Gerry Kelly interviewed by the North Belfast News:
What next for policing stalemate?
Belfast, 12. July 2003
Q. Given that the peace process was driven by the engine of a nationalist consensus, what is Sinn Féin’s message to the Irish government in terms of the obligations for northern nationalists over the coming months?
A. Well I think that the buck stops with Tony Blair in terms of the power base. He’s the guy with the power. He’s the guy who undermined democracy, who refused elections - which in any other jurisdiction would not have been acceptable. Our criticism of the Irish government is that they have not defended the nationalist and republican position the way they should have, because people do obviously look, in ways they nearly expect from a British prime minister who has been in charge of the British occupation, if you like, over such a long period of time, they expect certain things. But of an Irish government, they expect them to go with the imperative in the Constitution, which is for a United Ireland. And when they have acquiesced and at times even agreed, we have been very critical of it. Now after the elections were cancelled Bertie Ahern and his government said that they were against it, and have repeated that since. I think the difficulty for people is that he was seen, Bertie Ahern was seen, and actually spoke, straight after disagreeing with this, in support of Tony Blair. So they begin to wonder just how strong the opposition to it is.
Q. The Irish government, as well as the British government, the unionists, the SDLP, many different sources, have pointed to Sinn Féin signing up for policing as the most significant action that could happen to save the peace process. Is that fair?
A. Well, actually unionists haven’t, in fairness. Unionists in fact have said that if Sinn Féin had signed on to the Policing Board or signed up to, which involves going onto the Policing Board, that they would walk away from it, so you need to be clear in terms of the unionists. You nearly need to set this in context. First of all the SDLP co-operated with the RUC, so no matter what situation you’ve been in for the last twenty years you had a situation where the SDLP would have worked with whatever system was there. They are now working with a system which is inadequate. They are working now with a system where there is no transfer of powers, where the securocrats are still in charge, where the Special Branch at this moment in time is still a force within a force. Now, we continued on the negotiations. The SDLP in fact, before Weston Park, their chief negotiator was already saying that you won’t get any more out of the British in terms of legislation. We said, well, we need more in terms of legislation and policing won’t work unless we get it, and we pursued that. We then got the improvements out of Weston Park. It wasn’t enough. We said it wasn’t enough. It didn’t get to the threshold of Patten and we argued further for more change. Now in the recent negotiations we continued that process to get more change. To talk about Special Branch, for instance, we got the key issue of tenure, and it dealt with the tenure being how long a person could be in such a job of intelligence gathering because that in itself becomes a corruption. So it dealt with the Walker criteria and we got commitments on doing away with the Walker criteria: that is by which the Special Branch, if there was a joyriding incident, if there was a burglary, if there was a tax dodge, if there was any sort of low-level crime if I could use that term, that before anybody could be arrested and charged with that the Special Branch had to be informed and either if someone had have been an agent or an informer they simply were not then charged, or alongside that it became a pool of recruitment to the Special Branch to decide, okay, we have someone on a joyriding charge, on whatever it might be, burglary, etcetera, etcetera. Let us recruit them [as] another informer. In essence it was, I suppose, the basis of counter-insurgency. I mean, the RUC and the PSNI were set up on the basis of still dealing with a counter-insurgency situation, in other words a political police force as opposed to a crime prevention policing service, which is what we’re aiming to achieve.
Q. There is a sense that Sinn Féin are moving towards a situation where a rapprochement with unionists is a key factor in Sinn Féin’s political strategy. Is there not an argument, in terms of that, that Sinn Féin should be prepared to compromise on certain questions in relation to policing, in order to make life easier for unionists?
A. Well, I know you can’t separate them, but let’s deal with it. First of all, yes, of course, there has always been a policy of trying to accommodate and agree with unionism. That’s what the Good Friday Agreement was about. It is also our aim to have a United Ireland with unionists in it, so the only way that you deal with that and to not have a sizeable section opposing it is to try and come to terms with how we share the island of Ireland. In terms of policing - and this is the mistake that’s made - of course unionists have a particular view of policing. It was their police force and, I mean, I’m not even saying that is their view. It was their police force, and to a great extent still is. They want to maintain that. They are resisting every single change that has occurred. So the argument that, you know, you need to compromise on certain basic principles because that’s the way you will bring unionism on board: there are certain things which you can’t do.
