Sinn Fein Agrees To Back Police in Northern Ireland

Vote Is Step to Restore Power-Sharing

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post, 29 January

LONDON, Jan. 28 -- Northern Ireland's largest pro-Catholic political party voted overwhelmingly Sunday to cooperate with the predominantly Protestant police force, a remarkable reversal that was widely seen as a critical step toward cementing peace in a British province recovering from three decades of sectarian war.

"Today you have created the potential to change the political landscape on this island forever," Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams told about 2,000 party members after the nearly unanimous show-of-hands vote at a Dublin conference center.

The vote by Sinn Fein, the political affiliate of the Irish Republican Army, which waged a bloody struggle to free Northern Ireland from British rule, was a required step toward restoring a Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government in the province. The British government has given the bickering parties in Northern Ireland until March 26 to form a local government or see the province's affairs fully controlled by the central government in London.

Ian Paisley, the tough-talking leader of the largest Protestant party, the Democratic Unionist Party, and Sinn Fein leaders have sparred over several issues related to governing together, but none has been more full of anger, passion and history than policing. Catholics have long argued that the police have been a corrupt partner with Protestant paramilitary groups in systematically discriminating against them, often to the point of disregarding beatings and murder.

Catholic mistrust of the police was underscored last week by a report, issued by the independent police ombudsman, that concluded that police had colluded with Protestant paramilitary informers and protected them from prosecution even when they were implicated in murders and other violent crimes.

The report cast new doubt on whether Sinn Fein members could put aside their deeply held animosity toward the police and vote to endorse them -- a key goal of the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace agreements that called for Catholics and Protestants to share power to end a war that cost more than 3,600 lives.

Paisley made no immediate public comments concerning the Sinn Fein vote. In the past, he has said he would cooperate with Sinn Fein only if the party endorsed the police and demonstrated support for law and order. Paisley has been deeply skeptical of previous peace overtures, including the IRA's 2005 declaration that it had laid down its weapons permanently and renounced violence in favor of political solutions to the province's problems.

A spokesman for Tony Blair said the British prime minister "welcomes this historic decision and recognizes the leadership it has taken to get to this point."

Traditionally, many Catholics in Northern Ireland have essentially boycotted the police force.

Many have refused to become officers or even report crime, relying instead on informal networks within their own communities to settle disputes and address crimes.

Sinn Fein's vote clearly suggested that party members were willing to swallow their bitter feelings and cooperate with police for the sake of peace. But many also said that the province's Catholic minority would begin to trust the police only if officers gave them fair and legal treatment.

"They are going to have to earn it," Martin McGuinness, another senior Sinn Fein leader, said in a speech to party members. "We have to make them realize that they must be the servants of the people and not the other way around."

Paul Butler, a Sinn Fein member and former IRA prisoner, told party members that he supported the vote even though he had been "brutalized by the police," according to the Irish Times.

"It is difficult for me to make a decision because of my personal experiences of policing," he said. But he added, "Those who want maximum change must be prepared to take maximum risks."