'83 True blue "Law and Order"

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mig more akm lo a ponce state. enter a purce siduon wilnour Labour's opposition to the being shot) are attacked by the Police Bill, for all its timidity, police themselves.

At the same time as police only the individual copper who powers are extended, their sins against his hierarchy but also accountability to open, demo- the police hierarchy itself in its cratic organs is diminished. In crimes against the community. THE BRITISH general election involves the people of Northern Ireland in electing 17 Westminster MPs. But apart from the timing the election in the Six Counties has little in common with the election in Britain.

Even where the same terms are bandied about, they mean very different things. What, for example, is meant in Northern Ireland by a 'marginal' seat? It is a seat in which the Catholic and Protestant communities are close to being evenly balanced.

Much of the outcome of the election is decided before it, inside the Catholic and Protestant blocks, by way of deals and after fierce competition to be the Catholic or the Protestant candidate.

The most important political contest in this election is between the SDLP and Sinn Fein (political face of the Provisional IRA), within the Catholic community.

The SDLP has been the main victim of the collapse of political structures in Northern Ireland in 1974-5.

Impotence

Relegated to impotence as the party of a minority community, the SDLP has gone to seed in the last seven or eight years, becoming more and more a Catholic and merely nationalist party. Its leadership-level 'socialists' -Gerry Fitt and Paddy Devlin -are long gone.

The proven hopelessness of constitutionalism to gain anything has undermined the SDLP. The upsurge of support for the Provisionals during the hunger strike marginalised the 'SDLP and its concerns.

The Provisionals directed this upsurge to electoral purposes, electing Bobby Sands and then Owen Carron. And they learned Carron: capitalised hunger strike movement in electoral terms that the SDLP is not concerned the lesson that the ballot box could be a useful back-up to their military campaign. Their further electoral successes last on basic nationalist goals. year confirmed the turn, and now they may well pose a mortal threat to the SDLP.

Sinn Fein has in the last few years turned to 'community polities' - taking up grievances in order to build a base of support.

The support, and the electoral work itself, are to be geared primarily to military ends. The Provisional leaders see themselsionals and their politics in SO. ves fighting a war for perhaps 20 more years, and the turn to politics' is a turn to secure the necessary sustenance and support in the Catholic community.

Their manifesto focuses on the turn to community politics and 'constituency work'; on of the Catholic community. opposition to the SDLP as 'collaborationist' and a failure; and on their policy of abstentionism.

If elected, they will not take their seats.

Short on specific social poli- isionals - which, for sections cies, they have a general com- of the Catholic community, will mitment to a '32 County Democratic Socialist Republic'. The of its own. manifesto ends: 'We see the Six County state as irreformable and believe that full civil rights, an end to discrimination, unemployment, social deprivation and sectarianism can only be achieved when we achieve our national rights - that is, independence and unity" political status.

That sums up their basic politics: the national question is centrai, and everything else must wait on it, or be coopted as an auxiliary support for the national issue.

Between the SDLP and Sinn class.

- without illusions.

"WE stand for law and order:

Labour stands for political control of the police at the expense of law and order" . Such is the Tory message which feeds Fein the choice is between two off a social imagery almost two nationalist parties. It is simply hundred years old. not true when Sinn Fein says On the side of law, it lines up the deities of individual freedom, for unification and independen- security, equality, social order ce. The SDLP hope to get these and legitimate authority; against by way of a deal between Britain the law are arrayed the godless and the South. They differ from forces of anarchy, despotism and the Provisionals on methods, not On the one hand the police appear as the voice of reason, On that level there is nothing helping old ladies cross the road, to choose between the SDLP chatting to schoolchildren, and Sinn Fein. The SDLP's reminding travellers to don safety methods are inadequate: but a belts and crash helmets for their strong case could be made out own good; on the other hand that much of what the Provision- they appear as the embodiment of als do is, in the extremely com- external authority, , tough, plicated circumstances of North- helmeted, trained like a pack of ern Ireland, counterposed to hounds, capable of swooping their own case. We have carried down mercilessly on hardened detailed criticisms of the Provi- thugs or political subversives.

What has happened in fact?

Nevertheless the Provisionals Like the military the police are are a Catholic working class exempted from public expendibased movement whose rather ture cuts. The size and cost of the police force has grown sharply. vague populist: socialism exThey are armed with new presses the aspirations and the equipment: protective shields, traditional revolutionary nationtear gas, highspeed landrovers, alism of the radicalised segment plastic bullets, computers and of course guns (many police forces Development towards better now have special firearms units politics in the Catholic commun- and over 12,000 have been ity wil perhaps come about trained in their use). by the development of the political and social turn of the Prov- Potentates They have been reorganised take on a logic and momentum into larger and more centralised units. Chief Constables have Sinn Fein is the clearest ex- become local potentates. pression of the legitimate de- Special units (the SPG. Police mands and aspirations of the Support Units. the Special oppressed Catholic community Branch) proliferate. Protagonists to put an end to the artificial of "community policing" (like Six County state. It is the party Devon's Alderson) have given way which embodies the demands of to the hard men (London's Newthe Catholic prisoners of war for man learnt his trade in Northern Ireland).

By contrast, the SDLP is a Police representatives whether chief constables, the straightforward middle Class party with bourgeois links and Police Federation or the AssociNation of Chief Police Officers -conceptions, and unashamedly bourgeois aspirations - one have become an articulate political lobby on a range of issues. which looks only to regain the During the current election position it had in 1973-5 as the campaign, leading spokesmen for embodiment of the common the Police Federation have interest in Ireland of the British received loud ovations in their and sections of the Irish ruling recent conference as they stations for up to four davs without charge on the authority of a magistrate's warrant, to deny access of suspects detained in police stations to solicitors for up to 48 hours.

It is certainly true to say that previous Labour governments "paved the way" for the extension of police powers.

But it is the Tory admınstration which is turning this preparatory work into a basis for somedoes indicate a decisive difference from the Tories' blood lust.

TUTS

theory the police are presented as servants, of the law and of the community.

If this ideal is to be any more than hollow rhetoric, there must exist mechanisms whereby the community and the law can impose their respective will on the police. Such mechanisms have always been limited and weak, nevertheless they have existed. What we witness now is the erosion of even these tenuous democratic safeguards.

Interference

On the one hand, the powers of local authorities to control the police which they pay for is under sharp attack on the grounds of "political interference" and Labour calls for a police authority in London are rejected. We should not be surprised if the democratic component of police authorities is altogether scrapped if the Tories are re-clected.

On the other hand, the judges have voluntarily taken the initiative in attacks on defendants' rights (like the right of silence) and in restricting legal inhibitions on police behaviour.

The Police Bill, by making practically all violations by the police of rules regarding detention and interrogation a matter for internal discipline and not legally enforceable punishment, gives a Tory mark of approval to these judicial innovations.

Now Thatcher raises the spectre of capital punishment (presumably one of those Victorian values she so admires).

Socialists have been fighting on all fronts to oppose this ever more rapid drift towards a police state. We fight in defence of legal rights of defendants and suspects and for legal sanctions against police misconduct.

Fight

fight for more police authorities with more powers to control the police. We fight for the extension of a police authority to London and for the basic democratic rights of "no taxation without representation"

We fight for the right of self defence for those denied police protection and for self-defence against the police for those whose rights (to picket, to walk the streets without harassment, to antar analina etatian We fight to scrutinise, to control and to put in question not

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