Ulster Police Targeted by Extremists on Both Sides in Sectarian Strife

Along the Shankill Road in the heart of Protestant West Belfast, people still recall the night in March when neighbors laughed and cheered after a policeman’s home was firebombed.

But, for the more than 8,000 officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the wave of 400 or so attacks and threats against their homes constitutes a depressingly ugly turn of events in Northern Ireland’s seemingly endless sectarian war.

Certainly violence is nothing new to them. Police officers here are killed at a rate 15 times that of their U.S. counterparts. Flak jackets and rifles have been standard issue for years in many areas.

What unsettles the police is that, after nearly two decades of attacks by radicals in the minority Roman Catholic community, the Protestant-dominated force has suddenly become the target of Protestant extremism.

Threats, Verbal Abuse

Bombs, rocks, threats and verbal abuse are being rained on the police by Protestants outraged that a police force long considered their protector has begun to challenge their protests. Roughly 90% of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, or RUC, is Protestant.

The unrest is in reaction to the agreement last Nov. 15 by Britain and the Irish Republic, giving Dublin a formal consultative role in the government of Northern Ireland. Protestants here in Northern Ireland, also called Ulster, regard the agreement as the first step toward a united, Catholic Ireland. The agreement has brought additional pressure on a police force already faced with one of the most difficult law-and-order tasks anywhere.

The constabulary’s ability to stand up to Protestant intimidation has eased one of the greatest concerns brought on by the Anglo-Irish agreement, which is designed to protect the interests of the Catholic minority. The RUC has acquired a degree of grudging respect from moderate Catholics for its resistance to Protestant extremism.

But people who monitor the constabulary’s efforts emphasize that its gains are fragile and could quickly be wiped away by a single incident. It seems clear that pressure on the force from both sides of the sectarian divide will mount rather than recede in the months ahead.

Police Station Destroyed

Last week, a few days after an Irish Republican Army bomb destroyed a police station and injured several officers at the town of Cloughmills, north of Belfast, constabulary officers were forced to drag the Rev. Ian Paisley, a fiery Protestant politician, away from an illegal sit-in.

As the officers carried Paisley out, he shouted: “Don’t come crying to me the next time your homes are burned. You will reap what you have sown.”

Since 1969, when the present sectarian unrest began, 229 police officers have been killed, all but three of them at the hands of the IRA. Now, the police look for further confrontations with Protestant groups as the season of traditional street marches and parades reaches its height next month.

“No other civilian police force faces such a divided community,” said John Cushnahan, leader of Ulster’s only non-sectarian political party, the Alliance Party. “They’re stuck in the middle.”

In an unprecedented plea, Alan Wright, chairman of the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, recently called on politicians in every part of the deeply divided British province to resolve their differences.

‘Bent on Destruction’

“The RUC cannot go on indefinitely holding the ring while politicians fruitlessly slog it out with our lives at stake,” he warned. At times, he said, Ulster seems to be “hell-bent on self-destruction.”

A Police Federation spokesman, Alan Burnside, said there is a mood of apprehension in constabulary ranks because of the prospects for escalating confrontation between the police and Protestant groups.

“They don’t want to become alienated from the communities in which they live,” he said.

But to some extent alienation is already a fact. An emergency housing unit has been established to help about 70 police families that have been bombed out of their homes or driven away through intimidation by Protestant extremists.

In rough inner-city Protestant neighborhoods, graffiti have appeared referring to constabulary men as “scum.” In middle-class suburbs, some people have stopped talking to policemen and their families.

“In a way, being snubbed by neighbors is more hurtful because there’s not much you can do about it,” Burnside said.

Important Watershed

However difficult the constabulary’s present position, the chief constable, John Hermon, sees as an important watershed the disciplined way his men have dealt with Protestant street protests.

“There’s a sense of achievement in this amounting to an emancipation,” he said in an interview in his spartan office at the heavily guarded RUC headquarters. “They had to face them (the Protestant protests) and they did. There was a professionalism and an integrity of performance, and they’re conscious of it.”

