Press Releases - 1999

5th October 1999

Fringe Meeting Speech At the Conservative Party Conference

Let me begin by saying thank you for the opportunity of addressing you during your conference (at this fringe meeting).

I will go straight to the heart of why I am here.

As you know as a result of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement a commission was set up, chaired by Chris Patten, into the future of policing in Northern Ireland. My Federation took the pragmatic view that while we did not believe that a commission into policing was necessary any proper study of policing was bound to conclude that policing was best left in the hands of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

My Federation submitted 44 recommendations and comments to Patten and we were gratified that most of these were taken on board in the final report. Indeed the report also incorporates in its 175 recommendations much of what the Chief Constable’s own fundamental review had contained. That review conducted by Sir Ronnie Flanagan when he was Deputy Chief Constable in 1994 had been shelved so as not to anticipate any recommendations that the Patten report might wish to make.

You will gather from what I am saying that in many areas particularly concerning training, community policing, decentralisation and so on we would be in full agreement with Patten. But I am not here to talk about where we are in agreement but where we – and not just this Federation but many other bodies and informed commentators – believe he and his colleagues on the Commission have got it so terribly wrong.

First I have to remind everyone that the Commission was conceived – perhaps like most conceptions – in a state of euphoria: when there seemed to be an unstoppable momentum to a ceasefire turning into a very solid state of peace.

That state of peace some 18 months after the Agreement is anything but confirmed. Both loyalist and republican paramilitaries continue to break the ceasefires with murders, guns and explosives being smuggled and nightly paramilitary style attacks on innocent civilians. The Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam may have decreed that the IRA ceasefire is still intact but it’s not just those so recently in their graves and hospital beds who know that it is not.

But whether you agree with the Secretary of State or not there is no doubting the judgement of the Chief Constable of the RUC who, as recently as last weekend, has said that the IRA’s capacity to mount a campaign is undiminished and that he was expecting a major atrocity to be inflicted by an amalgamation of the dissident IRA groups.

If you couple that dreadful prognosis of significant terrorist threat with the present political stalemate then you can hardly fail to conclude that this is no time to ruin the front line of defence that stands between you and the evil of terrorism.

Over the past 30 years the RUC has had 302 officers murdered and some 8,500 injured by terrorists. We have even-handedly but successfully held our two communities together to create an environment which made the politicians, legitimate ones and those with more dubious credentials, realise that negotiation was better than obliteration.

That price in human lives was a terrible price for any police service to pay –and let me tell you the bereaved families and the injured officers are still paying it. They have not got out of prison after serving paltry sentences for murder and bombing as the convicted terrorists can do as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. You should also bear in mind that if the Agreement collapses all the terrorist prisoners stay free and the process of early release continues. The collapse of the Agreement will create a very unstable, unsafe atmosphere in Northern Ireland yet we will have let out 450 hardened terrorists to take advantage of it.

If Patten had foreseen today’s circumstances I doubt that he would have produced the Report that he did. In fact I doubt if he would have taken the job on. This is the wrong report for the present political and security context and I hope and pray that Government will see that.

Let me pick out the Report’s key failures. First, even though it should be recognised that the RUC is the first line of defence against loyalist and republican terrorists, Patten says the name should be totally abandoned. In a stroke he wipes away 77 years of proud history and dismisses the sacrifice of our colleagues, the professionalism of our force and the memories of our widows. He also in making that recommendation chooses to ignore the extensive research work of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland. Let me quote from their statement accompanying the publication two weeks ago of their Annual Report " . . . . our view remains that the name is arguably one of the least significant factors deterring Catholics from joining the RUC. There is no reliable evidence to show that changing the name would produce any significance increase in recruits from the Catholic community and in the absence of this we have real fear that the proposal will alienate a large section of the community without having any appreciable impact on the problem it is designed to solve. The hurt caused by this one issue alone is so great that we would need to be persuaded by conclusive empirical evidence that the pain is worth bearing. We will be doing all we can to explore this further."

If that is not a public rebuke to Patten then I don’t know what is.

