The Pat Finucane Centre was established in 1989 in Derry. It is named after the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane who was murdered by members of the UDA in February 1989. The centre is politically independent and has no links, formal or otherwise, with any political party or movement. It is a human rights and political development centre and provides resources and advice to a number of groups involved in human rights work and political action. Such groups include the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign, the Bogside Residents Group, Cearta and Relatives for Justice.
Though it is politically independent, the centre would be perceived as being nationalist in orientation and republican in character. Whilst counselling caution about the use of labels, we would broadly accept these perceptions as being accurate.
The centre has a long standing interest in the issue of policing and has identified as one of its major projects consequent upon the peace process the development of a policing service which is acceptable to both political traditions and which accepts and affirms democratic accountability and a culture of human rights. The centre has organised a series of public meetings, workshops and conferences in the North-West on the issue of policing, submitted articles to local newspapers and taken part in numerous discussions on TV and radio on this topic. In addition we have visited local community initiatives in Chicago and New York where we met with academics, human rights workers and the head of Community Affairs of the NYPD. We maintain regular contact with organisations in South Africa involved in the complex issues surrounding policing in that country and have organised a visit to the North of Ireland of a delegation from Kritische Polizei, (Critical Police), a pressure group within the German police.
Our submission focuses on two key areas. We begin by defining the problem from our perspective. Following on from that we offer suggestions on key issues which must be addressed if a policing service which is acceptable to both political traditions is to be achieved.
The starting point on any discussion about policing must be the acknowledgement of the unacceptability of the RUC to the overwhelming majority of members of the nationalist community. In official discourse this unacceptability is explained by reference to the campaign of violence by the IRA and other groups. Had such a campaign not existed interaction between the RUC and the nationalist community would be 'normal'it is argued. Should the IRA ceasefire remain in place 'normal' policing could eventually be resumed. One consequence of this, it is further argued, would be greater Catholic recruitment to the RUC. In a submission to this Select Committee the RUC Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, identified fear of intimidation and violence as the "major inhibiting factor" against Catholic recruitment. The implication is that the problem is internal to the nationalist community.
The nationalist experience has been very different. The unacceptability of the RUC to that community predates the present violent conflict. The role of the RUC from the very foundation of the state of Northern Ireland has been to protect a system of government which was fundamentally undemocratic and corrupt. In essence one community policed and continues to police the other. The character and ethos of the RUC was and remains unionist. Its policing function was and remains paramilitary in practice. The fractured relationship between nationalists and the RUC is clearly not a consequence of the conflict (ie: the result of unfortunate but necessary anti-terrorist measures). Rather the mutual rejection stems from the role of the RUC as the armed militia of one community in defence of institutions the very existence of which are contested by the other. We submit that the conflict here has actually been prolonged and human rights abuses are endemic because of the nature of policing. The reaction of the state, as represented by the RUC, to the Civil Rights movement was one of the most important factors in the alienation of the minority community at that time and the subsequent growth of the IRA. The problem though was not one of training, inadequate management structures or 'bad' policing. The RUC handling of the situation in those crucial years was understandable in the context of an organisation representing the unionist community. The controversy surrounding Orange parades on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown since 1995 is compelling evidence that the organic relationship between unionism and the RUC has changed little in the intervening years. Normal policing has never in effect existed.
This is the "major inhibiting factor" against Catholic recruitment. The RUC has frequently pointed out that greater representation from the minority community is impossible due to intimidation of potential recruits by illegal organisations such as the Irish Republican Army. While this is undoubtedly true it fails as an explanation to account for the fact that Catholics have rejected the RUC since the foundation of the State. The RUC has blamed the nationalist community for the underrepresentation of Catholics. By so doing the RUC avoids dealing with the real problems of legitimacy and allegiance in a contested state. The problem cannot be overemphasised;the role of the RUC is to defend the state not serve the citizen.
In early 1923 Catholics constituted 21% of the newly formed force. This was a peak that was never to be regained in terms of minority representation. By 1927 this had declined to 17%. A steady decline continued over the years. In 1966, two years before the outbreak of the troubles, Catholic membership had had dropped to just 10%.
(figures taken from Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police-Community Relations in Northern Ireland, Ronald Weitzer,1995, p39)
Using information provided to the Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights (SACHR) Dr. Graham Ellison of the University of Ulster compiled the following table. These statistics do not include the RUC Reserve.
| Rank | Protestant | Catholic | Undeter- mined |
Female | Overall Total |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senior Officers | 8 | 88.9% | 1 | 11.1% | 0 | 0.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 9 |
| Chief Superintendent | 19 | 86.4% | 3 | 13.6% | 0 | 0.0% | 0 | 0.0% | 22 |
| Superintendent | 107 | 82.3% | 20 | 15.4% | 2 | 1.5% | 1 | 0.8% | 130 |
| Chief Inspector | 140 | 82.4% | 21 | 12.3% | 2 | 1.2% | 7 | 4.1% | 170 |
| Inspector | 420 | 83.0% | 48 | 9.5% | 15 | 2.9% | 23 | 4.5% | 506 |
| Sergeant | 1272 | 84.7% | 112 | 7.5% | 28 | 1.9% | 90 | 5.9% | 1502 |
| Constable | 5518 | 78.8% | 484 | 6.9% | 221 | 3.2% | 778 | 11.1% | 7001 |
| Total | 7484 | 80.1% | 689 | 7.4% | 268 | 2.9% | 899 | 9.6% | 9340 |
(Professionalism in the RUC; Examination of the Institutional Discourse, Dr Graham Ellison)
Catholic membership of the RUC stood at 7.7 % in 1992 according to Hansard, the official parliamentary record. That has dropped to 7.5% in 1996 according to a recent report of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.
