A keynote intervention in the on-going debate as to if, and when, nationalists and republicans should join the newly-established Police Service of Northern Ireland was made yesterday by Mr Chris Patten, chairman of the Commission on Policing. Writing in the Belfast Telegraph, Mr Patten, the EU Commissioner for External Relations, argued that with the Police Act now passed into law, it was time to get back to the future, "to look beyond old political arguments and towards building new policing arrangements for Northern Ireland which are second to none in the world " by his measure. That was the "spirit of Patten" and it was now within reach.
Central to Mr Patten's argument is the outright rejection of the common contention that the Patten Report was "a political compromise or a political balancing act". The whole point of report was that it was not political. It was the work, the principal author says, of an independent and international group of people from very different backgrounds, entrusted with a task by the politicians who agreed the Belfast Agreement "precisely because the issue of policing could not be solved by politicians".
Offering his judgment on the manner in which the Commission's proposals were implemented into law, Mr Patten says that most of what was in their report did not require legislation. There was a vast amount more to be done to turn the vision in the report into reality - on recruitment, on police reorganisation, on training and education, on police practices and human rights. He urged the political parties and other community leaders to work to get their representatives on to the Policing Board and the district policing partnerships. And, most importantly, he judged that they should now start to encourage youth from all parts of the community to apply to join the new police force.
Having resisted invitations to speak out about the progression of Patten through the legislative process, his intervention now is timely. His arguments are well reasoned while avoiding any hostages to fortune. Resisting the temptation to "whinge about the implementation process", he opines that "whatever my own views on how that might have been handled, it is not my business'. But he does note that "the concern that I and my former colleagues have that our recommendations should be implemented goes far deeper than pride of ownership".
That view, alas, is not shared by all members of the Patten Commission. Dr Clifford Shearman wrote last week that the Patten report "has been gutted". In contrast, the only Northern Ireland Catholic member, Senator Maurice Hayes, called on Catholics to join the new force. The nationalist parties would have to decide, he said at the weekend, whether they would "settle for 90 per cent of something or 100 per cent of nothing. The Government's nominees to the Commission have refused to offer any view.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, last night reiterated his position that he could not recommend now that nationalists should join the force. There was still more work to be done, especially on flags and emblems. Mr Patten feigned "dismay" that the implementation debate focused so much on politics "and in particular on the politically-charged issues of names, symbols and flags". He should know better following his extensive consultations on the ground in Northern Ireland during 1998 and 1999. For all of that, Mr Patten has made a worthwhile contribution to the on-going debate.