February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By John Kelly
Way back in the balmy 1960s, when I cycled extensively, I came up against a formidable set of uniformed bigots in the lovely Mountains of Mourne in County Down.
It was not a nice day for cycling. In truth, it was not a nice day for hardly anything. But there I was, clambering uphill, crammed saddlebag creaking, when I was stopped by a patrol of B-Specials. It was that sort of day when the soft, continuous rain, shortens tempers.
The following initial exchange, more or less, took place.
What’s your name?
Why do you want to know?
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Give me your name.
Kelly, John.
Address?
Dublin.
That’s enough, yeh boy, yeh! Follow us to the station.
About five minutes behind me were two friends, laboriously straining their muscles against the steep hills that tumble through the Mournes.
So, there I was in Hilltown RUC barracks. That was the only way to describe it. To use the term police station was patently ridiculous. The building was enclosed in a protective sandbag enclosure, dotted with gun-firing apertures. The glass windows were sealed behind stout wooden frames.
The questioning continued. A young fellow, not much older than me, lay on a corner bunk, hand clasped beneath his pillow.
Another B-Special, or perhaps an RUC man, stood forlornly at the entrance, rain creeping down his oilskins. Suddenly, he yelped and dashed back to the station house, shouting, "There’s two more of them coming."
Dangerously, with frightening suddenness, the man on the bunk snatched his hand from beneath the pillow. I felt the unmistakable barrel of a gun held menacingly against my temple.
"Who’s with yeh?" one of the RUC gang shouted.
In fury, more than courage, I jerked my hand against the gun barrel.
"Get that thing out of my head," I yelled.
Surprised, more than scared, the young guy lowered his gun to the bunk, while three others dashed outside to pull in my two friends.
We were held for almost an hour, answering question after meaningless question, before we were finally released to finish our journey to the youth hostel in the rolling wilderness surrounding the vital Silent Valley waterworks that supplied a great part of County Down.
It was my first run-in with the RUC.
Compared to a multitude of attacks suffered by countless others in the 30 years of Northern strife, it was, of course, a relatively minor one. In fact, I feel it somehow churlish to even relate it now.
But it thought me lessons about the Northern Ireland police force that I have never been allowed to ignore.
Its primary function is military. It is there to protect one section of the community, the loyalists, against any incursions from the south.
Those were plentiful enough in the 1960s when the IRA was based mainly south of the border. Raiding parties, often doubling as cyclists, frequently raided isolated RUC stations. Even more frequently, bikers pedaled guns and explosives for use in "British Occupied Ireland," as dedicated IRA volunteers referred to it.
Occasionally, such forays ended in death. The most famous victim was, of course, the Limerick IRA volunteer Sean South, since immortally remembered in song. Wounded in ambushes were the late Dave O’Connell, often accompanied by Ruairi O’Bradaigh. Both subsequently became prominent IRA leaders.
It is easy to understand the fear that those isolated young RUC B-Specials suffered, especially when they heard the unfamiliar Southern accents in such a lonely spot. But that does not excuse That is why the RUC must be reformed, root and branch, as the result of the widely anticipated recommendations in the report prepared by the eight-man team headed by Chris Patten, Her Majesty’s former Hong Kong governor.
Since that first inauspicious encounter with the RUC, I have, of course, met many that would have been a credit to any independent police force in the world. Many would be happier to be regarded as guardians of the peace rather than as quasi-military enforcers of loyalist hegemony.
The Provisional IRA and other paramilitary forces should be happy as well.
The role of enforcement rested even more heavily on them. Only psychopaths can enjoy the task of blowing away the knees of drug pushers. Yet, within close-knit communities in nationalist neighborhoods, some law enforcement was always necessary. Since the RUC was unacceptable, the people had to carry it out themselves. Otherwise, anarchy would quickly have prevailed.
Free of the attention of the RUC, there were many young men of all persuasions and political backgrounds who flourished in criminal activities against the interest of their own community. Sad and savage as it often was, the threat had to be dealt with locally.
The result was that organizations such as the IRA became accepted as enforcers as well. There were few that cherished their involvement in "punishment shootings," or savage beatings. It was, by far, the most sordid and merciless aspect of the entire conflict.
The vast majority of Northern people, decent and hard-working, concerned citizens, innocent of any paramilitary involvement, will surely welcome the extensive reformation of the RUC.
Loyalists will hardly take a similar view. They will regard it as being something of a defeat. After all, irrespective of the fact that they often shot them, loyalists generally regarded the force as being theirs. You can expect widespread protests from that direction.
It is somehow ironic to reflect on the fact that the first RUC victim of the entire conflict was Constable William Arbuckle. His skull was splashed to pieces on a Belfast street by a high trajectory bullet fired by a loyalist sniper as the RUC attempted to prevent a mob from burning yet another nationalist neighborhood to the ground.
What of the IRA?
If the reports are true, it must encourage republicans to maintain the cease-fire, regardless of any future deliveries of arms through the U.S. postal service.
And the IRA must acknowledge that it has achieved one of its primary aims, the complete transformation of the RUC, if not the total disbanding it demanded.
They can only regard it as a significant development and one that must encourage them further down the road to decommissioning.
They must not be slow to show a positive response.
Even then, the British government will find it extremely difficult to sell this to both sides of the sectarian divide.