The RUC presented Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Watch with the following figures for 1996 –
These percentages have not varied by more than 1% in any category since 1991
(To Serve Without Favor: Policing, Human Rights and Accountability in Northern Ireland ,Human Rights Watch, 1997)
Between 1966 and 1996 Catholic membership of the RUC had dropped from 10% to 7.5%. According to the Chief Constable this can largely be explained by the fear of violence and intimidation that Catholic recruits would experience from within that community. The implication is that during 27 years of violent conflict with some 300 officers killed armed republican groups only succeeded in reducing Catholic recruitment to the RUC by 2.5%. This is hardly a satisfactory explanation for the religious imbalance.
During the first IRA ceasefire much was made of the rise in Catholic applications to join the RUC. This was brought to the attention of the Select Committee by the Chief Constable who noted that applications had risen from around 12% to 22% in the 1994-96 period. Our Centre requested information on the actual number of Catholics recruited as opposed to the percentage of applicants. Figures supplied to us by RUC Headquarters showed that in 1996 a total of 36 Catholics were recruited to the RUC. 27 Catholics were recruited in 1995 and 13 in 1994. Over a three year period in other words only 76 Catholics were recruited into the force. There are however wide discrepancies in the various available statistics. The figures quoted above do not include the RUC Reserve though the parliamentary reply shown below would appear to do so.
| Applicants | Acceptances | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Total | Catholic | Total | Catholic |
| 1992 | 2317 | 231 | 326 | 26 |
| 1993 | 733 | 86 | 65 | 3 |
| 1994 | 5999 | 954 | 187 | 26 |
| 1995 | 4458 | 906 | 223 | 35 |
* These figures are from the on-line edition of the Hansard Index. The figures were provided by Mrs Denton , the parliamentary under-secretary of state for Northern Ireland, on Dec. 12 1996.
The rejection rate for Protestant applicants is lower that for Catholics. The Police Review reported in 1989 that the RUC rejects 5 percent of Protestant applicants and 20 percent of Catholic applicants. The continuing imbalance in Catholics in the RUC should be seen against a second issue, membership of RUC officers in the Loyal Orders.
A significant minority of male RUC officers are also members of the Loyal Orders and in particular the Orange Order. This is a semi-secret organisation dedicated to maintenance of the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and defence of that Union in the context of the Protestant Reformation. Members are sworn to "strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome." The linkage of politics and religion explicit in the demand that the United Kingdom remain a Protestant State is central to Orange ideology. The Loyal Orders are religious/political organisations which stand in determined opposition to the civil and religious liberties of some 45% of the population in the North of Ireland. Given the nature of the conflict here this has obvious implications for RUC officers who are members of the Loyal Orders.
The admission by the Chief Constable of the RUC, Ronnie Flanagan, that he had resigned from the Masonic Order "so people would trust him to be impartial" (Irish News, 4.11.1996,p.1) raised the entire question of RUC membership of secretive organisations such as the Loyal Orders.
Shortly after the Chief Constable's admission the Pat Finucane Centre wrote to the Police Authority requesting statistics on cross-membership of members of the Authority itself and the RUC in the Loyal Orders. In reply we were informed that "members (of the Police Authority) are not required to declare their membership of the organisations you refer to..." (Police Authority, 15.1.1997). The second part of our query referred to the RUC but this was simply ignored by the Authority. The RUC does not require officers to declare membership of the Loyal Orders.
The former chairman of the Police Authority, David Cook, has urged a registry of names of RUC men involved in organisations such as the Orange Order. When this was suggested by him to the Authority it was rejected by a majority of members. However it remains unclear what purpose would be served through the existence of such a registry. It emerged in 1996 that two members of the Police Authority were members of the Loyal Orders after one of them was said to have been involved in Drumcree related loyalist protests. A former member of the Police Authority, Chris Ryder, writing of the stand-off at Drumcree in 1996 said, " ..the personal allegiance of policemen and women was brought close to breaking point. Some officers were indeed members of the Orange Order and others had close family or relatives as members.' During the stand-off there were people on both sides of that confrontation who were blood relatives' one senior officer said ." (Irish News, 23.6.1997, p.20). The point regarding "close family or relatives" is important. Given the number of members and the fact that both the Loyal Orders and the security forces are drawn from the same community it would be surprising if RUC officers did not count loyal brethren among their circle of friends and family. No one knows, not even the Orders, how widespread membership is among the RUC . It is possible however to get some idea of percentages from the Orange Roll of Honour published in the November 1996 issue of the Orange Standard and again updated in the February 1997 issue. The Roll lists the 159 members of the Orange Order who lost their lives in the past 28 years as a result of the conflict. Thirty nine of the dead are listed as members of the RUC. This means that almost 13% of all RUC officers killed were also members of the Orange Order. These figures do not include those RUC men who are members of the Apprentice Boys of Derry. Such cross membership has obvious implications for those charged with upholding the law impartially.
For the majority of young working class males in nationalist areas their only contact with the unionist/Protestant community is with members of the RUC or the Royal Irish Regiment on patrol in those areas. Human interaction with the other community is therefore limited to a negative experience. From the perspective of an unemployed youth on the New Lodge Road in Belfast or Shantallow estate in Derry contact with unionists/Protestants is restricted to highly emotive encounters with representatives of a State to which they owe no allegience.To make matters worse that contact is frequently intrusive even provocative. In such male on male encounters, which are replicated on a daily basis throughout the North, power is clearly vested in the RUC officer. Young nationalists are keenly aware that the RUC have the legal power to demand personal details, deprive them of their liberty, even use violence against them. They are also keenly aware that such power is, in general, wielded by young men from the unionist/Protestant community. This constitutes a disaster for community relations on a daily basis.