policing ireland

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Policing Class Society

Modern police forces are essentially institutions dedicated tothe surveillance of target populations. To use Ignatieff’s phrase,capitalism created a ‘society of strangers’ (Ignatieff, 1978) wheretraditional mechanisms of social control no longer workedleading the state to embark on a long process of the bureaucrat-isation and centralisation of social control.

Pre-capitalist, class-divided, societies depended on a processof indirect control of populations mediated by the patronageof local elites and local customs. This was backed up by whatFoucault terms ‘exemplary punishments’ conducted in the fullpublic gaze (Foucault, 1979). The English ‘Bloody Code’ ofcapital punishment, for instance, contained over 200 offenceswhich brought a sentence of public execution. Between the lastquarter of the seventeenth century and the middle of thenineteenth century the criminal law was extensively reformed inEngland—and elsewhere in Europe—to the extent that, withthe exception of murder and treason, capital punishment wasreplaced by transportation. The public symbolism of executionas a spectacle which manifested itself in England through theprocession of the condemned through the streets of London toTyburn (Foucault, 1978, Lindbaugh, 1975) was discontinued in1783 and public executions were abolished in the 1860s. By this

Policing Irelandby Jim Smyth

The Royal Ulster Constabulary can be located within a context ofpolicing which deviates significantly from other Western Europeancountries. A centralised, armed and paramilitary force has existed inIreland since 1822, not as a response to social changes induced byindustrialisation, but as a direct agent of British colonial policy inIreland. The RUC is culturally, politically and organisationally lockedinto its role as a counter-insurgency force and is now a dysfunctionalelement in the context of the Good Friday Agreement and movementtowards a more inclusive and democratic society in Northern Ireland.

date also, physical punishment as a public ritual had all butdisappeared.

Behind these changes in the nature of punishment layprofound shifts in the nature of social and economic relations.Bourgeois society rests upon twin pillars: formal and legalequality on one hand, and deep seated economic and socialinequalities on the other. This essentially contradictory realitybrought with it new conflicts and locations of resistance. In themobile and increasingly urbanised society of industrialcapitalism new definitions and categories of crime wereintroduced to protect and consolidate the new order. Aexpanding nexus of social relations based upon possessiveindividualism (Macpherson, 1964) had, by the beginning of thenineteenth century, successfully infiltrated the fabric of Englishsociety bringing with it a new matrix of criminal offences. Thedestruction of rural custom and the enclosure of common landcriminalised many aspects of traditional rural life and the newurban working class was the subject of extensive new legislationto curb their militancy and consolidate the factory system.

Foucault’s analysis of the changing nature of punishmentand power vividly charts this shift in the modus operandi ofsocial control, of which policing is a central part. Social controlbecomes increasingly bureaucratised. Dandeker (1990: 111)points to four important changes central to this process:

� a revolution in punishment with prisons replacingpublic physical punishment.

� new bureaucratic structures for the processing ofdeviant populations

� The consolidation of the modern state developed anapparatus of surveillance and control which reacheddeeper than ever before into society. The police becamethe agent of the rational disciple of society.

� Supervision, surveillance and control became thewatchword of the new professions.

But the new structure of power was never as ubiquitous andtotal as commentators such as Foucault seems to imply. Thestability of bourgeois society may rest ultimately on the threat ofrepression but its everyday existence depends upon legitimacyand complicity. The legitimacy of the modern state rests on anumber of pillars but central is the acceptance of a set of

102 Capital & Class #69

property relations. By the early nineteenth century the preceptsof possessive individualism were well entrenched as the basis ofthe power of the bourgeoisie and formed the basis of cultural andeconomic stability. This precarious stability was not achievedwithout struggle, as E.P. Thompson so often reminded us(Thompson, 1963, 1975, 1980). Complicity (Donzelot, 1980) isa more elusive and slippery concept but without it no state orpowerful institution can survive. The Catholic Church innineteenth century Ireland could only impose its brand ofrepressive sexual politics because a predominantly peasantsociety survived on late marriages and strict control of women’sbodies to ensure that illegitimacy would not upset the smoothworkings of inheritance (Smyth, 1995). Equally, the policedepend upon complicity for their very survival. In their owninterests, a significant section of the population cutting across theclass structure, are united in their condemnation of certaincrimes and willing to assist the police in their efforts toapprehend perpetrators.

Moral sanctions condemning crimes such as rape, murderand personal assault predated capitalist society and cut acrossclass lines. The reality of a more mobile and impersonal societymade such offences more difficult to detect and sanction withoutthe presence of a uniformed and bureaucratic police force. Thestate, via the agency of the police, took over the role of policingand punishing those already beyond the pale. The respectableworking class clearly demarcated itself from the criminal classparticularly as the working class was, and still is, the main victimof property crime. The police depended upon both the legitimacyof the new economic and political order and the complicity of thepopulation in the control of the criminal classes.

This ambiguity characterised the attitude of many workingpeople towards the new system of policing. While they resentedthe strict enforcement of property rights on the part oflandowners and others, they were also prepared to invoke thelaw to enforce their own meagre property rights. E.P. Thompsonwrites in a similar vein:

What was often at issue was not property, supported by law,against no-property; it was alternative definitions of propertyrights: for the landowner, enclosure; for the cottager, commonrights; for the forest officialdom, ‘preserved grounds’ for the deer;for the forester, the right to take turfs (Thompson, 1975: 261).

