‘THE time is now right to support the PSNI’ (Police Service of Northern Ireland), Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams told delegates at the Sinn Fein conference in Dublin yesterday, before it voted to accept joining the PSNI Policing Boards.
He added that the party had to become involved in policing to ensure that the kind of collusion outlined by the Police Ombudsman last week could never happen again.
The resolution carried states: ‘This ard fheis supports civic policing through a police service which is representative of the community it serves, free from partisan political control and democratically accountable.’
This establishes that Sinn Fein will urge nationalists and republicans to join the PSNI.
In a vote of confidence in the Blair government it adds: ‘The British government has agreed to the transfer of powers on policing and justice away from Westminster to locally-elected political institutions and have set out the departmental model to which these powers will be transferred.
‘In these circumstances authority over policing and justice will lie in Ireland.
‘We note the British government’s new policy statement of 10 January 2007 which removes MI5 from policing structures in Ireland.
‘This removes the proposals to embed MI5 into civic policing and removes the danger of again creating a force within a force.’
Of course this does not mean that MI5 will cease organising in the north of Ireland, or will not recruit agents in the PSNI, with the same going for all branches of the British armed forces.
The resolution adds that Sinn Fein is mandated to ‘Appoint Sinn Fein representatives to the Policing Board and the District Policing Partnership Boards to ensure that:– a civic policing service, accountable and representative of the community is delivered as quickly as possible; the chief constable and the PSNI are publicly held to account; policing with the community is achieved as the core function of the PSNI; political policing; collusion and “the force within a force” is a thing of the past and to oppose any involvement by the British Security Service/MI5 in civic policing.’
This means that the PSNI will now function in all parts of the north with Sinn Fein sitting on its Policing Boards, legitimising its actions.
The resolution represents the conclusion of the historic change to the organisation carried out under the leadership of Adams and McGuinness.
Sinn Fein will now play a leading role in the organisation of the British occupation of the north, with its new position that British imperialism will respect the democratic choice of the majority in the north and that Irish unity can be carried out peacefully with the support of imperialism.
This major change follows on from the party’s support for the amendment to the Irish constitution which paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement, and the putting beyond use of its armoury of weapons.
The amendment ended the Republic’s claim to the north and established that an Irish republic over the whole of Ireland could only take place if a majority in the north voted for it.
Sinn Fein has now become a constitutional nationalist organisation whose leaders will be able to enjoy the spoils from being leaders of a UK regional government, while it seeks to win a majority in the north for the establishment of an Irish Republic.
In the north, they will no doubt be handling the portfolios for education and health, which are due to be massively cut, with some 400 schools facing closure along with a number of local and community hospitals. There is also the question of the privatisation programme that has now begun to get underway.
British imperialism intends to use Sinn Fein to further the changes that the British government wants to make to the north of Ireland, a process that will undermine the massive base of support that the 30-year-long armed struggle won for the party.
The way is now opening up for the struggle for a new leadership for the working class of the north. This must be one that will carry forward the struggle against the austerity programme that Britain intends to impose, and which mobilises the working class both north and south of the ‘border’ for the Irish socialist revolution.
