Walking
down the Lower Falls's Albert Street en route to
a relative's funeral a matter of days ago, a PSNI
land rover passed alongside me cruising city ward.
Even if the colour has changed from grey to white
the distinctive whirr emitted by its engine has
remained the same, letting you know it is in the
vicinity before it comes into view. Before turning
into McDonnell Street I paused to watch the vehicle
as it stopped, the occupants disembark, spread out
and begin to run. It is a familiar manoeuvre. The
cops seek to surround the house they intend to call
at in a bid to ensure nobody hotfoots it out the
back or via other possible exit routes. In all probability
it amounted to nothing more than chasing some sixteen
year old for joy riding.
The
British conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton
has argued that 'law is constrained at every point
by reality.' We may wonder then what strange reality
was at play in interpreting the needs of the law
in West Belfast. At a time when loyalists openly
strut the streets of the North plying their murderous
hate trade, the enforcers of the law were scrambling
through Albert Street most definitely not in pursuit
of loyalist petrol bombers. Catholic residents of
Ahoghill are living in fear of their lives, Thomas
Devlin is murdered on a mission to buy sweets, Protestant
men are being gunned down in the street by the ceasefire
UVF, chapels are under siege. The Albert Street
sprint was so out of character with the PSNI sedentary
stance in Garnerville last month when their eagerness
to uphold the law being broken under their noses
was insufficient to persuade them to dismount from
their jeeps. The UVF and UDA, in a rare display
of unity, gathered to expel the families of a common
opponent from their homes. Doubtless, included in
the ranks of the mob were some who probably have
been up to their necks in recent murders. Evening
all - steady as she goes boys. Even those who are
prepared to endorse the PSNI will find it hard to
point to a comparable scene like played out in a
nationalist community.
Since
it was caught flatfooted by the Northern Bank robbery,
the PSNI has faced a mounting credibility problem.
It has been lambasted over its inability to curb
the upsurge in armed attacks on cash security vans,
and has taken flak for its violence on the streets
of Derry in May. It caused controversy when one
of its patrols knocked down and killed West Belfast
man Jim McMenamin in June. Its less than robust
response to the loyalist feud, and its failure to
protect one section of the community from the type
of attacks that have been carried out by hate mongers
in Ahoghill, have raised the old spectre of a partisan
police force. Deputy Chief Constable Paul Leighton's
initial observations that sectarianism was not a
factor in some of the attacks by Antrim bigots left
observers exasperated.
While many nationalists would accept that the knife
killers of Robert McCartney and those of Thomas
Devlin inhabit the same moral universe, they must
think they stand pretty much alone on the issue.
The outcry over the Devlin murder has at no point
approached the volume generated by the McCartney
killing. There has been nothing like the same political
and media attention and few expect the Devlin family
to be guests at the White House. Many must hold
genuine fears that the chances of the PSNI pursuing
the killers of Thomas Devlin with maximum resolve
must be slim.
These
shortcomings are not the result of the PSNI being
little other than a renamed RUC bringing with it
all the sectarian baggage of yesteryear. All but
the most traditional of republicans accept that
the PSNI, while unquestionably a British police
force, is a considerable improvement on the last
British police force that London constructed for
its difficult to manage offshore citizens. The malaise
that afflicts the PSNI is more structural than attitudinal.
Having picked up the 'primacy of the police' baton,
it can do little else but slot into the traditional
role of a British police force in the North of Ireland.
It is the cutting edge of British state political
strategy, and must police the peace process, every
bit as much as the RUC policed the war. The imperatives
and constraints of that process govern policing
every bit as much as they do other areas of policy.
Fudge, deceit, double standards and ambiguity prevail.
The central policy question for the British is not
'what is just?' but 'who can we least risk upsetting?
It
doesn't matter in the slightest what the attitudes
of individual PSNI members happen to be. It is not
attitude but government policy that keeps them in
their jeeps while murderous gangsters strut through
Garnerville. A genuine policing approach would not
manifest itself in such a fashion. As ever, policing
and the rule of law have been subverted in order
that they may dovetail with the self serving political
rule of the British state.
