An
uncivilised report
From DAILY TELEGRAPH September 10th, 1999
But, while it is essential to build confidence in the police among all decent
people, do we want to give "ownership" to those who are bitterly hostile
to Ulster's position within the United Kingdom? Again, this is an Orwellian
euphemism for allowing the fox into the chicken coop. It will be accomplished
by a Sinn Fépin presence on the new policing board, a greater say on local
policing authorities and even the recruitment of republicans into the new
"Northern Ireland Police Service". More disturbing still, the report offers
scant protection from those local authorities that will now be given the
right to "buy" extra policing from security firms controlled by the paramilitaries.
The effect will be to begin the cantonisation of Ulster. In his book East
and West, Mr Patten speaks of the old tenet of Chinese statecraft - using
barbarians to control barbarians. In Ulster, though, it is the barbarians
who will gain an increasing grip over the law-abiding people of the province.
No wonder people are afraid. For Patten makes a nonsense of the principle
on which this whole process is supposedly built - the consent of the law-abiding
majority. And so what should be a peace process becomes a blackmail process.
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