The young RUC recruit was angry. His grandfather, his father, and he himself had been members of the Orange Order. But all the parades had meant was "an excuse to get drunk". He had been "forced to join", he said.

"Forced to join . . ?" queried the Rev Brian Kennaway, the order's education convenor, who has since resigned. "Did you not go before a panel and were you not asked if you wanted to join?"

The recruit said he had. But his father and his father's friends were on the panel. A fellow recruit wondered aloud, "where was the freedom there?" Another asked what had Christianity to do with getting drunk and other activities with which Orange parades had come to be associated.

Mr Kennaway suggested this might be a question of geography, that Orange parades in some parts were not always what they should be.

Another young recruit was as heated as his "forced-to-join" colleague. He wanted to know why it was necessary to forfeit membership of the Orange Order before becoming a member of the RUC. What right had the chief constable to make such demands? Was it not a breach of fundamental rights?

We were at the RUC training centre in Belfast. The force's very last recruits were undertaking two hours of an 80-hour programme in community awareness.

Involved were 36 young men and nine women who had replied to the RUC's last recruitment advertisements at the beginning of 1998 BP (before Patten). They have been at the training centre since April 2nd and will continue there until graduation on August 17th, though training continues until October.

Their two-year probation period continues until 2002, by which time the training course will be completed. The community awareness aspect of the course was introduced in 1994.

Currently the programme involves 44 individual speakers from more than 30 cross-community organisations, including the Orange Order's Mr Kennaway - it was at his invitation that I attended the session, together with a colleague. Openly, unobtrusively, as requested.

The recruits moved in groups of 12 between Mr Kennaway, speakers from the GAA, the Royal Black Preceptory and a representative of an Irish language organisation.

Those quoted above were in the second group to gather to hear Mr Kennaway's potted history of the Orange Order before he asked for questions. A young man in the first group told him: "I left the Orange Order after seven years." It soon became clear this was not because of joining the RUC. It was because of Drumcree. He abhorred what has been taking place there.

It must have been galling for Mr Kennaway. More than any of the other speakers, he was subject to the most sustained interrogation from the recruits. The order was on trial where these young men and women were concerned and most had already passed a verdict. Or so it seemed.

The irony is that, where most people outside the order are concerned, Brian Kennaway belongs to that group which has come to represent "the acceptable face of orangeism". He is one of those people who wish to preserve the order's more benign traditions, while distancing themselves from the ugliness.

All was quieter on the other "fronts". Mr Terry McLoughlin, editor of the Down Democrat newspaper, spoke to the recruits about the GAA. He was listened to with polite interest, but little recognition of what he was talking about, as he outlined the association's history.

Then he asked: "What does the GAA mean to you?" There was one reply and it was as curt as it was brief. "Discrimination," pronounced one young man. And Terry was off on a hobby horse. He has been campaigning against the ban for years - Article 21, which prevents RUC and British army personnel from playing GAA games.

He pointed out to the young women present that the ban did not apply to camogie.

Over in the Black Preceptory "corner" Mr Bill Logan was explaining how it was a much more spiritual organisation than the Orange Order. Its members were referred to as "Sir Knight". They held processions, not parades, and it was organised in preceptories, not lodges. And most of its gatherings revolved around Bible readings.

Mr Logan had some collarettes with him and he explained the significance of the various symbols attached. The crown representing temporal power, not the monarchy. A skull and crossbones representing the death which is everyone's destiny.

There were badges representing scripture and the four evangelists. An ark representing Noah's vessel and a dove representing the bird which told him the waters had receded. All of which was heard in silence.

Then one recruit asked: "Have you to be a member of the Orange Order to join the Royal Black?" The answer was yes.

Bursts of laughter came from the Irish language corner as details about the language's history, the extent to which it is spoken, and its importance in terms of identity to some, was explained. The rapport between the speaker and the recruits seemed lively. The speaker requested that his/her identity not be disclosed in this article.

It is a feature of this community relations programme for RUC recruits that co-operation from republican elements within the Northern Irish community has been somewhat less than wholehearted.

As Supt Roy Fleming, head of probationer training at the centre, put it, where the republican community was concerned, there was "a difficulty in getting people to co-operate freely and openly." And if people had such difficulty even where talking about the Irish language was concerned "how much more so if they have had previous subversive involvement?", he said.

However, they had succeeded in persuading some people to help out in this area of the programme.

Supt Fleming is anxious that the recruits' community awareness programme be balanced. And he points out that it also means getting to know about ethnic minority groups, as well as gays, lesbians, and Travellers. He looks on the programme as "a key part of what the students do . . . it is an integral part".

As regards the future, he is sanguine about a name change for the RUC. His father and grandfather were policemen, going back to the days of the RIC. And he points out the number of name changes there have been since the Dublin Metropolitan Police was established as the first full-time uniformed police force in these islands, in 1786.

In Ireland "the Peace Preservation Force was set up in 1814, the Constabulary Police in 1822, the Irish Constabulary in 1836, and the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1867", he said. The "Royal" prefix was bestowed on the force in 1867 by Queen Victoria.

In 1922 the Garda Siochana was established in the South and the remnant of the RIC in the North became the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Soon another name will be added to that line. Whatever it may be.