Commentary
| Date | 01 October 1986 |
| Published date | 01 October 1986 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8605900401 |
| Subject Matter | Commentary |
The
POLICE
JOURNttJ.
The Beleaguered
The cowardly attacks in
Northern
Ireland on members
ofthe
RUC
show no signs of abating as the murder of three officers in a patrol
car indicates. Their deaths bring the total of officers killed by
terrorists to 233. The latest slaughter of three unsuspecting
policemen on
duty
in a busy Newry shopping
area
was made even
more grotesque when one of the
IRA
attackers threw agrenade into
the car, seemingly to prevent bystanders from rescuing any of the
occupants who remained alive: in this objective he succeeded. This
inhuman
conduct provoked the usual spontaneous condemnation
from responsible agencies, as one would expect,
but
the unremitting
support
for these heartless killers, from whom the last dregs of
human
decency must have been drawn, remains amonument to the
evil process of indoctrination to which so many of
our
brethren in
this troubled province have been subjected.
It
is becoming increasingly difficult to understand the hatred
unleashed in such acts of infamy
and
even more perplexing to
comprehend the apparent acceptance by a substantial number of
people of
any
conduct, however repulsive in character, if it can be
said to be in pursuit of a cause. Surely, such blindness to evil
and
flagrant subordination of conscience cannot provide afoundation
on which to build for the future
and
it is submitted
that
only a full
throated condemnation of violence by all responsible persons will
enable progress to be made. Crocodile tears
and
barely audible
murmurs of disapproval only serve to protect the unscrupulous
and
render the innocent even more vulnerable to attack.
In the midst of this social turmoil,assailed on all sides by zealots im-
mersed in bigotry, stands the Royal Ulster Constabulary, committed
to maintainingastablesociety
but
having to fight against impossible
odds. As sectarian discrimination
and
hostilities escalate, as threat
provokes counter-threat, so the police take the hazardous middle
road
of reason
and
moderation: slaughtered by the terrorists,
October 1986 287
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