The most senior officer in the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) says politics is now “more polarised, more entrenched and less creative” than it was 20 years ago.
Chief Constable George Hamilton was reflecting on two breakthrough moments in the peace process – now almost two decades ago.
Firstly, in September 1999, the report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland, chaired by Lord Patten, which signalled major reforms and the beginning of the end of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
Then, in November of the same year, there was the negotiation that put in place a power-sharing executive at Stormont.
That was new policing alongside new politics.
Twenty years later, the political institutions at Stormont have collapsed in a heap and, in a long standoff that began in 2017, there is no certainty about their future.
The chief constable, who will retire in June, also knows that policing is again under the sharpest of spotlights.
In the headlines – another disclosure controversy – the PSNI’s failure to disclose all documents relating to the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) killing of five men in a Belfast bookmakers in 1992.
Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly believes the “huge issue of legacy” is “the primary reason for the loss of confidence”.
“It’s contaminating the new beginning to policing – the recent issue around disclosure is not an isolated incident,” he adds.
This latest controversy over the disclosure of information will mean a delay in a number of reports on investigations by the Police Ombudsman, Michael Maguire.
Gerry Kelly also cites the case of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane and how it took several investigations and reviews over a long period of years to achieve the information now in the public domain, and not yet the full picture, “which leads to a belief that there is dead hand holding back disclosure”.
These continuing battles have opened old wounds and arguments about confidence in policing, about credibility and the composition of the service in terms of Catholic representation throughout its ranks.
Political class
“The irony of the political class criticising us,” comments a senior PSNI officer.
No government in Northern Ireland for more than two years.
And no process yet in place to address the questions of the conflict years, despite being two decades beyond the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.
“Twenty years ago, we didn’t realise the problem the past was going to be,” Mr Hamilton says.
“There was no commission to deal with the past, no architecture to deal with the past.”
The political negotiation that stretched from 1997 through to late 1999 was silent on this.
“Either they thought they had solved the past or they didn’t think at all.”
That observation from…
