Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations - Transitional ...

9. POLICING
Women during the conflict experienced the following with regard to
the security forces: 258
• Raids
• Arrests
• Stop and search
• Strip searching
• Children (taken off them)
• Everyday resistance (keeping your dignity)
• Power games
• Armed sexism
• Partners (I wasn’t the one arresting him. It wasn’t my fault)
• Complaints (deemed no case to answer)
• Lack of support
• Lack of trust vis-à-vis RUC, British Army, Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR)
• Fear.
9.1 The Good Friday Agreement
Policing is deemed a ‘central issue in any society’ in the Agreement, which advocates
‘development of a police service representative in terms of the make-up of the community
as a whole’. It is essential that the police service is ‘representative of the society it polices’.
The ‘great hurt suffered and sacrifices made by many individuals and their families,
including those in the RUC and other public servants’ is acknowledged (the reference to
families makes possible an acknowledgement that includes male combatants and
participants without adjudicating on the reasons and actors of the conflict). The agreement
‘provides the opportunity for a new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland with a
police service capable of attracting and sustaining support from the community as a
whole’. What is meant by community is underscored with reference to ‘a new political
dispensation which will recognise the full and equal legitimacy and worth of the identities,
senses of allegiance and ethos of all sections of the community in Northern Ireland’. While
this should ‘inform and underpin the development of a police service representative in
terms of the make-up of the community as a whole’ the context suggests that the
overriding interpretation of identity, allegiance and ethos is around Catholic/Nationalist
and Protestant/Unionist.
The new policing structures and arrangements should ensure that the police service is
‘professional, effective and efficient, fair and impartial, free from partisan political control;
accountable, both under the law for its actions and to the community it serves;
representative of the society it polices’. While advocating that the force should be
‘representative of the society it polices’, fairness and impartiality are defined in terms of
‘partisan political control’ without reference to patriarchal or gendered control.
Arrangements ‘should be based on principles of protection of human rights’. An
Independent Commission of Policing for Northern Ireland should be established.
9.2 The Patten Report
258 Many headings are from Strong about it All: .Rural and Urban Women’s experiences of the
security forces in Northern Ireland, edited by Helen Harris and Eileen Healy
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