Press Releases - 1999
16th November 1999
Speech by Les Rodgers, Chairman Police Federation for Northern Ireland,
At the Joint Central Committees Meeting of Police Federation for England and Wales, Scottish Police Federation and PFNI.
Today the Royal Ulster Constabulary faces the most important challenge to its existence in its 77 year history. The threat comes not from the Republican movement which has done its utmost to destroy this Force and what we have stood for. Instead, the very real threat comes from the Government itself if it accepts the Trojan Horse of a gift that the Patten report most surely is.
We have all too often been the only safeguard between those who would thrive on civic chaos and the innocent peoples of Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and mainland Britain. The intention of the terrorists was to overturn the rule of law in Northern Ireland by creating an ungovernable state of affairs. It may well be still the intention of the dissident groups but that mainstream terrorism did not succeed was due entirely to the security forces and in particular to the dedicated and unstinting work and sacrifice of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. It has been our determination to uphold the rule of law which has enabled our politicians to see that the only way forward has been through constructive debate.
Because of who we were, because of what we represented, the legitimate forces of law and order, we were targeted for killing – in or out of uniform, on or off-duty - any opportunity to take advantage of our personal vulnerability was seized upon. And over our 70 year history we saw 370 officers murdered, 302 in the past thirty years alone, over 9,000 injured and since 1986, in the aftermath of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, 540 police families have been intimidated out of their homes.
The human price being paid by the police family has still not been totalled. Research by the Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust conducted only last year has revealed for the very first time a very cruel legacy from the troubles. Half of RUC officers who retire on medical grounds suffer ongoing psychological distress. That officers who retire on medical grounds should suffer mental distress as well as physical wounds is perhaps not surprising but what is truly shocking is that of officers who leave on non-medical grounds, almost 20 per cent are in need of professional psychological treatment.
They say, the world over, once a police officer always a police officer, but no-one anywhere can tell me that it is right or proper that there should be no mental rest from the job even when retired.
The RUC officers were murdered because of the job they chose to do, serving the community and upholding the rule of law. Before, the terrorists attacked us physically with bombs and bullets. Now they attack us with their lies and propaganda because they do not want a rule of law unless they can take control of enforcement. This is a cross-community conspiracy with the paramilitaries of whatever ilk determined to take control of their respective areas by vilifying the police. Their campaign has nothing to do with inadequacies in the police service or with its acceptability within the community. The truth is that the only police they would want is one which would be subservient to them.
This is the prospect held out to them by Patten. His report is, of course, a betrayal of the proud tradition of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. He tosses our name and history aside with a casual disregard for the sacrifice of brave men and women. The absence of tribute from the report on 9th September told us all we needed to know about how much he understood what the police service and their families had been through over the past 30 years. A sincere acknowledgement was needed in his presentation if he were to convince us that he understood the scale of the hurt which his recommendations on the name and associated symbols would mean.
He called his report ‘A New Beginning.’ I can tell you that if implemented in full as it stands, it would be the cruellest of endings for one of the finest police forces in the world.
What he has not understood about the name is quite simple. We all know that police officers did not die in the name of the RUC; they were murdered because they were the representatives of the rule of law in Northern Ireland. But it was by being in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, with its Royal prefix and its proud history, that officers gained that necessary sense of identity and comradeship which sustained morale and enabled us to withstand the onslaught of the most sophisticated and ruthless terrorism in Europe.
But Patten would not have known, or it seems cared, that being at risk binds and strengthens colleagues together in a collective pride. The name means everything to us, to our widows and to our reputation as a police service.
The betrayal is felt worst of all by our colleagues in the full-time reserve. Patten’s acknowledgement of their magnificent contribution is a mere paragraph followed by a 14 word recommendation. That does no justice to them or to the 47 officers who were murdered in the reserve or the thousands injured. From our perspective there can be no possibility of the reserve being disbanded now or in the foreseeable future. The quality of the peace just could not allow it. And when the time comes then our colleagues should be treated as all police officers should be treated, whether full time reserve or regular, with generosity and justice.
If implemented as it stands his Report will savagely undermine the morale of this service. Some sections of the community will take joy from this because Patten will have demonstrated that the pen is mightier than the armalite and that a misguided official report is more likely to fatally weaken a determined police service than endless violence no matter how well targeted.
I take no pleasure in reminding you that when we welcomed the announcement of the Patten Commission it was on the grounds that at last we can have independent verification of our right to police Northern Ireland into the next millennium. We were wrong but the consequences of being wrong will not affect today’s members of the police service in the way that the public will be affected. And I am not talking about what arrangements we may eventually agree on, for example the voluntary severance packages for all our officers, who may wish to leave. That is a battle for compensation still to be fought and I give government early warning now that the words of the previous secretary of state and others may well come to haunt them.
What I am talking about is what kind of police service will be left if Patten has his way. It will not be neutral it will be neutered, rendered incapable by his recommendations.
First, we should note that the report has appeared in a very uncertain political context. Even if we get agreement on ending the current impasse there must be time for any new arrangements to bed down and for trust to be built between communities at all levels. There is a very different atmosphere to that which followed the signing of the Belfast Agreement. My Federation never had any problems with the logic that once you agree how Northern Ireland should be governed you should agree on the instruments of governance including the legal system and the police service.
But any new arrangements for the police service must be capable of ensuring the future peace of Northern Ireland. Any diminution in our effectiveness will only undermine the very agreement which the politicians have laboured so long and hard to construct.
The fundamental flaw in the report is that we require a considerably better standard of predictable peace than we have at the moment and anyone who thinks that significant areas of the report could be implemented at the moment is sadly wrong.
There was of course much that we could welcome, the investment in IT, the new found emphasis on community policing, the creation of a new training centre and the adoption, in the main, of the Fundamental review. But those were the easy bits.
Let me just touch upon a few of the report’s failures.
We support, without reservation, the need for increased representation of minorities in the service. But under recommendation 121 the creation of a pool of qualified people to draw from on a fifty-fifty basis would be illegal under existing UK and probably European legislation. Change the law if you must but the government had better prepare for endless law cases from recruits rejected on the basis of religion. If they had looked at Northern Ireland demographics they would have seen that the population under the age of 25 is now split fifty-fifty protestant and catholic. In a new era of peace recruits would come forward on an even basis anyway.
Furthermore if the creation of a recruitment pool is such a good idea why not apply the principle to the entire UK police service? Indeed why restrict it to the police? What about the public service and why not include gender in the scope of the proposal? This was a stupid idea which was not thought through and compares with the lack of thought given to the proposal for yet another new oath when we have just adopted the Scottish version.
The D’Hondt principle may have a role to play in constructing a government executive where ministers from different parties can provide the democratic checks and balances on the exercise of power by their colleagues. To apply the D’Hondt principle to the selection of politicians to sit on a Police Board is something entirely different. Far from removing policing from politics Patten has put them at the centre of its management and control.
We have similar criticisms of the proposed district policing partnership schemes whereby district councils will buy in agencies to provide a supplementary police role from the public and private sectors. The examples quoted by Patten of CCTV and graffiti cleansing, I have to say, are very unconvincing and as to his point about 3p in the rate being a restraint. Does he not see that every night the paramilitaries are delivering beatings without charge? As for the territorial division of Belfast into neat manageable quarters this act of cynicism will create at least two Mafia fiefdoms and two for the others to fight over.
If District Policing Partnership Boards are to be replicated throughout Northern Ireland so that paramilitaries or their direct representatives can be members then the development of a coherent and effective policing strategy benefiting the community will become an impossibility.
Nor do we want a return to the days when the police service was under political direction. We believe passionately and with good cause in the operational independence of the Chief Constable. We reject the concept of operational responsibility, which is quite clearly intended to intimidate a chief officer into submission. What will be the effect on parades policy if the Chief Constable has to defer to a politically dominated Board? How will we prevent senior appointments becoming political proteges? We invite Government to look carefully at these particular recommendations and to convince us through the tight, expert framing of its legislative proposals that the independence of operational decisions in policing will not be lost.
In all the Patten Report has made 175 recommendations and the previous Secretary of State initiated a consultation period which ends on 30 November. As a Federation we will be responding to those areas of the report which we are opposed to and have concerns about.
Like all Chief Officers this Federation treasures its independence. In fighting our campaign we have made it clear that our cause is purely professional; our arguments are based on our experience as police officers who have stood up to terrorism and criminality and by so doing have created the conditions for constructive, political and inclusive debate. That has not, of course, stopped others hitching themselves to our cause so I want to make one thing very plain.
Those who argue in defence of the RUC, for their own selfish political advantage, are no friends of the RUC. We will not be hijacked by those who have motives that do not solely reflect the best policing interest of the community. Much of the police burden and grief which has fallen on our shoulders over the past 30 years has been caused by the need to address violence from both sides of the community.
It is sad to say that for too many people the message still hasn’t got through. So I will say it again. We are no political party’s police force. There can be no payback, no political return from the RUC or from this Federation for anyone who brings political baggage to our campaign. Such people should stay at home for this is a campaign which must be above party politics or it is not worth winning.
We have an urgent agenda to address. It includes as a major priority the need for the police to take back the streets from the evil influence of the paramilitaries. There can be only one police service in Northern Ireland, an evolving modernised RUC, a process begun by the Fundamental Review and which could be boosted by selective implementation of parts of the Patten report. But while uncertainty hangs over the future of the police service we find ourselves, as we so often have warned before, caught up in the political game as a pawn to be sacrificed if expedient. In the meantime unless the government and all the political parties give their unconditional support to the legitimacy of the RUC to police Northern Ireland then the public will continue to pay the price of a growing drugs culture, paramilitary beatings, and sectarian attacks.
Thank you.
