A few years ago American lawyers asked us to arrange an inquiry into the RUC, its origin, history and record.
Witnesses came and gave an account of the RUC from the 1920s on, relying on the experiences of themselves, their families and neighbours. The Irish Times sent a journalist to cover the inquiry.
Before it began we talked together about policing. I said, "I believe there is as much reason to investigate, disband and reconstruct the Gardaí as there is to do it with the RUC."
The journalist disagreed, said such a thing was not necessary and, furthermore, that her father was a garda. I said, "Then please ask him." I never knew whether she asked him or not.
This was before the current revelations about the gardaí. Those who suffered from the RUC asked other people about problems with police in different parts of the world. And one of the countries where there were major problems was Ireland, North and South.
One was always conscious of the petty arrangements between the RUC and their own favoured people, between gardaí and theirs, one was conscious of the petty briberies which allowed things to happen or blind eyes to be turned. People saw this as part of life and not a cause of great alarm. A comedy series on TG4, the Irish language channel, portrayed a garda station somewhere in Donegal in which the gardai were up to all kinds of scams, like turning the place into a B&B.
The most notable incident in this series was one where the gardaí planted explosives in somebody's caravan to get promotion. Naturally one asks how much the writers of that series knew or suspected about what was really going on. People certainly knew something was going on. The Heavy Gang was just the worst of it, not the whole of it.
An indication that the gardaí were going out of the control of their bosses came when Norah Owen was Minister for Justice in Dublin (1994-7). She went to the AGM of a police trade union, and was publicly booed, hissed and humiliated. This woman was these people's boss. And they humiliated her in public.
There were other indications too that the gardaí had the upper hand over their bosses. In the Dáil even the slightest criticism of what police did had to be prefaced by "Now I have the greatest admiration for the Garda Siochána..."
Newspaper editorials did the same. No politician or newspaper was willing to appear critical of the police. Or the army. The end of that for the army came with the deafness issue. The amazingly high and frequent claims about army deafness gave the politicians an opportunity to criticise army people without being accused of disloyalty. They took it eagerly.
All this time the judges in the courts were showing high favour to the gardaí. The standard of evidence presented in the courts reached such low levels at times that one could scarcely believe it. Police no longer needed, especially in political cases, to bring first class solid evidence. They even got the power to declare in court, without evidence if necessary, that a defendant was a member of an illegal organisation, such an accusation being accepted and being still accepted as real evidence.
The blame for indiscipline among police should be looked for first and foremost among those who run the police and the courts. If you not only allow but encourage low professional standards you can expect trouble – trouble which will involve, among other things, the workers, that is, the police, having disdain for their bosses, that is, the minister of their justice and the judges in their courts.
The enormity of the police events in Donegal as revealed by official tribunals need not have come as a surprise to many people in view of what happened in other countries. Since The Day of the Great Booing suffered by Norah Owen and wondered at by others there was no doubt about the direction the gardaí were going.
In all police you have similar problems. People enter a police force – or service as it likes to be called now – wanting to give a real service to the public. Some probably come in with them on the make, but if things are run properly these are controllable. There are temptations to take short cuts, to close files by accusing the wrong people, to turn blind eyes or upturned palms in the direction of drug dealers.
Giving in to such temptation or not giving in may often depend on the quality of the people you work with. Where morale is low and political direction inept, trouble is only to be expected.
There seems little doubt that all this happened with the gardaí, just as it happened with the RUC.
And it all becomes a massive public sore when governments use police illegally and cruelly to bolster their hold on power.
The struggle for power then can be intense. Who is going to control the police? The Minister for Justice? The head of the police? The business people? The law-breaking people? The secret services? All these seem to believe they have a right to fight it out.
Discussion of all this is not taking place because once again the governments and their agents have turned our discussion away into what does not matter.
Who cares if the IRA issues a statement of intent? The IRA will get its licence or not from the will of the people.
In either Belfast or Dublin is there going to be a police statement of intent to tell us that they too will conform to the will of the people?
