NI: Mayhew sacks chair of PANI
01 March 1996
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has sacked two members of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland (8 March) including the Authority's Chair, former Alliance Party Lord Mayor of Belfast, David Cook. The other sacked member is Chris Ryder who has written books on both the Ulster Defence Regiment and the RUC. Mayhew moved against Cook and Ryder because they refused to resign following a vote of no confidence in them taken by other members of the Authority in February.
Conflict within the Police Authority has been increasingly evident during the eighteen month ceasefire period. Prior to 1994, the Authority operated in conditions of secrecy on the grounds that members would be IRA targets - two were shot dead in the 1970s. The 20 members are appointed by the Secretary of State but the trade union seat on the Authority has not been taken up since 1980. Similarly the Social Democratic and Labour Party (led by John Hume) does not recognise the Authority. For some time, the government has been planning to change the Authority's responsibilities and to alter its relationship to the chief constable. It published a discussion document to this effect before the ceasefire (Policing in the Community) but has postponed issuing a white paper.
The Police Authority was first established in 1970 as part of the Hunt Report reforms which sought both to disarm the RUC (unsuccessfully) and to remove it from the direct political control of the Minister for Home Affairs. The Authority has rarely flexed its muscles even though its formal responsibilities (including finances, personnel, buildings and supplies) appear to permit it to address policing policies - the Authority has standing committees on police/community relations and public order. In practice, the Authority has been unable to have much impact on successive chief constables and, in Ryder's words, has generally behaved like a "performing poodle". There has been growing tension between the present chief constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, and Cook, and Annesley is on record as describing the Authority as "a bunch of well-meaning, good-intentioned amateurs".
Cook and Ryder believed that the Police Authority could become less secretive and attract more support by showing that it was putting pressure on the chief constable over such matters as Catholic recruitment to the RUC. In 1995 Cook launched a consultation exercise in an effort to establish public views on priorities for policing. Shortly before this, a series of community-based conferences were raising fundamental concerns about the RUC with much of the discussion either echoing Sinn Fein+s demand for disbanding the force or calling for radical reform. Meanwhile the Secretary of State was making it clear that in his view there is nothing wrong with the RUC. Cook's modest exercise in public consultation culminated in the publication of a report (Everyone's Police: A Partnership for Change, 26 March), but not before the internal wranglings within the Authority had been resolved. Writing in the Observer (10 March), Ryder has explained that two issues were behind the removal of Cook and himself. The first concerns the number of days in the year when the union flag is flown at police barracks - 19 (as opposed to 15 in Britain) including the 12th July, the day on which the Orange Order and tens of thousands of unionists celebrate William of Orange's defeat of Catholic King James at the 1690 Battle of the Boyne. Ryder argues that the sight of the union flag "fluttering over police stations in overwhelmingly Catholic areas ... prejudices the perception of the modern RUC as an impartial, even-handed and apolitical police service and needs to be debated."
The second issue is the oath of allegiance sworn by RUC officers which dates back to the Constabulary Act of 1836. Under this oath, officers pledge to "well and truly serve our Sovereign" and not belong to "any association, society or confederacy formed for or engaged i