Policing Ireland 103

The introduction of the ‘policed society’ in the 19th century hadcomplex roots. At one level the new urban propertied classes felta need to protect themselves from the threat of revolution andthe reality of riot (Silver, 1967) and at a more prosaic level therewas a need to consolidate and police new property and classrelations. The police also played a significant part in suppressingwhat was seen as anti-social forms of behaviour and recreationsamong the working classes. Popular ‘rough’ sports weresuppressed in an attempt to undermine collective forms ofassociation as well as altering patterns of behaviour (Phillips,1997; Storch, 1975, 1976). Opposition to new forms of policingdid not only come from below. The rural gentry was opposed tothe erosion of their traditional powers and the 18th centurysystem of law which suited them insofar as it granted informalcontrol over their own semi-autonomous areas. (Hay, 1975).

Policing Nineteenth Century Ireland

Any analysis of the development of policing in Irelandimmediately confronts a number of apparent anomalies. Theabsence of an industrial revolution and the widespread survivalof a rural and pre-capitalist economy seems difficult to reconcilewith the early development of a centralised, armed andbureaucratic police force. A centralised and uniformed policeforce was proposed for Ireland in the mid eighteenth centuryand by 1786 the Dublin Metropolitan Police was in existence: itwas not until 1829 that a similar force was established in London.The first serious attempt to rationalise policing in rural Irelandwas in 1814 when Robert Peel pushed an act through parliamentto allow the appointment of paid magistrates and officers (the‘Peace Preservation Force’) in designated ‘disturbed’ areas.

Peel, when he came to Ireland in 1806, saw the problem oforder as a first priority. He was aware that the problems ofIreland were in large measure attributable to its economic andpolitical circumstances, but he showed little inclination to tryand rectify this other than by opting for a security solution. Therationale for a law and order approach was, in the words of Peel,‘The Irishman’s natural predilection for outrage and a lawless lifewhich I believe nothing can control’ combined with the verynature of the Irish character: ‘you have no idea of the moraldepravation of the lower orders.’ (Foster, 1988: 294).


But apart from this, rather familiar, assessment of the Irishpsyche Peel faced other problems. The great upheaval of 1798had been suppressed only with great difficulty and a measure ofluck. The central problems of the country, disaffection with thepolitical and economic order, remained and at times ofagricultural depression and falling agricultural prices oppositionto the given order was not restricted to the rural poor, but movedup the social scale to involve larger farmers. Opposition, as in therural unrest of 1813–16, 1821–4 and the 1830s focused on issueswhich had distinct political resonance: the question of tithes,eviction and land tenure (Clarke and Donnelly, 1983).

In contrast, levels of ‘normal’ crime were low. Foreigntravellers were wont to comment on the ability of travellers tomove unmolested through disturbed areas, and Lewis commentson the stark difference between crime in Ireland and otherEuropean countries:

[unlike in England and France] …and of almost every civilisedcountry in the world, the object of crime in Ireland is notpersonal gain but are preventative and exemplary crimesintended to influence the conduct of persons in respect of somefuture action (Lewis, 1836: 54).

and a contemporary commentator, Charles Townshend, agrees:

much of Irish violence and intimidation in the 19th century wasdirected not by ‘extremists’ in any useful sense of the term, butby representatives of the community whose object was tomaintain, not destroy, social order (Townshend, 1983: 9).

The rationale for the introduction of bureaucratic policing inIreland arose from the lack of legitimacy of the colonial order,and the inability of informal methods of social control to masterthe situation. If legitimacy was a problem, complicity was equallyabsent. The authorities were totally mystified by the goings on ofrural secret societies. Even when arrested and charged, peoplemaintained a wall of silence. The authorities depended, almostexclusively, on the reports of the Anglo Irish gentry which floodedinto the castle and drove Peel to despair. Ignorance, indifferenceand paranoia dictated the attitudes of the anglo-Irish.

Both the poor and the middle classes were alienated from thestate. The emergence of agrarian secret societies in the early 19th


century reflected both the weakness of the central state and thelegacy of 1798. The state in the early 19th century had littleeffective power, apart from the use of the army, outside the fewurban centres. The Castle administration was, however, convincedthat no uprising could take place without outside help. The Irishpeasant bands which sporadically dominated large areas of thesouth and west of the country in the first three decades of thenineteenth century lacked both discipline and arms, renderingthem incapable of winning set piece battles against regular forces.

The use of the military to impose internal order was a farfrom ideal solution and beset with problems. The militaryestablishment was against the use of soldiers in a policing roleand the London government was intent, for internal politicaland financial reasons, to reduce the military establishment inIreland. It was also recognized that the military was, at best, ablunt instrument. For the military establishment and the castleofficials the problem of using the army was succinctly put byNorman Gash:

…the problem of obtaining an adequate military force was onethe exercised the minds of Irish officers. In time of war thetroops were wanted elsewhere, in peace the taxpayer did notwant them at all (Gash, 1961: 186).

Apart from the regular army, the main force of repression wasthe Yeomanry. This was an exclusively Protestant and orangeforce, used to terrorise the Catholic population with a deservedreputation for ‘ill discipline and brutality’ (Crossman, 1996: 51).Incidents of beatings, burnings and murder were common as inShercock, Co. Cavan in 1814 where a force of yeomanry killed 13people and wounded scores of others in an unprovoked attack(Donnelly, 1983: 129ff). The attitude of the Castle towards theyeomanry was ambiguous. Peel was privately critical of them, asin a letter of 1815, but was not prepared to countenance theirdisbandment:

Admitting that the Yeomanry are generally speaking unfit forthose very duties in the performance of which their main utilitywould consist, namely in relieving the army from the maintenanceof internal order and the collection of revenue, I am not quiteprepared to come to your conclusion that it would be the wisestmeasure to disband the whole force (Parker, 1891: 174).


