PerspectiveNorthern Ireland’s Lessons for American Policing

Not that long ago, Americans would regularly go to Northern Ireland to offer advice on reforming the region’s notoriously repressive policing. Martin S. Flaherty writes in Just Security that happily for Northern Ireland, and tragically for the United States, the lessons now run in the other direction.

Flaherty writes that for nearly three decades, Northern Ireland suffered sustained civil strife often referred to as “The Troubles.” For much of the last century, the mainly Protestant majority which defended the union with Great Britain dominated the mostly Catholic minority which preferred joining the Irish Republic. The unionist majority, firmly in control of the local legislature, entrenched systemic discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and government against the Catholic nationalists. “Think Mississippi or South Carolina, with the unionists and nationalists mirroring White and Black Americans, respectively,” Flaherty writes.

Nationalists ultimately took to the streets in peaceful protests and demonstrations, but as was the case in the U.S. South, the protests and demonstrations were met with violence from the majority population – and the result was an escalating cycle of paramilitary violence on both sides, lasting for more than a generation.

In a move that would have pleased Donald Trump or Tom Cotton, the military took center stage early on. When the local police proved unable or unwilling to protect the nationalist community, London sent British troops to patrol the streets of Belfast, Derry, and other towns and cities in Northern Ireland. The results were predictable. At first many nationalists welcomed the restoration of order. But in short order, the reality of soldiers, military vehicles, and checkpoints took hold.

Inevitably, the minority community came to view the troops as an occupying force and responded with peaceful protests as well as violence. In particular, paramilitary bloodshed persisted, both from such groups as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and various “loyalist” counterparts.

At its height, the number of soldiers hit 21,000, this to police a society of 1.5 million. The nationalists were further mistreated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland’s police force, which reflected the majority community almost exclusively (Catholics made up less than 10 percent of the force).

Flaherty adds:

For all their excesses, security forces in Northern Ireland were dealing with one challenge that no U.S. police force faces: paramilitaries from both sides engaged in campaigns of shootings and bombings that were, to a great extent, directed at the security forces themselves. Some 300 RUC officers and over 700 soldiers died in paramilitary attacks, a threat radically more clear and present than vague fears of “Antifa” activists. That said, absent more fundamental reforms, the massive, militarized security response proved utterly incapable of ending the Troubles, and in many ways perpetuated them.

Today, thanks to large-scale reforms, Northern Ireland is a substantially different place. Striking among the changes, the Army has ceased active operations in the region. And the RUC was nominally terminated and substantially altered. In its place now operates a renamed and reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Flaherty offers a detailed list of changes which were initiated as a result of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and concludes: “None of this is to say that policing in Northern Ireland today lacks problems or critics. But the PSNI is nonetheless widely regarded as a substantial step in the right direction…. Those seeking a hopeful model for change would do well to look to a land where change once seemed hopeless.”