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In Northern Ireland everyone still knows where you live

A small group of dissidents holds the people of Ireland to ransom. A political response is needed

A PSNI data breach leaked personal and employment details of every police officer and civilian member of staff. Photograph: EPA

Denis Bradley
Sat Aug 19 2023 - 05:00

Hugh Orde, the first chief constable of the PSNI, is reputed to have said that in Northern Ireland everyone knows where you live. Knowing him, I could envisage him saying it, and if he didn’t say it, he should have said it because it is true. That insight into the fabric of Northern Ireland received little attention or discussion in the aftermath of the leak of the names and workplace of all PSNI officers and many civilian staff.

The late Martin McGuinness once said that dissident republicans were “militarily pathetic”. He also once stood beside Hugh Orde after a policeman and two soldiers had been killed by dissidents and said that they were traitors who betrayed the desires and the political aspirations of all the people who live on this island, and they don’t deserve to be supported by anyone.

He appealed to the nationalist community to assist the police services North and South to defeat these people and then said that, on this issue, there was a duty on him to lead from the front. Those sentiments and insights received little or no attention either.

The leak should not have happened and the leadership of the police and the policing board, which has oversight of policing, need to grasp the negative ramifications as speedily as possible. But the reporting and discussion that followed revealed realities that go beyond the responsibilities and the competence of the police and the board and the ability of security alone to solve.

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It revealed that 20 years after the establishment of the PSNI and 25 years after the Belfast Agreement, there is still a small group of dissidents who are holding the people of Ireland to ransom. As a result, the police service in the North has not embedded itself into the nationalist community, which was the reason for replacing the RUC with the PSNI.

The media reporting generally skirted or ignored those matters. The concentration was on the security of officers and civilian workers. Many reports revealed the fear that some officers and their families have; others told of officers who were going to have to be rehoused and a few who would leave the job and go abroad. Much was made of the millions of pounds of compensations that would inevitably accrue and the appearance of what Americans call ambulance-chasing lawyers advertising their services in the local papers.

The saddest stories were of Catholic police who had never told their wider families that they were in the police or who had not shared a meal with their parents in more than 10 years because the security advice was not to visit their original home place. Orde was telling us that all the above was beyond the competence of security alone. It was a political problem that required serious and sustained political intervention.

[ PSNI data leak: How big is the breach and how did it happen? ]

All of this and more because of a handful of republican dissidents who believe they have a different but higher moral code than the rest of the people of Ireland. The smattering of dissidents that are still extant believe they are the only ones who have the solution to the age-old Anglo/Irish problem. When everything is parsed and distilled, dissidence is an Irish problem that has cascaded down the generations, and bringing it to a resolution needs all the attention and authority of the Irish people and their Government. That is what McGuinness was telling us: that this final ideological disagreement was now central to peace.

McGuinness moved out of his past and stood with Orde to point the way to the future. McGuinness is dead and that baton has passed to the Irish Government. On this fundamental issue they are the voice of the Irish people and specifically they are the voice of the nationalist people of the North of Ireland.

The leak presents itself as a security issue but to frame it only in that light is a mistake. McGuinness was correct: this needs political attention at the highest level. This challenges the Irish Government at a level reminiscent of the threat posed by the Provisional IRA to the Irish State. The commitment of the Irish and British governments that brought about the Belfast Agreement was to take the gun out of Irish politics forever. That commitment keeps demanding courageous, imaginative political thinking. In normal parlance, they need to think outside the box.

The Irish Government must now claim the PSNI as its own. To make it clear that to kill or injure a PSNI officer is the same as killing a Garda. They must launch a campaign to encourage young nationalists, North and South, to join the PSNI. They must challenge all the other parties in the Dáil to join them as they encourage and challenge all institutions and organisations, from the GAA to the Catholic Church, in promoting that message.

[ PSNI data breach: man arrested is released on bail ]

They must deliver that message in the heartlands of northern nationalism, where the dissidents have a small foothold and where the people still carry the memory and the fear of the gun. It must respect the people who have suffered the most from the twisted history of Ireland, reassuring them that the British are no longer the obstacle to a shared and reconciled Ireland, but that violence is. This message is not best delivered from the halls of Queens University or the sanctuary of Dáil Éireann.

Finally, in issuing the ultimatum, they must acknowledge the complexity and tragedy of Anglo-Irish history and must acknowledge that a similar agreement to that offered to the Provisional IRA and the loyalist groups will ultimately be offered to those dissident prisoners who are in jail, North and South.

Denis Bradley is a journalist and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board

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