In rejecting a suggestion from the officer commanding the armyin Ireland, Peel was probably sharing the attitude of a latercorrespondent, who in writing to the Chief Secretary,Goldbourn, commented:

I know that the yeomanry are unpopular, but so is everythingthat is constitutional and loyal. They saved the nation in 1798and the disaffected dread them more than they do the regularsbecause they are well acquainted with their character and knowtheir haunts (Donnelly, 1983:128).

Although the yeomanry faded away over the first half of thenineteenth century it was to return to haunt the politics ofNorthern Ireland in the form of the Special Constabulary. It isone of those ironies of history that almost immediately after theestablishment of the Specials in 1923 a constabulary lodge wasfounded known as the Sir Robert Peel Loyal Orange Lodgewhereas under 19th century RIC regulations membership of theorder was forbidden. A report of the Commission of the NCCLin 1936 comments:

In practice, membership of the ‘B’ Specials is confined tomembers professing the Protestant faith who are also membersof the Orange Order, that is supporters of the Unionist Party(Gallagher, 1957: 179).

The problem which faced the Castle in the nineteenth centurywas complicated. Although many influential Anglo-Irish figuresopposed any move towards replacing the military with analternative force (and were particularly opposed to anytinkering with the yeomanry) the Castle was acutely aware of theproblems of using both these forces for internal policing. Theauthorities were equally aware that only a continental stylemodel of policing would be adequate to impose order on therecalcitrant Irish and that any such move could provokewidespread opposition both in Ireland and England. Since theAnglo-Irish were the only allies of the Castle in the countrysideoutside the North East, caution was the order of the day. It wasimportant not to alienate the gentry by emasculating theirmonopoly over the local enforcement of the law but it wasequally necessary to modernise the apparatus of surveillance,control and punishment given the chronic lack of legitimacy


enjoyed by a system of land ownership which condemned thenative population to grinding poverty.

In the eyes of the castle the country could not afford theluxury of a police system in tune with the rights of free bornEnglishmen, given the unsettled nature of the country and thereluctance to embark upon significant reform. There wereisolated figures within the establishment who clearly saw that theproblem lay elsewhere than in the nature of the Irish character,but such voices went unheeded. Charles Grant, who succeededPeel as chief secretary in 1818, was convinced that unrest anddisorder could only be contained if the state made significantpolitical concessions—particularly Catholic Emancipation—toreduce the disaffection and alienation of the population.However, Grant was seen to be leaning to far towards theCatholic cause during the disturbances of 1921 and he wasswiftly removed (Crossman, 1996: 25ff).

Casting the Die: Policing as a Solution

The Irish countryside between 1800 and 1823 was ravaged byagrarian disturbances with a mere five relatively tranquil yearsduring this period. During the Napoleonic Wars the Britisharmy establishment was between 40,000-50,000 of which 20,000were Militia. By the end of the war, in 1813 the numbers hadfallen to 35,000 of which a mere 11,000 were regular troops. TheCastle estimated that at least 40,000 were needed to police thecountry. Since the Militia and yeomanry were seen as being oflittle value in a policing role, Peel had an ideal opportunity torealise his ambitions to establish a police force in Ireland. In theevent, the Peace Preservation Force was a compromise betweena fully fledged centralised police force and the extensive use ofthe military in a policing role. The compromise was necessarybecause of deep seated opposition to a centralised police force.In London the leader of the House of Commons, Castlereagh,opposed the measure and the Prime Minister, Liverpool,criticised the bill as being ‘not English’ (Broeker, 1970: 60).

The Peace Preservation Act of 1814 was the first attempt todeal with the problem of policing rural Ireland, but it enjoyedmixed success. The increasing inability of the Peace PreservationForce—a sort of riot squad sent into disturbed areas to restoreorder—to fulfil its function let to the establishment in 1822 of the


County Constabulary as a permanent, national police forcewhich existed alongside the Peace Preservation Force until theiramalgamation in 1836 as the Irish Constabulary. The IrishConstabulary was, in the opinion of its first Inspector General,more akin to a light infantry regiment then a ‘normal’ policeforce. The force was under military type discipline and drill wasa central part of training and practice. Control was centralised inDublin Castle, the force was heavily armed and, effectively,garrisoned in barracks scattered strategically across the country.In organisation and practice the IC was a military force ratherthan one dedicated to civil regulation.1 In the years before thefamine the main police function was controlling agrariandisorders, disrupting popular practices and the policing ofevictions. Along with its important intelligence gatheringfunction the police imposed public order and had little aptitudeor inclination towards the more regular police functions ofinvestigating and preventing non-political crime.

