland the RUC played a pivotal role in maintaining the security and integrity of the state. Two major consequences flowed from this. First, given the RUC's overt involvement in state security as well as its intrinsic character as a key state agency, nationalists’ and republicans’ rejection of the state's legitimacy implied a de facto rejection of the RUC's legitimacy. It required little extra effort to include opposition to the RUC under the umbrella of a general opposition to the state. Second, the importance of the RUC's security role gave it a wide licence in terms of the strategies it could pursue to achieve this. Because nationalists and republicans represented the most visible threat to the state, historically the RUC concentrated its resources on policing those communities. This offered vast scope for aggressive, paramilitary-style policing of nationalist communities, a feature exacerbated during times of violent conflict. The combination of these two factors ensured that even among those who did not reject their legitimacy on the basis of political principle, the police suffered a diminution of legitimacy.

This contested background may make it easy to exaggerate the depth of opposition to the RUC that existed, or fail to appreciate regional variations in its role. For instance, in areas that were relatively untouched by the direct impact of political violence, especially middle-class suburbs, ‘normal policing’ often operated. Based on ethnographic research in a relatively peaceful unionist community in Belfast, Brewer and Magee (1991: 265) found: ‘The mundaneness of policing in Easton parallels that for police forces in liberal democracies; and the processes of reasoning and cognitive resources by which this work is accomplished are also common to policemen and women elsewhere.’ It is also important to appreciate that political affiliation was not the only factor shaping the public's attitudes towards the police: class, youth and gender also had a strong impact (Ellison 2001; McVeigh 1994; O'Mahony et al. 2000). Furthermore, surveys revealed that a sizeable proportion of Catholics viewed the RUC as fair in their handling of ‘ordinary crime’, while a small but significant proportion of Protestants viewed the RUC's behaviour as unfair (Weitzer 1995).

While these research findings refute the assumption that nationalists and unionists were inevitably and invariably poles apart in relation to their views on and support for the RUC, it is crucial to appreciate the depth of divisions that did exist. The RUC was viewed with suspicion, hostility and active opposition by a sizeable minority of the population of Northern Ireland. Over the course of the conflict, 302 RUC officers were killed and over 9,000 seriously injured. Its officers wore flak jackets, were heavily armed, operated from heavily fortified stations, and in some areas officers never patrolled without army support and often did not respond to calls for service because of safety risks. Some RUC stations in border areas were supplied and serviced entirely by helicopter. Vast differences also existed in the levels of routine contact that residents of different communities had with the police. A survey in 1997 found that 49 per cent of ‘Protestant small town’ respondents, but only 1 per cent of respondents in ‘Catholic lower working class urban’ areas, knew an RUC officer ‘to speak to’ (O'Mahony et al. 2000: 79). Furthermore, whatever Catholic support did exist for the RUC plummeted in relation to counterinsurgency and public-order policing (Weitzer 1995).

Nevertheless, some authors argue that the problems facing the RUC, exaggerated or not, were successfully addressed during the conflict, particularly through the lengthy process of professionalization from the 1970s onwards (Doherty 2004; Hermon 1997; Pockrass 1986; Ryder 2004, 2000). As Ryder (2000: 12) stated: ‘Today, a new, professional RUC stands, impa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Tables
• List of acronyms
• Part I Introduction
• Chapter 1 The context of policing and legitimacy in Northern Ireland
• Part II Policing the conflict
• Chapter 2 Crisis, rehabilitation and normalization: reform and professionalization of the RUC
• Chapter 3 Policing history: the organizational memory of the RUC
• Chapter 4 Simultaneous surfeit and deficit: security policing, crime prevention and ‘alternative justice'
• Part III Policing the peace
• Chapter 5 Police reform as peace dividend: the debate over the future of the RUC
• Chapter 6 Visions of normality: peace and the reconstruction of policing
• Chapter 7 Resistance narratives: from lollipop protests to Drumcree
• Part IV Police reform and conflict resolution
• Chapter 8 A New Beginning? The Patten Report on policing in Northern Ireland
• Chapter 9 Implementing the reform programme: the new institutional framework of policing
• Chapter 10 Conclusion: conflict, legitimacy and reform
• References
• Index