NEW POLICE?

In Ireland recently Mr Drew Harris  was appointed for a five year term to head the Garda Síochána.  His salary will be a quarter of a million a year. For some people there is an important  question  to be answered : Will this decision  turn out to have been a disaster or a total disaster?

It would be a good idea  if the body making the appointment were to give us an account of the qualifications and experience of all the applicants shortlisted  and their account of their  motive for wanting the job of heading the police in the Republic of Ireland. When people join the police they may well have seen imperfections, even corruption, in the organisation they are hoping to join, they may therefore join in the hope of improving the organisation or, knowing what the organisation is really like, they may want a piece of the action. Police sometimes do.

Drew Harris joined the RUC in 1983.It was not the  RUC's  best year, in fact the RUC never had a best years since its foundation, the best it could have was toleration by about half the population and complete support of a government who benefited from lop-sided , partial political police, so much  wrong with it had shown up in spite of all the attempts to hide it. Eventually even the London government had to order some civilising to be done. So we may ask ,Why did people in N. Ireland join the RUC in the seventies or eighties, what was the motive - to help civilise the force or to have part of the action ? And if you joined to help  reform the force how did you try and how successful or otherwise were you? The history of the RUC 's transformation  into the PSNI is not one of great change or  success. It was set up as a political police and never got over it. Eventually, like many others  who had ceased to be useful to  the  government, they were eventually given a new name, a new identity, new clothes, with the fervent hope that so much of their history would be either  forgiven or forgotten.

One of the more inane suggestions for RUC/PSNI  reform was to have equal representation of Catholics and Protestants in the new force, now called a Service;  like some religious zealots  they may have thought being beaten by one's  fellow-faithful was good for the soul of both beater and beaten . However often this  was said,  Mr. Patten, the agent for change, never took seriously the advice, Don't do it, take rational - and community - advice  about it.  When government goes to such lengths to make sure you are half and half likely to be beaten up by a member of your own church, injury followed by insult now becomes  at least doubly offensive.  As a means of ensuring equality of job opportunity  50/50 recruitment could be helpful; as a rational way of civilising a police force it was irrational and even cynical. So did the applicants for this Irish job tell the appointment body  why they wanted to be police, that is, any police force mired in accusations of violations for years past and why did they want not only to join another one but to direct its policy and operation?  Let us  know what they explained to you and we will listen. Let them not explain and we may never know. We will however have our experience, the experience of our neighbours and of our fellow Irish citizens to help us know for ourselves.

Did the applicants favour a civil police, a political police alongside a civil police, or a mingling of the two? In the light - or darkness- of what happened  in both  RUC and Garda Síochána over the years we can provide our own answers if we need to. 

When  RUC changed into PSNI it was suggested to Mr Patten in Belfast that every local community should have a seat on local policing boards and even have the power to suspend named police who in their own  district did more harm than good. The suggestion died.

We have a right to hope that all our human rights and civil rights bodies and all our community associations will insist that whoever was responsible for this appointment in Dublin gives us details of all this. No names mentioned, but  previous history, motives, connections, membership of political societies, including, very much including, secret societies,  past success or failure in either correcting or supporting police reform or lack of it. Without that information and much else we are entitled to fear this appointment process  may have been either a disaster or a complete disaster for decent people who still, in spite of everything,  hope for civil and civilised policing.

A senior Garda officer is quoted as saying this selection would help, among other things, to compel the government "to address issues about state security". In the light of the present abuses of the term "National Security" by governments  this may help us answer at least one of the questions mentioned above.

For years after the Gardaí  were set up in 1923 people referred to them as the Civic Guards, or simply as The Guards. They knew what they wanted.  For the past  few years public representatives in the Dáil and elsewhere have been more and more frequently  using  the official name, Garda Síochána, Guardian of the Peace. But ideas of how to  "keep the peace" have changed in this world through the years. Present day combining  of civil - and civilised - police with "Home Security" experts, secret service experts, bugging experts, infiltration experts, agent provocateur experts , has made us nervous. And with good reason.

So we would perhaps prefer the Government in Dublin  not to package  them along  with real community peace keepers.