The
bar of the hurdle which the UK government insist
Sinn Fein must first overcome before they can join
any Stormont Assembly Administration is currently
set at SF's membership of the PSNI Policing Boards.
I have excluded the Irish government as I'm increasingly
bewildered as to what their role in this matter
is.
However
even if SF were to clear this unnecessary and provocative
hurdle, it is more than probable it will still be
some years before the Ministerial chauffeur arrives
to drive Martin McGuinness to work as Deputy First
Minister. If past practice is anything to go by,
once his party overcomes the aforementioned hurdle
as if by magic another will suddenly appear before
it.
Nevertheless,
the question of who polices nationalist working
class communities is far more than a negotiating
device within the hands of the British government
and its Unionist allies. For with the downsizing
of Oglaigh na hEireann there is a shortage of Volunteers
to patrol the streets and administer law and order
within working class nationalist communities and
even were they able to do so, this in itself would
quickly be erected as yet another hurdle to prevent
SF from entering the Assembly Administration.
The
question of the legality and acceptability of the
PSNI has become an urgent issue to be resolved within
these communities. If the Provisional Republican
Movement is no longer able or willing to provide
these communities with the security they are entitled
to, the question arises of who can provide basic
law and order. We recently witnessed the limitations
of the CRJ schemes, when a feud between two Ballymurphy
families, which began over a disagreement about
a child's behavior, escalated into a man's life
being taken and a number of homes and businesses
being firebombed.
Understandably
law enforcement in the north is a tricky question,
not only for the PRM but also for the Nationalist
working class community as a whole. As like working
class communities throughout the world, the nationalist
working classes attitude to the police is light
years away from how they are viewed in the more
leafy middle class suburbs. Thus it is no surprise
much of the media whose members come from the middle
classes, along with the politicos who sit at Westminister
and Dublin, have a very real difficulty getting
their heads around this problem.
Within
any society it is those who are at the bottom of
the pile economically who most often feel the sharp
end of the state as represented at street level
by the police force (force being the operative word).
Any opinion such people have of the police will
have been tempered by their life's experiences when
coming into contact with the them. Whilst the northern
working classes attitude to the police is in many
ways unique, having been forged in the furnace of
the Troubles, below the surface it is not that dissimilar
to how workers from Brooklyn, New York, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, Glasgow, Scotland or Sydney, Australia feel
about their own local constabulary.
In
all these places workers will have a very jaundiced
attitude to the police born of a lifetimes experiences.
Whereas the middle class see the police as their
protectors and guarantors of their property and
privileges, workers see them at best as a necessary
evil not to be called on for help lightly, and at
worst simply as the heavy mob of the state and powerful
vested interests within it.
Whenever
members of these communities find themselves under
threat or attack from any of these vested interests,
whether they be major criminals, businessmen and
women or state agencies, almost without exception
the police side with these vested interests and
not with the communities that find themselves under
attack.
These
experiences when dealing with the police has not
endeared them to working people. For example, roughly
the same proportion of working and middle class
people take illegal drugs. But this is not reflected
in the numbers arrested for this offense or sent
to prison by the courts, the vast majority of whom
come from a working class background. You would
have to be pretty dim witted or prejudiced not to
conclude when dealing with illegal drugs the police
are far more likely to use the full rigors of the
law within working class communities than in their
middle class counterparts.
Although,
like most sensible people, northern workers are
well aware without law and order there can be no
pretense of living a civilized life. This being
so the northern working class could follow the example
set by working class communities in the south and
throughout the world and deal with the PSNI when
and if the need arises by placing a clothes peg
on their noses and getting on with it. Who knows,
a better relationship may come about over time due
to these contacts. However, I would not hold my
breath as they would still have no political input
as far as control over the PSNI is concerned.
The question is would it be in SF's —and those
they represent— interest to go the extra mile
on policing by joining the policing boards, or is
the former clothes peg option as far as Republicans
can realistically go at this stage of the Peace
Process?
One
cannot help but have a sneaking suspicion the British
government and its unionist allies are proceeding
on this matter with such insistence because they
wish to blood SF in much the same manner as a Mafia
godfather would get his henchmen to kill, so as
to implicate and corrupt his accomplice. Once SF
recognize the policing boards, they will be partly
responsible for running an armed wing of the northern
statelet, with all this entails.
Unless
they can show real benefits for those they represent
by doing so, and in a comparatively short space
of time, this will not sit well with either Republican
activists nor those from whence they came.
