OPINION:MI5 control of intelligence-gathering in Northern Ireland may be impeding the flow of information on dissident republican violence to the PSNI, writes MARGARET RITCHIE
THE RECENT car bomb at Strand Road police station in Derry, swiftly followed by an attempted under-car bomb in Bangor, has underlined that dissident republicans are now able and willing to bring murder and mayhem to almost every part of Northern Ireland.
Without any vestige of popular support, without even a coherent political statement, they seek to emulate the purely technical prowess of the Provisionals who brought devastation to our cities, towns and villages for so long.
The born-again Provos now operate in a very different political, social and policing environment. Twelve years ago, in the first all-Ireland poll for 80 years, the people of Ireland voted overwhelmingly for the Belfast Agreement. It set up our devolved institutions and also laid down the principle of consent – Ireland can only be united by the votes of the people of both jurisdictions.
The principle of consent is now the settled democratic will of the people of Ireland. Violent dissidents have therefore directly challenged Irish democracy; they have excluded themselves from all democratic political discourse. They have no claim on the political sympathies of anyone. It is not a question of branding them as criminals, but rather of recognising that they have made themselves criminals by setting themselves outside and against the community. They are not a political problem; they are a community policing problem.
The first and greatest triumph of the peace process was the establishment of an accountable, representative policing service which is accepted in every part of our community. Indeed, that very success largely accounts for the fact that the PSNI is the primary target of the dissidents.
In acting against violent dissidents, the PSNI is acknowledged to be acting in the interests of, and in co-operation with, the whole community.
For almost 10 years the flow of intelligence from the community to the PSNI and An Garda Síochána has been the key to containing the dissident threat. However, I believe that flow may have been weakened by the 2007 transfer of intelligence-gathering primacy from the PSNI to MI5, and we may have been paying the price over the last year or more.
The transfer of control to MI5 was largely done at the behest of Sinn Féin, which wanted to distance itself from what it called “political policing” before joining the Policing Board. The party insisted that Special Branch, which was indeed a deeply flawed body, should not be reformed as part of the Patten process, but simply abolished. This was a serious political error, and we repeatedly told them so.
Control of intelligence- gathering was removed from the PSNI and from the control of the accountability mechanisms set up under the Belfast Agreement, including the Policing Board and the Policing Ombudsman.
We have an accountable policing service facing violent dissidents, but it is reliant for intelligence-gathering on an unaccountable, shadowy service with its own agenda and a deeply dubious record in Northern Ireland. This cuts right across the grain of co-operation between people and police which must be the very bedrock of dealing with the dissident problem.
There is now clear evidence that there have been intelligence failures over the last two years, starting with the huge bomb abandoned at Castlewellan on its way to Ballykinlar and continuing with the murder of two soldiers at Massarene Barracks and of Constable Carroll in Craigavon. But those who point the finger of blame at the PSNI are facing in the wrong direction.
The dissidents were regrouping, reorganising and co-operating across factional lines since late 2008, not least against those they perceived as informers, and there may have been a loss of human intelligence sources. The greater technical expertise the dissidents showed in bomb-making technology may have extended to frustrating the signals intelligence-gathering on which MI5 is thought to be over-reliant. It is notable that in the same period there was no downturn in intelligence success on the part of the Garda, which continues to frustrate dissident attacks and make arrests.
The SDLP believes we need to go back to the first principles of the Belfast Agreement to defeat the dissidents. Sinn Féin’s MI5 experiment has been a failure. Primacy in intelligence-gathering should be returned to the PSNI, where it would be subject to full accountability mechanisms of the Policing Board and Policing Ombudsman. Protocols governing PSNI use of informants should be extended to all informants.
There is a place for technical wizardry in this fight, but any agencies whose expertise is sought must be under the operational control of accountable PSNI officers.
The absolutely crucial source of intelligence is human, and consists of ordinary people telling what they know to a policing service they trust. There is no other way.
Margaret Ritchie is SDLP leader