If we believe that there are certain things which need to happen to policing to have a new policing service, we are doing it on the basis that it will serve society as a whole. That is that it will serve both Catholic, Protestant, unionist, republican and nationalist. And therefore we argued very forcefully on the issue of legislation, not because legislation is the beginning and an end of everything, but because to try and get a proper policing service you at least need the legal basis and structure to guarantee that even if corruption happened that you can do something about it. Whereas in the past the power base within this force within a force, and of course the emergency legislation and all the other things which attached itself to that, prevented you having that. So I would argue that for unionism, we want something which affects not necessarily political unionism and political republicanism, but certainly that people on the ground from different parts of our community can say, well, this is a proper policing service. It is impartial. It is no longer political. It is no longer partisan. We have a chance to move the whole process forward. So that’s our aim, as opposed to making a compromise which would affect political unionism because they simply would want you to do that. If we had taken that position then we simply would not have fought on this issue of policing.
Q. Senior Sinn Féin officials have stated publicly that the leadership will recommend the party to support the PSNI in the context of the correct political, practical and legislative conditions being met. What are the key political, practical and legislative conditions that still have to be met from Sinn Féin’s perspective?
A. Well, I think legislatively we have gone some distance in what has happened in each of the sets of the negotiations, and there have been several since the Good Friday Agreement, in that we have moved it further on. And as we move it further on, obviously, the issues they get less and less. But for instance, the biggest, if you want to take the biggest issue which is sitting there at the moment, it’s the issue of transfer of power. Because part of a transitional policing service, which is what in the end you could be talking about, is that you have to be moving into an all-Ireland context. Now if the institutions, the all-Ireland institutions, the Ministerial Council, any possible cross-border body or all-Ireland body, the possibility of a Justice Ministry for instance, if they are all now put into abeyance then you have a massive obstacle to overcome, which is why I said that while legislation was essential it wasn’t the entire argument, if you deal with the legislation but you still leave that legislation in the hands of the securocrats, as we now call them, in the NIO or in London - and remember Special Branch always was an arm of MI5 - then you will not be able to wrest the power into the issue of accountability to local politicians. So there is an issue of accountability. So just in dealing with the present situation - and indeed before the institutions fell, remember, this was not transferred - then we have a massive job to do in terms of that. In other issues you are talking about, there’s still emergency legislation, the state is still run by emergency legislation after the whole length of it, now some eighty years. We’ve got other issues of demilitarisation. There are issues of plastic bullets, of collusion, and you know, I hear Hugh Orde talking about what will happen with drugs, what will happen with loyalism, etc. etc. And his excuse, if I can say this, maybe that’s the wrong way to put it, but certainly he argues that he is determined to do all of these things. My difficulty is that I already know, and there is a mass of evidence on this, to show that the Special Branch were actually the people involved who know - who already know - who already have the information which we are told is necessary to put drug dealers behind bars, for instance and to put in particular loyalist drug dealers, that they already have that information and refuse to act upon it. My difficulty is that a couple of weeks ago in Ardoyne, when an issue of policing an Orange march came up, that besides the Parades Commission making a mistake and saying that it should go up through Ardoyne, the police force on the ground actually decided that they would turn a march into two marches and come down and run the supporters through after the march went through a Catholic area. So people make decisions on these things on the ground and, while legislation is essential, you have to look at what it is happening in terms of what way it affects those on the ground. The Ombudsman, for instance, which became another key area of accountability, has been under-resourced, in my opinion deliberately, and there are signs, well, I know that they have refused to give more money because I have made representations politically on this basis. There are a number of retrospective inquiries which she is now able to access but she is not able to access them because she doesn’t have the resources. So on the one hand they’re allowing for legislation because we forced the issue through to allow for the Ombudsman to do the work, and on the other hand they’re taking money away so she cannot do it. This also happened in human rights, if I may say so as well. You had a number of people resigning from the human rights body because, while giving the legislative power, they removed the resources. And it’s just another way for a government to frustrate the possibility of moving all this forward. So there’s a number of questions to be answered by the British government, in particular, as to how we move this thing forward. In terms of collusion, you know, how much work has been done? If you even just look at the Pat Finucane case and I mean, is there anybody, and I would nearly argue even within unionism, who is not now convinced of the depth of collusion that was involved in Pat Finucane. Even if you are within unionism and you don’t particularly care about what happens, with respect to political unionism, is there anyone who doubts that the weight of evidence there is massive? And yet we are still going through process upon process, inquiry upon inquiry before they ever make a decision in respect of holding an inquiry. So all those things, you cannot ignore those things in terms of policing and, you know, how they are or are not moving forward.
Q. Some republicans believe that this Old Guard will act again in attempt to coincide with the political negotiations in the autumn. How can anyone ever hope to make such a caucus accountable?
