SIR Ronald Flanagan, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary in England and Wales, and the senior police adviser to the Home Secretary, will publish a full report today of his review into policing.
Flanagan is no ordinary policeman. He was the last head of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which after the peace deal with the IRA has been ‘reformed’ into the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The RUC was a major part of the British capitalist state, fighting a war in the north of Ireland against the Republican movement and the nationalist population.
This is what John Stalker found out during his investigations into the RUC and ‘shoot-to-kill’ squads. These were death squads whose mission was to assassinate targeted nationalists.
The RUC was not much good at filling in forms or keeping records, or being held accountable, but it was the world’s number one as far as the handling of ‘death squads’ was concerned, or the shielding of loyalist killers who on behalf of the British state murdered targeted figures such as the solicitor Pat Finucane.
On May 24 1984 an inquiry under Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker of the Greater Manchester Police was opened into three specific cases where it was alleged that a specially trained undercover RUC team known as the ‘Headquarters Mobile Support Unit’, had carried out a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy.
The shootings were initially investigated by other members of the RUC, and the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland decided to bring prosecutions. At the first trial, relating to the shootings of two INLA men Grew and Carroll, Constable John Robinson admitted to having been instructed to lie in his statements, and that other witnesses had similarly altered their stories to provide justification for opening fire on Grew and Carroll. When Robinson was found not guilty, the resulting public outcry caused RUC Chief Constable John Hermon to ask John Stalker to investigate the killings.
On June 5 1986, just before Stalker was to make his final report, he was removed from his position in charge of the inquiry. On June 30, he was suspended from duty over allegations of association with criminals. On August 22, he was cleared of the allegations and returned to duty, although he was not reinstated as head of the inquiry. The inquiry was taken over by Colin Sampson of the West Yorkshire Police, its findings were never made public.
From the above it can be seen just what Sir Ronald Flanagan’s ‘field of expertise’ is.
It is in the organisation of civil war type operations on behalf of the British capitalist state.
It must be said that without the assistance of Flanagan and other RUC veterans, the Metropolitan Police and other forces have developed along RUC lines with their own gangs of shoot to kill police.
Innocent men such as Harry Stanley and Jean Charles de Menezes have been killed, and not a single executioner has faced charges.
Flanagan has been brought in to give the Metropolitan Police and the other police forces that little extra cutting edge to make all the difference.
He has been summoned in to get rid of its accountability.
Form filling about incidents that ‘keep up to 3,000 police officers off the beat’ are to be scrapped.
In their place the police are to leave those that they have stopped and searched ‘business’ or ‘calling cards’.
Flanagan will recommend ending the ‘six million police hours a year’ that are ‘wasted on bureaucracy.’
We are to trust the police officers are doing the right thing.
Since Labour has announced that they are terminating the Welfare State, Flanagan is to help produce the kind of ‘RUC’ police force to police the operation.
The working class must reply to these provocations with the organisation of a socialist revolution that will smash the capitalist state and organise the advance to socialism, and a higher form of society.
