Sir, - Chris Ryder in his article on Reform of the RUC (June 11th) refers to "laying the foundations for a new policing order in Northern Ireland" and says that "it must be based on the consent of the entire community". This, of course, is the ideal to be aimed at. But I would venture to suggest that the assent of the entire community is seldom if ever achieved in any country, be it Britain, the USA, or even the Republic of Ireland. And the failure to obtain it is not entirely the fault of the police force, however imperfect it may be.
For many years I lived in Dublin, within a few hundred yards of an area into which, I was given to understand, the members of the Garda Siochana were unwilling to enter alone. More recently, in another area not far away, the attempts by the police to deal with a drug dealing problem were impeded by a hostile crowd. Elsewhere, on the north side of the city, a member of the force, giving evidence in a case, declared that when Garda cars entered the area they were regularly stoned. All this is in a part of the country where one might have expected that there would be little political motivation for orchestrated hostility to the police force, as is the case in Northern Ireland.
In any state where there are substantial minorities, be they tribal, religious, racial or political, it is unlikely that the police force will be accepted by the entire community. And, as far as Northern Ireland is concerned, I would hope that those who have little or no personal experience or understanding of the problems of policing here, should be slow to condemn a force which, however imperfect, has had to face an extremely difficult situation.
I would hope that those who read Chris Ryder's article also read Ruth Dudley Edwards's piece on the same page, in which she made clear one ugly aspect of our situation here in Northern Ireland, which makes the whole problem of policing such a difficult one. Granted that there are improvements which need to be made, as long as you have a small but highly organised group who are determined to foment hatred and violence, it is very difficult for any police force to make itself acceptable everywhere. - Yours, etc., (Rev Dr) G B G McConnell,
Warrenpoint,
Co Down.