A. How can anyone expect it? I think if you look ten years ago, there are a number of things happening today that you may not have expected. You see, and I’m not in an interview to say all is lost or in an interview to say, you know, there is no way that we will get this: quite the opposite. I mean, our intention is to have a proper political solution. Our intention is that within that transitional period, that when we have reached that point that we can say to an Ard Fheis, or we can say to our sons or daughters, you know, this is worth participating in because it has become, has the potential to be a proper beginning to policing. But to speak about the Special Branch and the human rights abusers, you see, even look within their own organisation. If you remember, I think it was last year, there was a number of PSNI members actually complaining that the Special Branch was moving out of Special Branch positions and taking up other positions. In other words what they were doing was using the power they already had to get different positions knowing that the pressure from Sinn Féin and other groups was forcing change, that they were already trying to get into a different position to try - to try, and I say try - to try and have the type of power that they had before, or at least maintain the power that they had. I think accountability comes from political and community accountability. It comes from a transparency where people can say, you know, something might go wrong, but here we have an ability to do something about it. Now while we haven’t reached that point I would also emphasise that we have made substantial progress on a range of issues across, especially across, accountability and in other areas. And we will continue to push to achieve that. But without political accountability - and bear in mind, not only on policing, we haven’t even got political accountability now, you know, politically - then we have some distance still to go.
Q. Well if we have some distance to go, the SDLP position is that Sinn Féin is effectively a hurler on the ditch, waiting for the match to get near the end, who are going to come on once the SDLP have got the game nearly won. Is there any validity in the argument that you can only properly create the new police service by getting stuck into these institutions and making them work?
A. Well let’s be clear about what happened. You see, the SDLP argue a very false argument. They argue as if they negotiated the changes up to Weston Park and then Sinn Féin continued on. Now Sinn Féin did continue on. Sinn Féin was involved in negotiations, and I personally was involved in them from the beginning of the Mandelson Bill right the whole way through. And remember the SDLP in Westminster actually voted for the Mandelson Bill, the original Mandelson Bill, they then abstained in the second one, and then voted against it in the third vote. So there is some confusion about what their position was on this and I would argue that it was, quite clearly, they were going for whatever politically they could get away with. Now that’s the difficulty. Far from being hurlers on the ditch we are being involved and are involved in negotiations right along. And there’s very few people who doubt, you know, that during negotiations it was Sinn Féin who stayed in there, who refused, when the Brits said - and they said continually - we can’t go any further, we said, well, you have a difficulty because you have to, because if we’re getting this right... it wasn’t a matter of trying to get more and more out of the Brits. It was a matter of trying to get the thing right, and it was the Brits who were resisting it. And the people, I remember Peter Mandelson saying at a meeting to, I think it was myself and Gerry, when we were arguing about securocrats, actually saying that he was one of the securocrats and I think that said it all. What they were doing was resisting all of the power that they were giving over. You know some people say, you know, is Hugh Orde a nice guy? I never met the man, but some people say, is Hugh Orde a nice guy? To me that’s not the relevant question. The relevant question is, whoever may take over that job, whether they’re good, bad or indifferent, do they have the power? Take plastic bullets. We in the last negotiation argued and won a commitment for the end of this year for them to remove plastic bullets. What did the Policing Board, which contained the SDLP, agree to, had already agreed to? They had already agreed that we wouldn’t have to get to that point until 2005. Now that’s the type of thing we’re talking about. We’re talking about real change. We’re talking about if you can stay in there now, and I would argue very clearly, because when we had consensus, nationalist consensus, of course we were stronger than when Sinn Féin was arguing this on their own, and that goes without saying. If you have the whole of political nationalism arguing, of course you have more power. But we still need to get it right which means if we’re forced to do that on our own - and we were forced to do that on our own - we continued on doing it. We want to get this right. Our intention is to have a proper beginning to policing and the SDLP jumped too soon in terms of what’s going on.
Q. Still and all, you’ve practical situations on the ground outside of the key political negotiations. Now as a republican you would have experience and have knowledge of state forces breaking into people’s houses and leaving spying devices and that type of thing. And in response republicans would have consulted solicitors in an attempt to contact the relevant authorities - the PSNI or the NIO or whoever - to make them accountable. In practical terms many republicans have also experienced break-ins by anti-social elements to their home, during which people have been assaulted or property has been stolen. What is Sinn Féin’s recommendation to victims in those circumstances, in terms of making the PSNI accountable to police their area?
