Northern Ireland

Abstract

Since the creation of Northern Ireland as a separate political entity under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, a substantial minority of the population of Northern Ireland has continued to reject the legitimacy of partition, and consequently the legitimacy of Northern Ireland as a political entity within the UK. Indeed, the contested nature of Northern Ireland as a sub-state entity, both internally and externally, lies at the heart of the province’s conflict.¹ This has had a fundamental impact on policing in Northern Ireland in all its aspects, though the vehemence of the Catholic minority’s hostility towards the police has varied considerably since partition. At particular junctures the police have also come into conflict with the Protestant majority. Four principal phases in the development of policing in Northern Ireland can be identified: the plans made for the formation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1922; the subordination in practice of policing to the political direction of the Unionist government from 1922; the attempt to civilianise policing after the dispatch of British troops to the province in August 1969; and finally (from 1976), the establishment of the doctrine of police primacy in relation to security. While the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985 has had a considerable impact on Protestant perceptions of the position of the police, it has not as yet made any fundamental difference in practice to the role of the police, and even the more moderate political representatives of the Catholic minority have continued to decline to give unqualified support. Indeed, security policy is still an issue on which opinion in Northern Ireland remains largely polarised on sectarian lines.