Secondly he says we should have a new oath enshrining a commitment to human rights and the oath containing allegiance to the Queen should be dropped. Well, I have news for Mr Patten, the Royal oath was dropped in 1998 and since then we have been using the oath which is used in Scotland. There is no need to change the oath yet again or to elevate it to a higher status by suggesting that not only the RUC but the entire UK police service needs to affirm its commitment to human rights. As a police officer of almost 30 years experience I have never had any doubt that policing was about human rights.

Thirdly he says the Force should be downsized to 7,500 from its present 13,500. From what I said earlier I am sure that you would agree that this would be an act of pure madness. Again our Chief Constable had made it clear that any decision to downsize the force can only be made against a background of a safe and predictable peace.

There is only one person qualified to make that judgement: it is not the Secretary of State who cannot recognise a breach of the ceasefire when she sees one. It is not the Republic of Ireland Government who are hardly neutral observers of what happens in Northern Ireland. It has to be a professional policing judgement given independently of political advice by our own Chief Constable. He has made it clear that the time to downsize is a long way off and if forced upon him against his judgement he would resign.

Fourthly the Patten Report is fundamentally flawed by its introduction of politics into policing. Now Patten, himself, believes that he has achieved the apposite but in fact he has thrown the doors wide open to politicians and paramilitaries alike.

He has proposed an overarching Police Board which would include along with the usual worthies ten politicians elected on the d’Hondt principle. This is the same principle which determines measurement of the Northern Ireland executive. The result would be that Sinn Fein would have two members on the Police Board. Now I have to remind you – if you are not ahead of me already – that Sinn Fein and the IRA are inextricably linked. Those are not my words but the Prime Minister’s and the Taoiseach’s. What Chief Constable could share information on crime, racketeering, anti-drug campaigns with such a Police Board? The proposal is unworkable.

For such a body to work, to enjoy the confidence of the Chief Constable would require a utopian state of peace throughout the British Isles. Until then the idea would be laughable if it were not so dangerous.

The Patten Report gets worse. It recommends that district councils should be allowed to supplement the work of the police service by buying in from public sector agencies and from the private sector. When challenged on this Mr Patten said that it was only an extension of what Councils could do already and related to things such as CCTV and graffiti cleaning.

I despair. There is nothing in his proposals to stop some Councils from awarding business to paramilitary controlled security firms – of which there are many. It is no giant step for them to move from static work at premises to patrolling housing estates.

Patten seems to think that the limit in funds available to finance this additional help would prevent that. Does he not know: the paramilitaries would carry out a police role for nothing. They are already doing it, unpaid each night, giving out savage beatings and shootings in order to control their communities.

There must be no role for anyone other than the legitimate police service of the RUC in protecting our communities.

What the RUC and the people of Northern Ireland need is a proper sustained peace when no-one will feel threatened if they want to join the police service. The evidence is there already. After the last ceasefire applications from Catholics rose from 11 per cent to 22 per cent. In time we can move to being a force whose membership is representative of the community. Peace would make it happen.

Changing the name of the RUC is an act of appeasement to terrorists. People will join the RUC from the Catholic community when there is peace and they are no longer, either themselves or their families, being threatened. The key to Catholic recruitment is peace: not a change of name.

We cannot win this campaign unless the people of mainland Britain wake up to what may happen. I am greatly heartened by the support we have received. I believe that we will win, that, the RUC will be preserved. I am a very proud member of the RUC not just because of what this Force has done over the years but because of what we should be allowed to do: we have earned the right to police the peace well into the next millennium.

The people of England and their representatives here today and especially the Daily Telegraph are to be congratulated for their willingness to join in this fight, to give their time and money to defend the Northern Ireland institutions of law and order. The threat to the RUC is a threat to the whole Northern Ireland community and ultimately to mainland Britain.

Patten has not thought through his proposals, perhaps he had his eye too much on Brussels. But the effect of these proposals if implemented in their entirety would be to deliver us all defenceless into the hands of evil people.