The Patten, the whole Patten, and nothing but the Patten. The Patten proposals on policing in Northern Ireland have been altered dangerously by Peter Mandelson. Brendan O'Leary urges him to think again, lest he threaten the who
From IRISH TIMES July 28th, 2000
"Something has gone seriously wrong. But what is it?" The question is Peter
Mandelson's, according to the leaked Philip Gould memo of last week. With
regard to the Northern Ireland Police Bill, which has left the House of
Commons for the House of Lords, the relevant answer is himself. In fact,
he is running out of time to avert disaster. Disaster may come in two forms.
Its mildest form is taking shape. The SDLP, Sinn Féin, the Irish Government,
Irish America, the American government, the Women's Coalition, human rights
NGOs, the Catholic Church in Ireland, and Irish nationalist civil society
have, accurately, condemned the emerging Act as a betrayal of the Patten
report, and of the Belfast Agreement, both in letter and spirit. In consequence,
the SDLP and Sinn Féin will not recommend that their constituents consider
joining the police, and they may well boycott the Policing Board and District
Policing Partnership boards. That will leave the police without Patten's
promised "new beginning", lacking full legitimacy with just less than half
the local electorate, an institutional bomb waiting to explode. The outbreak
of armed conflict in 1969 was partly caused by an unreformed, half-legitimate
police service, responsible for seven of the first eight deaths. In its
strongest form, disaster would de-couple nationalists and republicans from
the agreement. Failure to deliver Patten will mean Sinn Féin will find it
difficult to get the IRA to go further in decommissioning, which in turn
will lead to unionist calls for the exclusion of Sinn Féin from office,
and possibly to a repeat of Mr Trimble's "decommission or I'll resign" gambit.
If decommissioning does not happen because of Mandelson's failure to deliver
Patten, the SDLP will not be able or willing to help prioritise decommissioning,
unless it prefers electoral suicide. The IRA will find it difficult to prevent
further departures to the so-called "Real IRA", except by refusing to budge
on arms. In short, a second collapse of the agreement's institutions looms.
Something is going "seriously wrong". How did we get here? The short answer
is that the Bill was drafted by the Northern Ireland Office's officials
under Mr Mandelson's supervision. They "forgot" that the Patten Commission's
terms of reference came from the Belfast Agreement, and that Patten's report
and 175 recommendations represented the carefully researched compromise
between the unionist belief that the RUC met the terms of reference of the
agreement and the republican demand that the RUC be disbanded. The Secretary
of State and his officials believed they had the right to implement those
bits of Patten they found acceptable, and to leave aside those they found
unacceptable, premature, or likely to cause difficulties for Trimble or
the RUC. This led to a big lie: the Bill was presented to Parliament as
the implementation of Patten when it manifestly was not. One of Patten's
commissioners, Dr Lynch, publicly pointed this out, and some others have
privately confirmed Mr Lynch is right. In response to Irish and American
condemnation, Mr Mandelson promised, including in the Guardian newspaper,
to listen. He declared he might have been a bit too cautious, indicated
the Bill could be modified in Parliament, and suggested his critics were
engaging in hype. The Bill has been improved in the Commons but too little.*
The quota for the recruitment of Catholics is now better protected, but
not as strongly as Patten recommended. The Policing Board, rather than the
Secretary of State, has been given power over the setting of short-run objectives,
and final responsibility for the police's code of ethics. Consultation procedures
involving the Ombudsman and the Equality Commission have been strengthened,
and the First and Deputy First Ministers will now be consulted over the
appointment of non-party members to the board. |