The police force established in 1822 was to swiftly become thedirect interface between state and people. The state had found aneffective organisational form for the enforcement of policy anda means of keeping the tensions and contradictions of Britishrule under some sort of control. There may have been someambiguity towards the police on the part of the catholic middleclasses but in general the police were despised and hated by thenative population. After his election to the House of Commons,Daniel O’Connell exerted himself to discover the number ofpeople killed by the police, remarking in the House that‘whenever the people resisted the police, they were put to deathby them’. The official figures of deaths at the hands of theconstabulary in the years 1823–30 was 84 killed and 122 seriouslyinjured. This figure probably underestimated the real numberssince it was a common practice among the people to spirit bodiesaway for secret burial (Crossman, 1996: 44). The extent andintensity of rural unrest in nineteenth century Ireland defined therole of the police as that of enforcing deeply unpopular lawsand left little room for the practise of normal policing. As Farrell(1975: 168) points out, although a number of explicit armedchallenges to British rule during the century were unsuccessful,these events represented the tip of the iceberg in a country whereEnglish concept of law and order were, at an everyday level,imposed by force and force alone. Commenting on the situationin the middle of the century Farrell writes:


In the 1850s Irish agrarian relations were at a level resemblingguerrilla warfare. Landlords and land agents carried arms as amatter of course: the peasants killed them when they could. In1882 a force of a hundred armed men was thought necessary toundertake the seizure of cattle from one tenant in arrears: therewere 3,432 agrarian outrages in that year alone (Farrell,1965: 168).

The parameters of policing that were set in the early decades ofthe nineteenth century crumbled somewhat as the centuryprogressed. The ambiguities of policy, particularly over therelationship between the police and military (Muenger, 1991)were instrumental in a decline in the military effectiveness ofthe RIC and the ability of the force to deal with internal disorder.The author of an official report on the state of defence in Irelandin 1912 wrote:

Although the [constabulary] force is organised on military linesfor the purpose of administration, its members have only arudimentary training in the use of firearms and it cannot beregarded as a military force in any circumstances in the event ofa hostile landing in Ireland (quoted in Crossman, 1996: 188).

In effect, the RIC collapsed in the face of the determined militarycampaign of the IRA after 1919 as the RUC was to disintegratesome 50 years later when confronted by the street protests of theCivil Rights Movement.

Partition and the RUC

After partition in 1922 both parts of Ireland adopted the RICorganisational model of policing, but with crucial differences.Collins’ decision that the Garda Siochana should be an unarmedforce was based upon the assumption that the new police forcewould be accepted as a legitimate arm of the new state and,broadly speaking, this was to be the case. In the North, policingreverted to a model akin to that which existed in the first half ofthe last century. The RUC remained an armed force—indeed itsfirepower was greater than the RIC with the introduction ofheavy machine guns and other equipment2—and it swiftlyreverted to being a predominantly Protestant force, reversing a


century long trend in the RIC towards the increased inclusion ofCatholic officers. The force was divided into ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’classes. The former was the full time police, ‘B’ the part timeforce, and the ‘C’ a reserve force. This arrangement ensuredthat, if necessary, every able bodied Protestant male could beuniformed and armed to defend the state. By the summer of1922 some 50,000 full and part time police were backed by 13battalions of regular British army troops. A departmentalcommittee set up to examine the issue of policing hadrecommended that one third of the force be Catholic withpreference given to ex-members of the RIC. This recommend-ation was reinforced by the provisions of the Craig-Collins pactof February 1922.3 The fate of the pact was indicative of whatwas to come. A crucial clause in the pact dealt with policing.The clause specified that the ‘B’ special units in mixed districts ofBelfast were to be fifty per cent Catholic, that an advisorycommittee of Catholics was to be set up to assist with recruitingand that any search for arms was to be carried out by a mixedforce. In addition, Catholic/nationalist representation was to beguaranteed on the police recruiting committee.

The potential impact of this provision of the pact wasenormous. The unionist monopoly over policing would havebeen challenged and, more importantly nationalists would havehad an input into the religious composition of the force and thepossibility of some direct control over policing. The unionistswould also gain not least through the possibility of a gradualacceptance by Catholics of the Northern state. But in the face ofconcerted opposition from all sides within his own party Craigcrumbled. As Farrell (1974: 115) writes: ‘It seems that Craig hadto choose between confronting his own forces and underminingthe pact. He choose the latter’.

The decision to abandon any attempt to make the policemore acceptable was to have fateful consequences, but not forhalf a century. Unionists with long memories and a sense ofhistory must have felt a sense of satisfaction. For despite theefforts of the IRA and, in their eyes, the provisional governmentin Dublin, the status quo was maintained in the North. Themilitants among the minority were quelled and held in check: thetactics of terror and repression practised by the state worked.The Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (1922) gave the policeunprecedented powers. Many powers were transferred from thejudiciary to the executive and the actions of the Home Secretary


were removed from parliamentary scrutiny. The Act gave theminister the power ‘to take all such steps and issue all such ordersas may be necessary for the preserving of peace’. The minister hadthe option of delegating his powers to individual police officers.The introduction of the ‘B’ specials ensured blanket policing innationalist areas, something which its predecessor, theyeomanry, had never achieved. It is understandable that RUCrhetoric and common sense knowledge should hark back to a‘golden age of policing’, a time when they could operateunarmed in nationalist areas. Looking back nostalgically oneofficer commented in 1980 (at the time of the hunger strikescrisis): ‘People forget what it was like. You could walk anywhere,you could walk through Andersonstown unarmed and inuniform, with no problems. You’d go around and close the pubsand people would buy you a pint’ (Police Magazine, May 1980).The present Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, would seem toshare this nostalgia for an imaginary era of harmoniouspolice/minority relations. Firmly laying the blame for badrelations on others: ‘In the past the threat of violence has stoppedour officers getting close to the community.’ He then harks backto a golden age: ‘We need to get back to local communitypolicing where local residents had input through localcommittees’.4 Here the usual sanitised view of history isextended to imply that, in the past, residents had some sort ofinput into policing, a state of affairs that never existed.

