Sinn Fein Sinn Féin -- Building an Ireland of Equals

Sinn Féin Mid-Ulster MLA Francie Malloy speaking in favour of the Ard Chomhairle motion at the party's Extraordinary Ard Fheis

Published: 28 January, 2007

Partition cannot be wished away, no more than the Irish Republic can be wished into existence. Achieving national self determination and the realisation of the Republic are not theoretical propositions. They are concrete political objectives to be delivered in real time. Wishful thinking is not enough. We need and we have a strategy for achieving our goals.

Our strategy and the wider peace process have defined the political situation on this island, over the past decade and more. Irish republicanism is stronger now than it has been in living memory. We are building a party the length and breadth of Ireland the likes of which has never been seen. We have put the issue of Irish unity firmly on the political agenda. We have increased our representation at every political level North and South in all recent elections.

We have done this by developing an approach that has mobilised increasing numbers of Irish people behind our political project. We are succeeding, but there is much still to do.

Our political strategy involves critically engaging with the structures of society that affect the lives of the people we represent and seek to represent. We do this while unapologetically and ceaselessly pursuing our primary objective of ending Partition and removing the British state from Ireland.

Republicanism directly confronts partition and the legacy of eight decades of British misrule in the Six Counties. Republicans have worked systematically to expose, undermine and ultimately dismantle the traditional power bases of the Orange state, its sectarianism and discrimination; its denial of Irish identity and cultural rights; its repression through a militarised state apparatus, the hard edge of which was a sectarian, paramilitary police force. Policing has been a key power base of the failed Six County state that we have sought to dismantle.


This is the backdrop to our debate today. The issue of policing cannot be considered or decided on in isolation. The decision to be taken is about how we best advance our strategy to meet our objectives. This Ard Fheis places in your hands the responsibility for taking a further decisive step in the development of the republican strategy.

Hard political negotiations on the policing issue by Sinn Féin with the British have achieved far reaching changes. It is crucial that delegates today take full account of just how much has been achieved. The RUC, like the UDR and many other vestiges of the old Six County state, is gone, never to return.

It was this party - Sinn Féin, who made the issue of policing central to the peace process.

Had it been left to the Irish Government, the SDLP or others we would never have achieved the changes that have been secured. Others co-operated with and helped sustain the RUC at a time when it was engaged in the collusion and criminality exposed by the recent report of the Police Ombudsman. Sinn Fein stood firm and demanded the new beginning to policing.

We were right to withhold support from the PSNI and to stay out of policing boards up to now. By doing so we maximised the political pressure for change.

Having achieved the threshold for a new beginning to policing demanded at last years Ard Fheis, the time is now right to engage. We have a responsibility to ensure that the advances secured are implemented; to ensure that a civic, accountable policing service delivers for and is answerable to those it serves and critically, to take policing in the North away from the exclusive control of Unionism and British securocrats.

Some republicans argue that Sinn Féin should never accept policing until there is a united Ireland. The fact is that we must build and prepare for unity. We must lay the foundations, put the building blocks in place, for an all Ireland accountable civic policing service. It is Sinn Féin's job to accelerate political change north and south, to ensure that changes to policing structures are a transitional stage towards an all-Ireland policing service in a united Ireland. This is a big challenge, but we are up to it.

Some fear that engaging with the PSNI will legitimise partition and British jurisdiction in Ireland. While this may be a genuine fear, it is misplaced. Engaging with policing is the only way in which Republicans can ensure that it is not used as a political weapon to underwite the status quo and frustrate political change. We must ensure that policing is never again used as a tool of political repression or a prop for unionism.

Republicans must grasp the opportunity to hold the PSNI to account. In the twenty six counties Sinn Fein TDs in Leinster House, our councillors involved in community policing forums, have been to the forefront in holding the actions of the Gardai to account; highlighing corruption, inefficiency, prejudice, and failure to meet the policing needs of working-class communities. Our attitude to the PSNI will be no different.

Republicans must sieze the potential to bring about ongoing change in the policing arena. We demand a ban on the use of plastic bullets, a routinely unarmed policing service, that full light be shed on collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, that human rights abusers have no place and find no save haven in the PSNI. We must rise to these challenges.

Nobody underestimates the magnitude of the decision we will take today. We must get this right. The Sinn Fein leadership, the Ard Chomhairle, asks for support for this motion and the change in policing policy because we believe the time has come to engage.

This is a necessary and crucial step in a republican strategy which has been paying huge dividends for our struggle. It is a necessary step in meeting the needs of communities in the North who deserve an equitable, efficient, accountable and human-rights-compliant police service. It is one further step out of the past and into the future. Policing is another arena of struggle for this party in our journey to freedom, in building the Republic.

I wish to second the motion.


CRÍOCH