A. Well, I think you have to maybe divide this up. You see there are certain legal and statutory obligations on people which they cannot get out of and where there has to be contact with a police force. For instance, in terms of if you’re making a claim in terms of having been in an accident or a burglary or whatever. My advice is that you always use a solicitor. My advice has always been that you always use a solicitor and the reason I say that is because there is not the trust with the PSNI. I have also had experience of many people going in, especially in situations around the interfaces, and going in on their own, talking to whoever the PSNI member on the desk was and then nothing having been done. Or in fact when they went back to check was the statement still there, the statement wasn’t there, etcetera, etcetera. So remember we are dealing with the worst-case scenario of bad practice over generations. And therefore I would say, always have a solicitor in those circumstances and certainly that’s what I would do. In terms of all of the range of stuff from anti-social behaviour, joyriding, death-riding, burglaries, etcetera, etcetera, of course it is very difficult - underage drinking and all of that. But the community is already involved in all of these things. You know, there is a system of CRJ - Criminal Restorative Justice - set up, which we support. A community has to help itself, doing all of that. And people will make their own minds up as they always have. I think that we need to get to the point where we have a proper beginning to policing so that you have... if you have a police service which is representative of the community and which, when I say representative, is a part of the community, then you won’t need me to argue. You know, people will know that they have got to that point and will make those decisions. If you go into the interface areas, for instance, and watch the way the PSNI have been policing, I mean, I have been beaten myself. Gerard Brophy, who is a councillor, when he was trying to defuse a situation in North Queen Street, was beaten. He wasn’t beaten by loyalists, he was beaten by the PSNI. So there is still this canteen culture, this anti-Catholic ethos which is there and which we have to combat. So my advice remains the same. We are still trying to get it together. We are advancing. We will continue to push and negotiate upon that basis and we will not be found wanting when we believe that we have reached that point. But there is no other advice that I can give to people, and I say again, people do make their own mind up on these things. This is not a simple matter of Sinn Féin say and therefore people do - clearly it’s not. But you have asked me and the way I would approach it, and the way I would advise people to approach it, is as I have said. People will know when they have arrived at the point where there is a new beginning to policing and we get closer to it. I mean, I think that’s what our job is. That’s what we’re trying to do but we will not stop until we achieve what we have set out to do.
Q. Just to wind up, we have a situation in Belfast where a District Policing Partnership has been formed. We recently carried out an interview with the only resident from West Belfast on the DPP for the entire city, and the person concerned admitted that the DPP has yet to consult properly with the public, isn’t representative of the city, is unable to account properly at public meetings, but said that she’s in there because she wants to do her bit for the community. In terms of people who are approaching policing in a community spirit like that, what message do you have for nationalists who have taken a leap of faith on the issue of policing? Should they simply pull out and go home until the negotiations are sorted out?
A. Well, our position is that the DPPs are one section or one grouping, like the Policing Board, of the present arrangements, and that the present arrangements are not adequate, therefore we will not participate, and it’s nearly as simple as that. People will then make up their own minds about these things. And I think the example you use is the perfect example in a way, in that the majority of people have not participated in this because they do not believe that we’re at the point where they can do that. It is not because they don’t want to. It’s not because they don’t want proper policing. In fact if I could talk about North Belfast, in a way because people there have nearly suffered more than anybody else in proportionate terms over bad policing, they’re the very people who want a proper beginning to policing, but they know that they have not, that that has not been achieved yet and when it is achieved I think they will make their own decisions on that. So the only advice that I can give is what we do politically ourselves which is that we do not participate. I think it’s important to realise that, you know, the primary function of the PSNI is still to target republicans. They are still in counter-insurgency mode. They still recruit criminals, drug dealers, they give amnesties, they reward people financially and that in a way is a manifestation - for instance, not so long ago they recruited a thirteen year old living in Ardoyne, who had a learning disability, to spy on republicans, and a couple of teenage anti-social elements, from a community point of view who could be described as very bad in terms of the effect they were having on their own community, were recruited as well. So they continue to have this attitude where the community is something which they police as opposed to something which they are a part of. And you know, the recent idea that the SDLP on the Policing Board allowed Hugh Orde to break the 50-50 recruitment is, in many people’s minds in the nationalist community at least, amazing - that the Policing Board which is supposed to be the very Board which is to make sure that Patten is being implemented, actually allowed a Chief Constable to break away from Patten and to go back to practices which he should not have been allowed to do. Let me say, I have an absolute belief that we will eventually get the proper beginning to policing which is accountable, which is free from partisan political control, where human rights abusers will not be bred or allowed to stay, and that is my job. I mean I’m only one person, so it is the job of the whole party. I’m only a spokesperson and we will continue on and that is our commitment.
Journalist:Jarlath Kearney, Nord Belfast News