The simple reason why policing in the North ‘worked’ for solong was that the aspirations of the minority were deemedillegitimate and the police were given the power to ensure thatthey remained illegitimate. Unlike the RIC the RUC had thesupport of the majority of the population and the unionistgovernment was not constrained by any internal politicalopposition. In addition, the type of resistance faced by the RUC,armed strikes by the IRA, was one which they were throughtraining and inclination specifically capable of countering.

Collapse and Consolidation: 1969 and After

Stanley Palmer, writing of the rise of Irish nationalism andseparatism in the late nineteenth century comments that thenature and practice of the RIC was an important factor in theemergence of catholic nationalism:


Indeed, it may be argued that the diminishing independence ofProtestant Ireland would contribute to the development of anexclusivist catholic and cultural and political revolution at theend of the century. The importation of a centralised Englishcontrolled police, with a heavily anglo-Irish officer corpsdependant upon Dublin Castle, would in the long run helpprepare the soil for the growth of catholic republicanism andseparatism (Palmer, 1988: 245).

Similarly, it can be convincingly argued that the RUC, in itshandling of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), prepared theway for the re-emergence of militant nationalism. Institutionally,the Stormont state rested upon two contrasting pillars. The bulkof decision making, as it affected the lives of ordinary citizens,was made at local level. Through the apparatus of local govern-ment, local elites could influence decisions on housing, planningand significant areas of employment. The cohesion of theunionist alliance depended on the semi-autonomous politics ofexclusion and the local nature of this process made theimplementation of the reforms demanded by the Civil RightsMovement difficult, if not impossible. In contrast, thecentralisation of the security apparatus under the Minister ofHome Affairs meant that the police could be unleashed at will.The refusal of the state to address, or even acknowledge thedemands of the CRM made it inevitable that when street protestsbegan in the summer of 1968 the first line of confrontationwould be between protesters and police. Although policing andthe question of state repression did not figure on the list ofdemands made by the movement5 these questions were to swiftlypush themselves onto the agenda. Della Porta (1995: 189) arguesthat in Italy and Germany ‘political violence developed directlyfrom interactions between social movements and the police’,and the same is true for Northern Ireland.

Both ideologically and strategically, the Stormont regime wasfixated upon the threat of irredentist nationalism and was unableto cope with demands for reform couched in the post warlanguage of social democracy. Without the political will or thestructural means to implement reforms the unionist governmentresponded in the way it knew best: with increasing repression. Itwas the actions of the police which fostered the initial sense ofsolidarity among the nationalist community and pushed theCRM towards more forceful forms of collective action and


protest. As soon as the CRM moved into the phase of streetprotest the reaction of the police became increasingly repressiveand brutal. At practically every march police violence wasevident. During one of the first marches in Derry in October1969, attended by about 400 people ‘the RUC punched, batonedand pursued civil rights demonstrators in a brutal displayof…concerted violence’ (O’Dochartaigh, 1995: 5). Such actionsbrought about a radicalisation of protest and encouraged furthermilitancy. By the middle of 1969 two significant processes werein train: state repression had created a myth which had the effectof delegitimising the state by creating injustice frames (Gamson,1982) and arousing feelings of absolute injustice. In effect thequestion of policing. and by proxy the legitimacy of the state,had displaced the original reformist agenda. By the time theStormont regime got around to proposing a package of reformsit was a case of to little, to late. The use of ‘hard’ policing haddiscredited the more moderate elements in the civil rightsmovement and the tactics of peaceful protest. The RUC, used topolicing a divided society in a partisan fashion had noconception of itself as an institution of civil society, persisting inseeing the problem as one of public order. Despite the collapse ofthe RUC as an organised force and the introduction of Britishtroops in August 1969, the Chief Constable in his 1970 reportpreferred to offer a bland and sanitised version of events:

From its inception in 1922 the RUC played a dual role in thepolicing of Northern Ireland. Not only was the force requiredto provide a service of law enforcement…it had the addedresponsibility of protecting the Province from subversion fromwithin as well as from without…In later years, and especiallyduring the first eight months of 1969 the police were heavilyengaged in a peace-keeping role dealing with serious problemsof public order in the streets of our cities and towns (CCAR,1970: vii-viii).

In fact, the RUC had by August 1969 ceased to exist as afunctioning police force or even as a paramilitary force.Demoralised, discredited and exhausted it was removed from thestreets and replaced by the British Army. Like its predecessor, theRIC, the RUC had disintegrated in the face of concertedresistance and the new tactics of street protest to which it wasunable to effectively respond. By training and inclination poised


to deal with IRA insurgency and to implement the low levelharassment of individual nationalists it was neither ideologicallyor tactically prepared for the tactical innovations introduced bythe CRM. The decision to put troops on the streets was a fatefulone. The large scale introduction of British troops into Irelandhas historically indicated the presence of a crisis situation assuch a decision contradicted the long standing policy of usinglocally recruited police to hold the line. Peel, speaking in theHouse of Commons in 1814 in support of his Peace PreservationBill had sounded a prophetic note:

It would, in his [Peel’s] opinion, be infinitely better to investthe civil powers with sufficient authority to repress thesedisturbances, than to call in the aid of the military. The frequentuse of soldiers in that manner made the people look upon themas their adversaries, rather than their protectors. (Hansard 28:170. 23/6/1814)

