There is a logic to former prisoners being involved in district policing, butonly if paramilitaries cease their activities, insists Paul Murphy
As I have travelled around Northern Ireland over the past few weeks I have been asked by almost everyone I meet to say what I see as the greatest change in the four years since I took part in the negotiation of the Good Friday agreement. Each time my reply has been the same: policing.
Of course, no one visiting Northern Ireland after a period away could fail to notice the obvious changes: not simply the new name, uniform and badge, but a more open style of policing without the need for military support and protection, except in those few areas where the last residue of violent conflict remains.
But the change is deeper and more radical than the outward signs suggest. As the Patten report continues to be implemented, the Police Service of Northern Ireland is undergoing the most extraordinary transformation and the most fundamental change-management programme of any comparable organisation in the Western world.
Under its new Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, it continues to face and meet great challenges. PSNI members have demonstrated their independence by going where the evidence takes them; whether that leads to the arrest of so-called loyalists in connection with sectarian attacks and gangsterism, as in recent weeks, or of republicans charged with intelligence-gathering. They continue to make progress in the fight against organised crime and have contributed to the remarkable work being done by An Garda Síochána to prosecute dissident republican terrorists.
The Police Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, has demonstrated her independence and investigated complaints against the police without prejudice. The arrangements have given her powers to do so which are unparalleled. But much more important is the most impressive change: nationalist participation in policing. Impressive because I know from my role in the talks which led to the Good Friday agreement just how difficult it was for nationalists to take this step. I know that, as Chris Patten said, there are two histories of Northern Ireland and two experiences of policing.
It took courage and vision for John Hume, Seamus Mallon and Mark Durkan to recommend that the SDLP join the Policing Board after decades of boycotting policing structures; to choose to be part of changing policing when they could so easily have sat on the sidelines barracking those who were trying to bring about that change. Unionists, too, have borne the emotional pain of bidding farewell to the RUC while entering energetically into the building of a new policing service.
Nationalists and unionists have been proved right not just by the pace of change within the PSNI and the dramatic rise in Catholic recruitment, but above all by the performance of the policing board itself. It has confronted and resolved a series of extremely sensitive issues in a way that gives us all hope for the future of cross-community co-operation.
Yet there is more to do. The SDLP did not join the Policing Board in the vague hope of further change that would lead to a final reflection of Patten. They were promised in the implementation plan that new legislation would be brought forward to secure those changes. I have kept faith with these promises in the legislation I published yesterday.
The issues included are not new, nor are they headline-grabbing, but they are the stuff of real change in policing on the ground - not political rhetoric - and they reflect important work by the SDLP and their fellow Policing Board members.
The implementation of this legislation will be overseen by Tom Constantine, the former head of the US Drugs Enforcement Administration, who has acted as an expert adjudicator of the changes taking place within the PSNI.
But I also recognise that endorsement of the new policing arrangements from the SDLP, the Irish and US governments and from other influential parties - not least from Chris Patten himself - is not enough. The Patten report is the bedrock of the government's approach to policing change because his vision of representative community policing is ours. I want to see every part of the community in Northern Ireland playing a role in policing, and that includes republicans. Indeed, we all know that policing will not be complete until republicans include themselves. Ultimately this is a decision only they can make.
But yesterday I also published the text of those issues which were of particular concern to them, especially the possibility that ex-prisoners will be able to sit on district policing partnerships. Any reasonable person will see that there is a logic to ex-prisoners playing a role in building community policing, but only the most unreasonable could imagine this happening while the paramilitary organisations to which they owe allegiance are still active.
I released these further texts because I want to be open and transparent to nationalists and unionists alike about what the government would be prepared to do to address any genuine concerns by Sinn Féin about policing structures if the republican movement can make the final transition from violence to democracy.
I do not underestimate the difficulties for republicans in making what some have called this "quantum leap" - the final transition away from violence. Neither has the Prime Minister or I suggested that there is no work left to be done by the governments and the parties, as well as the paramilitaries. But we have reached a "fork in the road" at which republicanism will have to make a clear choice.
If they can make that choice and complete the journey to democracy, then everything, including policing, can fall into place. The last piece can be added to the jigsaw of the Good Friday agreement.
For the agreement not only promised a new policing service, delivered through the recommendations of the Patten Commission. It also held out the prospect of devolving responsibility for policing and criminal justice to the Assembly and its Executive. In other words, local politicians should have responsibility for these key elements of any society. That is the real prize that unites unionists, nationalists and republicans. It may seem ironic to be raising the prospect of devolving policing and criminal justice at a time when the devolved Assembly is in suspension. But as the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said in an interview in this newspaper, if we can reach a stage where the long-awaited transition from paramilitary activity to democracy is brought to completion, then everything could fall into place without delay.
To see Northern Ireland's politicians not only running the economy, but law and order and justice as well, would be a true sign of a mature and stable society. A society that has left violence behind for ever and committed itself to repairing the faultlines of history. These are not idle hopes; they are within the grasp of the people of Northern Ireland if the paramilitaries have the courage to take the final steps to peace.
Paul Murphy MP is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland