At the end of July the ‘Peace Agreement’ in Ireland reached a dead end (see FRFI 150). The Ulster Unionist Party refused to enter a power-sharing executive with Sinn Fein before the IRA decommissioned its arms. Senator George Mitchell, who had been involved in drawing up the original Good Friday agreement, agreed to hold a review of the whole process in September.
The period leading up to the start of the Mitchell review was dominated by Mo Mowlam’s supposed inquiry into whether the IRA ceasefire was still intact. This was brought about by the RUC chief constable, Ronnie Flanagan, claiming that the IRA had killed alleged RUC informer Charles Bennett and citing warnings given by the IRA to young anti-social elements to leave the north of Ireland. The UUP demanded that Sinn Fein be excluded from the peace process on the basis that the IRA had broken the ceasefire.
This conveniently ignored the ongoing terror campaign waged by loyalist groups against the Catholic community across the north of Ireland. In Portadown on 31 July a loyalist armed with an AK47 assault rifle and a handgun was spotted heading towards the nationalist Obins Street. He was overpowered and disarmed by local people who bravely tackled him.
In Larne there is an escalating campaign of attacks. On 9 August the home of a Catholic man was petrol bombed. In the early hours of 28 August the home of East Antrim SDLP Assembly member Danny O’Connor was petrol-bombed. On 30 August a pipe bomb was pushed through the letterbox of the home of Danny O’Connor’s brother. Both said they believed the UDA was behind the attacks.
As the Mitchell Review of the Good Friday Agreement began, the Patten Report on the RUC was published. The Unionist response to Patten was as predictable as their obstruction of the Mitchell Review will be.
The main points of the Patten Report are:
- the name of the RUC changed to the Northern Ireland Police Service
- a change of the RUC’s badge, an end to the flying of the Union Jack over police stations and the removal of the portraits of the Queen from police reception areas
- the setting up of a new police board with representation from political parties in the Assembly, giving Sinn Fein two seats on it
- a drive to increase Catholic representation in the new police force to 30% in ten years
- the merging of the notorious Special Branch with the CID, cutting the numbers of police from 13,000 to 7,500 and abolishing the full-time reserve while increasing the part-time reserve
The response of Unionism was to condemn the report. Trimble called it ‘the shoddiest’ he had seen in 30 years. John Taylor, Trimble’s deputy in the Ulster Unionist Party, declared that he would now take no part in the Mitchell Review, leaving the UUP’s delegation of which he was a leading member.
For Unionism, any modernisation of the RUC, any dilution of the symbol of the RUC as the defender of the ‘Protestant people’, is an attack on the existence of the ‘Orange State’ itself.
Predictably too, the SDLP welcomed the report, with Seamus Mallon calling on nationalists, especially the young, to seek careers in the police.
Sinn Fein has consistently called for the disbanding of the RUC. Its official response was to say that the report needed more study and discussion. However, the comments made by Adams and McGuinness show that if the Mitchell Review makes progress, then Sinn Fein could be persuaded to accept the Patten Report. Adams was clear:
‘The future of policing is inextricably linked with the fate of the Good Friday Agreement…it is clear that a new policing service, democratically accountable and reflecting the society which it seeks to police, is essential if the Agreement is to be implemented in full and political progress achieved’.
McGuinness added ‘We want to establish whether or not what is being proposed is effectively the creation of a new police service…because if we create a new police service, then we have effectively disbanded the RUC.’
While Sinn Fein gave what amounts to a guarded welcome to the Patten Report, the reality is that it is nothing more than a cosmetic exercise with the political aim of reassuring the Catholic middle class that the sectarian excesses of the RUC will be curbed. For the nationalist working class nothing of any real significance will change. The ‘Northern Ireland Police Service’, just like the RUC, will have as its main role the defence of the northern Ireland state and will still have access to plastic bullets to do it.
The RUC displayed its normal brutal, sectarian face on 14 August when it forced Apprentice Boys marches through nationalist areas of Lurgan, Belfast and Derry. In Lurgan, peaceful protesters attempting to block the road the parade was due to come down were attacked by the RUC. Eight plastic bullets were fired, injuring two protesters. In Belfast, the Parades Commission had ruled that the Apprentice Boys could parade down the Lower Ormeau Road. At 5.30am, 300 protesters were sitting in the road; the RUC, in full riot gear, saturated the area and began a brutal operation to clear the route. Protesters were punched, kicked and batoned in an attempt to break the protest. Eamonn O Dochartaigh, a human rights observer, had his nose broken, his hands injured and his video camera smashed by RUC officers. Gerard Rice, an Ormeau residents’ leader, said ‘the police were brutal. It was the worst I’ve seen. I’m relieved no one in my community is dead.’
In Derry, 10,000 Apprentice Boys marched through the city. Nationalists were hemmed into the Bogside with the British army placing barricades over the gates leading through the city walls into the Bogside. The Parades Commission had given permission for the Apprentice Boys to march but had banned the Bogside Residents Association from marching into the city centre. The response of the youth to this occupation of Derry by the sectarian bigots of the Apprentice Boys, the RUC and British army was to defend their area with petrol bombs and bricks. This act of resistance was condemned by the MP for Derry, Martin McGuinness, on national television news that very night.
The ‘Peace Process’ has reached a dead end, but it has succeeded in neutralising the revolutionary trend in the Republican movement. It is the resistance of forces such as the youth of Derry that gives us hope for the future.