The honeymoon period enjoyed by the British Army was indeedbrief and heavy handed military tactics had the effect of floodingthe still embryonic IRA with young recruits many of whom wereto die or serve long prison sentences. Long term British strategywas, however, to revamp the RUC and transform it into a frontline counter-insurgency force. Untroubled by the fact thatsimilar policies had failed in the past and were no substitute formoving towards a political solution, the RUC, after the rap onthe knuckles administered by the Cameron and ScarmanCommissions,6 was extensively rearmed and reorganised aswell as given extensive new powers to interrogate suspects andcharge them before non-jury courts, which came to be known asDiplock courts after the judge who recommended theirestablishment. A key component of this strategy was todisseminate the rhetoric of ‘normalisation’ presenting a pictureof a law abiding society beset by a small minority of terroristswho could only exist through intimidation and violence. Ofcourse, the attempt to present the police as a benign and neutralforce simultaneously fighting the forces of evil and carrying outits normal duties was not a new one. The 1837 Code of the IrishConstabulary was equally concerned for the image of the police:

The Inspector General is particularly desirous in the outset toimpress on every member of the constabulary…how very


incumbent it is on them to act in the discharge of their variousduties with the utmost forbearance, mildness, certainty andperfect civility to all classes of her majesty’s subjects, and thatupon no occasion or under any provocation should they so farforget themselves to permit their feelings to get the better oftheir discretion, and conduct themselves unduly and harshly inthe performance of their respective offices (Herlihy, 1997: 48).

As in the late twentieth century the gap between official rhetoricand reality was vast. Even the most phlegmatic commentators onthe relationship between the police and the peasantry in 19thcentury Ireland are unambiguous in their analysis. Broekercomments ‘By 1829 relationships between the constabulary andthe peasantry were characterised by what can only be describedas hatred…The fundamental cause of peasant resentment waspolice brutality.’ (Broeker, 1970: 236).

The practice of policing in Ireland has been shrouded in acarefully constructed ambiguity, designed to present the policeas a neutral and civil force while at the same time constructingthrough the application of legal and administrative ambiguity,an operational space within which ‘normal’ constraints aresuspended to allow the security forces to deal with thoseexpressing unacceptable political dissent. Aspects of this centralpolitical dilemma (how to crush dissent while at the same timewinning over ‘respectable’ Catholics) run through all aspects ofBritish policy over almost two centuries. The political lines haveseldom been blurred on this issue. The Tories, and their allies in19th century Protestant Ireland, were vehemently opposed tothe extension of more than nominal equality to Catholics, whilethe Whig/Liberal axis saw the isolation of dissent and theseduction of respectable Catholics by judicious reforms (such asthe establishment of new non-denominational universities) asthe way forward. Peel, a late convert to this position, wrote in1844 that he could see no way to avoid a repetition of the seriousunrest of 1829 other than by ‘detaching (if it be possible) from theranks of repeal, agitation and disaffection a considerableproportion of the respectable and influential classes of the RomanCatholic population.’ The fact that this policy did not succeed indamming the ‘flowing tide’ of Irish nationalism was not lost onUnionists after partition, and the reversion to the exclusion andrepression of Catholics was essentially the revival of a long triedand tested strategy. The particular form of policing instituted


after partition was a central component of this strategy, withoutwhich it could not have functioned for almost half a century.

The strategy pursued after the emergence of the ProvisionalIRA as a potent military force at the beginning of the seventiesplaced the emphasis firmly on security policy. As violenceescalated, the use of the British army in a policing role fulfilledPeel’s fears of over a century earlier due in part to the heavyhanded tactics of the military. Even before the collapse of theSunningdale Agreement in 1974 a dual strategy was being putinto place: the re-arming and reorganisation of the RUC as thecutting edge of the counter insurgency operation, and a moreincoherent policy of detaching moderate Catholics from militantnationalism by a series of measures such as fair employmentlegislation. However, such efforts were strictly secondary to theprimary aim of eliminating the IRA. The consolidation of a ‘new’catholic middle class had more to do with the impact of globaleconomic restructuring than with the results of state policy(Cebulla and Smyth, 1996). Successive British administrationswere open in their determination to pursue a military solutionfrom the Labour Northern Ireland secretary, Roy Mason, whowas fond of issuing soundbites such as his determination to‘squeeze the IRA like a tube of toothpaste’ to Margaret Thatcherwho talked of the hunger strikes of 1980 as the IRA’s ‘last card’.This approach was enthusiastically endorsed by the RUC.7

However, the RUC soon found itself embroiled in seriouscontroversy over its tactics and methods. Allegations of illtreatment while in custody began to surface in the late seventies(and were the subject of the Bennett Report) and this was swiftlyfollowed by increasing concern over the use of plastic bulletsduring the hunger strikes of 1980. The use of informers, so-called ‘supergrasses’ to obtain convictions in Diplock courtswas widely practised in the early eighties. The then ChiefConstable, Hermon, had no scruples about the use of informers:‘Terrorist organisations regard the supergrass technique as afundamental threat to their continued existence…the outcome[of the supergrass process] is crucial to the well being ofNorthern Ireland.’ (CCAR, 1983).

