Read State Violence for Free Online Page B

that the police do not want to be called out to deal with a fatal road accident, a burglary, a stolen car, a hijacking or a domestic dispute. There are instances of their refusal to operate in these cases. The RUC assume that one should understand the danger they might face and therefore they do not always act.
    There are no invitations from any of the Catholic schools in the Armagh area to the local RUC to address them, even on such vital matters for children as road safety. Career officers in the schools offer no encouragement to students to join the RUC, male or female.
    What is wrong? Is it just that Catholics are afraid of being shot by the IRA? There is fear of intimidation but Sir Hugh Annesley and other RUC representatives suggest that this is the only factor.
    The most important point is that Northern Ireland is made up of two strong cultural traditions, a British one and an Irish one. The RUC caters only for the British tradition. A man can not join the RUC and express his Irishness.
    First of all, there is the weight of Protestant numbers drawn often from very loyalist backgrounds. There are elements of the Masonic and Orange orders in the RUC and these are anti-Catholic. Some Catholic police complain that they suffer from misunderstandings, mockery, taunts and bigotry. The trappings of the RUC are all British, union flag, name, crown, poppy-flaunting, music and games.
    Above all, the RUC has traditionally been the defence force of the Northern Ireland statelet, a state which practised discrimination against Catholics for fifty years. It is regarded in this way by the Protestant leaders and their churches. An Irishman joining a police force in the north ideally should be able to fully express his or her religion, nationalism and cultural tradition, proudly and without offence or constraint.
    The gulf between the Protestant RUC force and the Catholic public has been widened by the counter-insurgency methods of the RUC and British army. In the 1970s, this involved one-sided internment of Catholics and torture of detainees in Holywood, Girdwood, Ballykelly, Castlereagh and Gough barracks, and in police stations like Omagh, Strabane, Strand Road Derry, Armagh and Dungannon. The courts were corrupted by acceptance of forced confessions and the word of ‘supergrasses’.
    It is difficult for the RUC to win respect when cases of ill-treatment recur and there are doubtful court cases like those of the ‘Beechmount Five’ and the ‘Casement Park Accused’. Worst of all is the shoot-to-kill policy, with the debacle of the Stalker Inquiry, and the collusion of RUC elements with loyalist gangs in the murder of Catholics and Sinn Féin members. There is great suspicion of British intelligence and elements of the RUC Special Branch and divisional mobile support units.
    Furthermore, there has been a long history of complaints of verbal abuse and harassment of Catholics by members of the RUC. Nationalists unfortunately refuse to distinguish between these problems and the force as a whole. They feel that community policing can not exist while such problems continue.
    This argument was advanced in 1973 by the Central Citizens’ Defence Committee in Belfast, in The Black Paper: Northern Ireland – The story of the police. The argument is still valid. The book said: ‘All the wishing in the world will not achieve the impossible. There is no way out of this torturous dilemma but the more difficult way that must be faced up to sooner or later. Law and order will not return to Northern Ireland on any basis but one. It will have to be seen to apply equally and fairly, to everyone in the land, whatever their position, even if they wear a uniform or hold a seat in parliament. Only when that is seen to be happening will the laws gain the respect from the community upon which its validity rests. This respect had been lost in Northern Ireland. It must be regained and strengthened. When those who make the law