The language of policing and the struggle for legitimacy in Northern Ireland
by Aogán Mulcahy and Graham Ellison
'Official' surveys, however, are subject to a number of significant methodological
flaws that have the effect of overstating support for the force, and understating
opposition to it (Ellison 2000). His survey of community organisations suggests
that claims of widespread Catholic support for the RUC need to be qualified
in three respects. First, even in relation to the RUC's 'community policing'
function, Catholic organisations (particularly those representing 'disadvantaged'
communities) display low levels of participation in RUC Community Affairs
schemes and little willingness to maintain contact with Community Affairs
officers. Second, the argument that Catholic opinion in relation to the
RUC is characterised by a high degree of intra-communal fissure (i.e. between
nationalists and republicans) is not supported to the same extent as in
conventional analyses of survey data. While middle-class Catholic groups
are slightly more willing to engage with RUC Community Affairs officers
than those groups representing 'disadvantaged' communities, a significant
proportion are not. In effect, it raises the possibility that 'negative
attitudes to the RUC are spread more evenly across a range of Catholic opinion
than previously has been assumed' (p.95). Third, even the window of opportunity
that the cease-fires provided the RUC with to 'normalise' its policing role
'did not appear to make any significant impact on the willingness of Catholics
organisations...to engage with the RUC' (p.106). This raises the possibility
that Catholic, and in particular nationalist, attitudes to the RUC are not
necessarily structured solely in terms of concrete experience, but are the
product of more fundamental issues concerning the relationship between policing
and constructions of group identity. |