The use of supergrasses, and the initial collusion of thejudiciary in the process exposed crucial contradictions in thecounter-insurgency strategy. The arrest on remand of largenumbers of suspects on the word of informers did not have anyappreciable effect on the level of violence and soon met with


concerted criticism from all sides. The relatives of the accusedformed an action group, bishops, politicians and communitygroups were joined by the Criminal Bar Association of NorthernIreland in voicing disquiet. In the face of this barrage of criticism(and the effect of a pamphlet by the leading English lawyer LordGifford) the judiciary began to modify their approach and retreatin the face of a barrage of damaging criticism. In the final analysisthe use of supergrasses did little to influence the course of theinternal war. Of the 600 or so people arrested some 200 came totrial. Fifty three were convicted and most of the rest freed onappeal. Of those convicted, 50 were found guilty on the basis ofconfessions. As in the case of the interrogation controversy of thelate seventies, the RUC had once again overstepped the mark.With the support of the political establishment, the police wereprepared to play fast and loose with fundamental legal andconstitutional principles, only to be brought into line by massivelocal and international opposition. By the early eighties thenumber of reports condemning RUC tactics and methods hadreached double figures but this had no effect on thedetermination of the police to use whatever methods necessaryto eliminate republican dissent.

The use of plastic bullets (and their predecessor, the rubberbullet) by the security forces for over three decades, predomin-antly against the nationalist community, clearly illustrates boththe ethos of the RUC and the state’s approval of its actions.Seventeen people have been killed (and thousands injured) bythese weapons: all but one have been Catholics and seven werechildren. As in the situation surrounding the 1996 marchingseason, the police seem to have unlimited access to plastic batonrounds and are prepared to fire off thousands of rounds securein the belief that no single round can be tested for forensics oreven linked to the injury of any specific person. No member ofthe RUC or British army has been convicted of an offencerelating to the use of baton rounds. Other contentious areas ofRUC activity include collusion with loyalist paramilitaries,intimidation of lawyers, and a consistent pattern of torture ofsuspects. Tactics such as these have been the subject of highprofile national and international investigations but the everydaypolice tactics of casual beatings, intimidation, sexual harassment,the searching and destruction of houses and blackmail remainmere background noise, ignored by those who’s lives or politicalallegiances do not attract the attention of the police.


Conclusions: Political Imperatives and the Ethos of Policing

Clearly the RUC, like its predecessor, has been a tool of statepolicy implementing the view that the needs of Ireland mustalways be subordinated to the dictates of British politics. Theorganisation, composition and ideology of the RUC makes it,however, more that a mere tool of its political masters. If there isevidence of the police balking at the dictates of its politicalmasters, or of individual officers speaking out, it is difficult tofind. The fact that the RUC is given operational autonomy andthat officers are, de facto, immune from prosecution are centralto the culture of the organisation. This culture involved the beliefthat, within very flexible parameters, the police can act withimpunity. Like the RIC, a central aspect of the esprit de corps ofthe RUC is the reality of killing and being killed. During theyears 1828–44 156 peasants and 44 police were killed inconfrontations. In the wake of an incident in 1829, when twopeasants were killed and 27 injured, two constables were chargedwith murder and later acquitted. The then Chief Secretary forIreland commented that, ‘if a guilty verdict had been handeddown’ then, ‘ the police may as well be broken up at once’. Twoyears later, at Castlepollard Co. Meath, the police opened firewithout warning, killing nine. No prosecutions followed. Acentury and a half later, In the wake of one of the most notorious‘shoot to kill’ incidents in recent times in 1992 in Armagh fourpolice officers were charged with murder. One of the trial judges,in giving reasons for his decision to acquit said:

I wish to make it clear that having heard the crown case I regardeach of the accused as absolutely blameless in this matter. Thatfinding should be put in their record along with my owncommendation for their courage and determination in bringingthe three deceased men to justice, in this case the final court ofjustice.8

The ethos, practice and organisation of the RUC arose out ofspecific historical circumstances and the pursuit of particularpolitical objectives. The RUC was the direct agent of theStormont state, and later of the central British state, in a policy ofrepressing the aspirations of the nationalist minority in theNorth. The symbolism, religious composition and actions ofthe RUC expressed the cultural domination of the majority over


the minority, and still continues to do so. Attempts by the RUCto mask its real nature by the specious rhetoric of professional-ism and management speak have continued unabated since themid-seventies (Ellison, 1997) yet the yawning gap between wordsand deeds seems unbridgeable. In the wake of the Good Fridayagreement, the RUC seems a singularly inappropriate policeforce for a pluralist and democratic society and this is recognisedin the Annex to the agreement which deals with policing. Aspart of the agreement a commission, chaired by Chris Patten,was set up to make recommendations ‘for future policingstructures and arrangements, including means of encouragingwidespread community support for those arrangements.’ (TheAgreement 1998: 23). The terms of reference of the Commissionare clearly aimed at the production of a package of reforms:

Its proposals on policing should be designed to ensure thatpolicing arrangements, including composition, recruitment,training, culture, ethos and symbols, are such that in a newapproach Northern Ireland has a police service that can enjoywidespread support from, and is seen as an integral part of, thecommunity as a whole. (The Agreement, 1998: 23).