Hermon, who is respected more than he is liked by those who serve under him, has led a campaign to harden police discipline and eliminate bias in his six years as chief constable. He insists that this professionalism has won the support of the vast majority of Northern Ireland’s 1.5 million people, but he says this majority has few political spokesmen.

When asked in a recent interview with a local newspaper why the police and their families were being intimidated, Hermon responded: “Because there is an unreasonable, bigoted fear in these people (Protestants) that their special position is being affected. Their ascendancy is being eroded and the police and the Catholics are in their way.”

Moderate Catholics agree that the constabulary’s recent performance constitutes a watershed.

Improving Image

“The history of this province has been that Orangemen (Protestants) could march when and where they pleased,” said Dan Keenan, spokesman for the Social Democratic Labor Party, whose members tend to be moderate Catholics. “That’s no longer true. The police aren’t about to be welcomed with open arms into Catholic homes, but their image has improved. You can’t doubt that.”

Chief Constable Hermon likes to cite historical anecdotes about clashes between Protestants and the police that go back to the 1880s, but such confrontations have been unusual in the present unrest.

It was not all that long ago that the constabulary was widely viewed as hopelessly biased and insensitive, supported by ill-disciplined, all-Protestant reserve units popularly known as “B-Specials.” The actions of both the constabulary and the reserves were targets in the civil rights campaign of 1968-69 that sparked the present round of violence in the centuries-old sectarian conflict.

An independent investigation found that the B-Specials’ response to street unrest had been “reckless and irresponsible.” Other investigations found that, although the constabulary had not actively helped Protestant mobs attack Catholic homes, it had on at least two occasions failed to prevent such attacks.

Police Overhaul

As a result of these investigations, the B-Specials were abolished and a comprehensive overhaul of the constabulary was undertaken. The RUC was stripped of many of its paramilitary trappings, including its rank structure and the heavy automatic weapons that had been in its arsenal for years.

It was reshaped along the lines of English police units. Its strength was more than doubled, to 8,200, training was expanded, and in 1976 the RUC took over from the British Army as Ulster’s primary force for law and order.

The constabulary has become one of the world’s most experienced civilian law enforcement agencies in the field of anti-terrorist tactics and has often been asked for advice by police officials in the United States and Western Europe.

To establish better links with young people in both religious communities, a public relations branch was formed and youth work became a priority.

Today, the constabulary sponsors quiz competitions between Protestant and Catholic schools, organizes soccer leagues and claims to be one of the largest discotheque operators in the British Isles.

Hermon maintains that, despite recent strains, discipline on the force is strong, morale is high and the quality of recruits improving.

‘Many Well-Educated’

“We are accepting about one of every 12 qualified applicants, and many of them are well-educated children of professional people,” he said.

Attractive salary levels and Ulster’s unemployment rate of 21% have helped boost interest in the RUC.

Still, the force continues to be controversial. Its use of plastic bullets to quell street disturbances, despite the death of 15 persons including eight children, is a serious grievance. So is its reliance on “supergrasses”--individuals charged with terrorist activities who are persuaded to inform on others in return for their freedom and a new identity.

Constabulary officials maintain that given the intensity of Ulster’s street violence, the lone alternative to plastic bullets would be lethal weapons. The “supergrass” technique, they say, is common in other countries.

There have also been allegations that some officers remain on active duty who were accused by the European Commission on Human Rights of torturing prisoners in 1971. According to a police spokesman, there was not enough evidence in this instance to prosecute specific officers.

Unofficial Policy

A far more immediate threat to the RUC’s gains is a highly charged scandal growing out of allegations that the force has had an unofficial shoot-to-kill policy in dealing with suspected terrorists.

The officers involved in controversial shootings of six persons in late 1982 were acquitted of murder charges, but subsequent embarrassing disclosures that junior officers may have perjured themselves at the behest of their superiors have revived doubts about RUC credibility.

Recently, an English police officer heading an independent investigation into the affair was suddenly dismissed under questionable circumstances, and this has cast further doubt on the matter.