There are no easy answers to the problem of policing arrangements in the North. Yesterday's claim by the monitoring group, Families against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT), that loyalist paramilitaries are preparing to launch their own murderous campaign against alleged drug dealers, has underlined the extent to which the culture of lawlessness remains a core issue. Uncertainties about the RUC's future are bound to have a damaging effect on the morale of its members. At the same time, change is urgently needed to allow it to fill a dangerous vacuum.
With a White Paper expected in the next few months, the hope must be that the accent will be put on making the police what they should be in any civilised society a unifying force broadly accepted by everyone. It is not the fault of the large majority of men and women in the RUC if it is not seen in this light now by many nationalists. But a combination of history the association, among other things, with the brutal sectarianism of the "B" Specials until a generation ago and of more recent incidents like the "shoot to kill" allegations in the 1980s, have surrounded the force with an aura of partisanship that no amount of professionalism is likely to dispel.
Recruiting more Catholics will help to create a different balance in public attitudes, but this, of necessity, is a slow process, and is not likely to get to the heart of the problem of acceptability. In the North, as elsewhere, the concept of the police as an expression of popular support for law and order has become eroded, and often, particularly in inner cities, has been replaced by a "them and us" attitude. This general trend has been exacerbated in Northern Ireland by socio political developments since the 1970s.
In the current debate, certain realities cannot be allowed to drop from sight. It is important that the peace dividend on the ground as a result of the ceasefires should not be dissipated by political inflexibility. Resistance to change in the RUC is, at one level, a rejection of any institutional change and, by extension, of any alteration in the status quo. This can, quite easily, obscure what is the force's dominating characteristic of professional integrity, reflected in the courage and impartiality shown by the bulk of its members and their families in spite of being targeted by the IRA and, in recent years, by loyalist paramilitaries.
Those who claim that any change is a climb down in the face of political pressure should ask themselves - whether the acquisition of public support throughout the community is to be compared with externals like cap badges, uniforms or even the name of the force. To say this is not to deny the significance of symbols; only to question the extent to which they should be central to the debate about effective policing in the light of negotiated change in political and social structures.
To argue, as the chairman of the Police Federation in the North, Mr Lee Rodgers, did some months ago, that the RUC, having weathered the violent years, should have the right "to police the peace", circumvents the question. What matters is its future, under whatever new arrangements, rather than its past, however much this may redound to the credit of many of its members. The aim should be to bring it close to the community it serves, and this requires a high degree of community control and the widest possible involvement in the political decisions leading to its reform.