At the time of writing, the Patten Commission has almostcompleted the process of consultation which involved over thirtypublic meetings (involving, according to the Chairman, some10,000 people) and is preparing to publish its findings, again inthe words of the Chairman, ‘in late summer’. The fact thatpolicing was not dealt with in the context of the Agreement, butmade subject to a commission, is an index of the importance andsensitivity of this issue which will define the everyday practice ofany settlement. The current deadlock in negotiations over thedecommissioning of IRA weapons clearly demonstrates the zerosum nature of politics in the North and the lack of trust betweenthe two communities. The members of the Commission canhave been left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling on theground about the RUC. Meetings in nationalist areas wereuniformly hostile to the police and the litany of well documentedcases of police brutality, collusion and everyday sectarianismpainted a picture of a force beyond reform. Indeed, most peopleat these meetings shared the view of the President of Sinn Féinthat ‘[A] new police service must be established. The RUC mustgo.’9 Attending public meetings in Protestant areas, particularly


when the meetings were held back to back, was a surrealexperience. One might have been forgiven for thinking thatthere were two distinct police forces in the North, one forProtestants and one for Catholics. Apart from one meeting onthe Protestant Shankill Road, where traditional working classantipathy to the police broke through, no criticism of ‘our police’was entertained: there was simply no understanding, orwillingness to understand, nationalist grievances. It is preciselythis Janus faced nature of policing in the North which must lie atthe centre of any reform package but it is clear that any reformwill be fiercely resisted by Protestants. The nature of policing inthe North is to uphold divisions and treat one section of thepopulation as potentially disloyal. The task facing the PattenCommission is to devise policing structures which acceptdivisions based on competing national and political aspirationsand it is already clear that the RUC in its present cultural andorganisational form is incapable of carrying out this task.10

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1. The prefix ‘Royal’ was added in 1867 in recognition of the role of the policein repressing the Fenian uprising. The crown and harp badge was alsointroduced in that year.

2. The Stormont appointed security advisor, General Solly-Flood, wanted toequip the police with patrol boats, planes and tanks thus giving them amilitary function. The proposal was turned down by the British government.

3. Collins and Craig met twice in the first two months of 1922. Mutual mistrust,the pressure of events and the inability of both leaders to deal with theinherent contradictions of their own position proved insurmountableobstacles to any agreement.

4. These comments were made during a lecture entitled ‘Policing in a DividedSociety’ delivered on 22/10/97. See Belfast Telegraph, 23/10/97.

5. For a list of the original demands see NICRA, 1978: 8.6. The Cameron Commission was set up in the wake of the disturbances on 8th

August 1969 and Scarman was established as violence continued. Bothlaid considerable blame for the disturbances at the door of the RUC.

7. See the Chief Constable’s Annual reports for the years in question.8. Irish Times, 6/5/84. The judge, Lord Gibson was later killed with his wife in

an IRA landmine explosion.9. I attended some 10 of the public meetings called by the Commission in both

nationalist and unionist areas. Gerry Adams made this statement, whichreflects SF policy, at the recent Ard Feis. See The Sunday Tribune, 9/5/99.

10. For a discussion of various pathways to reform see John McGarry andBrendan O’Leary, Policing Northern Ireland, Belfast, 1999.


Notes

Brodgen, M., and C. Shearing (1993) Policing for a New South Africa. Routledge,London.

Broeker, G. (1970) Rural Disorder and Police Reform in Ireland 1812-36. RKP,London.

Buckland, P. (1979) The Factory of Grievances: Devolved Government in NorthernIreland 1921-39. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin.

Cameron Commission (1969) Disturbances in Northern Ireland. HMSO, Belfast.Clark, S., and J. Donnelly (1983) Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest 1780-

1914. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin.Cohen, S., and A. Scull (eds.) (1983) Social Control and the State. Robertson,

Oxford.Crossman, V. (1996) Politics, Law and Order in 19th Ireland. Gill & Macmillan,

Dublin.Dandeker, C. (1990) Surveillance, Power and Modernity. Polity Press, Oxford.Della Porta, D. (1995) Social Movements, Political Violence and the State. CUP,

Cambridge.Donzelot, J. (1980) The Policing of Families. Hutchinson, London.Dooley, B. (1998) Black and Green: the fight for civil rights in Northern Ireland

and black America. Pluto Press, London.Ellison, G, and J. Smyth (1996) ‘Bad Apples or Rotten Barrel? Policing in

Northern Ireland’, in O. Marenin, Policing Change, Changing Police. GarlandPublishing, New York.

Ellison,G. (1997) Professionalism in the Royal Ulster Constabulary: an examinationof the institutional discourse. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Ulster.

Farrell, M. (1983) Arming the Protestants.Pluto, London.Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Penguin,

London.Gallagher, F. (1957) The Indivisible Island. Gollancz, London.Gamson, W. (1992) ‘The Social Psychology of Collective Action’, in Morris A.

Mueller and Carol McClug (eds.) Frontiers in Social Movement Theory.Yale University Press, New Haven.

Gash, N. (1961) The Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830. Longmans, London.Giddens, A. (1981) A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Macmillan,

London.Goldstein, R. (1983) Political Repression in 19th Century Europe. Croom Helm,

Beckenham.Harris, M. (1993) The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern

Irish State. Cork University Press, Cork.Hay, D. (ed.) (1975) Albion’s Fatal Tree. Allan Lane, London.Herlihey, J. (1997) The Royal Irish Constabulary: A Short History and Genealogical

Guide. Four Courts Press, Dublin.Ignatieff, M. (1978) A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial

Revolution 1750-1850. Pantheon, New York.__________ (1983) ‘State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of

Recent Social Histories of Punishment’ in S. Cohen and A. Scull (eds.)Social Control and the State. Robertson, Oxford.

Lewis, G. Cornewall (1836) Local Disturbances in Ireland. B. Fellows, London.


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