Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Time to worry about the big picture in political and policing terms

Trevor Birney, left, and Barry McCaffrey were arrested as part of an investigation into the suspected theft of confidential documents from the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.
Trevor Birney, left, and Barry McCaffrey were arrested as part of an investigation into the suspected theft of confidential documents from the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. Trevor Birney, left, and Barry McCaffrey were arrested as part of an investigation into the suspected theft of confidential documents from the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.

Argument goes on over the New York Times publication of an anonymous self-styled ‘resister’ in the Trump White House, principally as to whether this ‘resistance’ is much more than conservative careerists distancing themselves from a dangerous narcissist. For all the resister’s pomposity, this still sounded like a whistleblower.

Meanwhile two journalists here went to court last week to protect documents police seized after their early morning arrest, searches of their homes and what their office described as ‘every desk and cupboard’ for 13 hours. Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney were behind a documentary film into the fruitless investigation of the 1994 Loughinisland killings. The documentary centred round the report into the investigation by Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire, who found it was undermined by desire to protect informers.

Even with determination not to fret unduly, the big picture here has begun to be a worry. Last week’s melodramatic swoop was said to be part of investigating theft of documents from the Ombudsman’s office. What it looked like was PSNI revenge for painstaking examination of police files that made policing here look bad. To the Loughinisland relatives, waiting all this time for even one charge, it suggested more police interest in deterring whistleblowing, and harassing critics, than in finding the killers.

Which adds to questions about policing here once again, at a moment when politics is in the hands of a blatantly partisan British government. So much for the British desire to seem even-handed that the Good Friday Agreement was partially built on. Another part of the foundations was reform of policing.

Theresa May almost certainly has little more sense of this society and its history than had Karen Bradley, her current representative in Hillsborough (for three to four days a week maximum), when first she arrived. May has repeatedly been told by Irish ministers how Brexit threatens stability in Ireland but it is doubtful she can focus on anything beyond her own predicament. It is something of an irony that yet more warning to her comes from PSNI chief George Hamilton, telling the Sunday Times what he also told a Westminster committee in June, that dissident threats remain considerable but the May government is failing to prepare for the impact of Brexit here on peace and security.

For the Sunday Times benefit he added that some Westminster politicians see Northern Ireland as ‘peripheral’, and feel the Troubles and conflict are ‘sorted’ when in fact ‘we're working flat out 24/7 to keep a lid on it.’

Not that wary observation should ever be suspended on a police service, but for all the appeals of senior figures the direction of policing here gets no instant sympathy. Like everyone else however the chief constable well knows that May, and the childishly open Bradley, are in the hands of the DUP. What would be an unsettling experience at any time has extra dread now we know more, thanks to the RHI inquiry, about dysfunction inside the party, the failed control-freakery that overrode pretensions to be interested in the good of all.

Whether or not Bradley’s ignorance led her to mug up after she got the job, the day to day pressure is to keep the DUP’s ten MPs on board. No incentive there for open-minded reading on how the Troubles began or ended, to discover why stability needs continuing effort. Above all, the northern secretary needs to understand why it matters that first David Cameron and then May abandoned the British impartiality central to Good Friday.

She could do with studying Brian Feeney’s column last week. As Feeney noted, Brexiteer Owen Paterson when in Bradley’s post bowed to ceaseless unionist complaint and scrapped 50/50 Catholic/Protestant PSNI recruitment. Catholics now make up more than 45 per cent of the population. Catholic PSNI representation eight years on still seems stuck at around 30 per cent.

Paterson chopped the programme in the year that George Hamilton came home from a stint in Strathclyde, to serve as assistant chief constable. It would be interesting to know what he thought at the time, how he imagines last week will make the PSNI more attractive to Catholic recruits.

It is also interesting, and irksome, to recall the comments of newly-installed Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, who described himself on Sunday as Irish and his appointment as a 'manifestation' of the GFA. Back in January as PSNI deputy chief constable he told the Irish Times that 'nationalist parties' Sinn Féin and the SDLP ‘could have been more vocal in promoting the police service as a career’.