Introduction

This chapter traces the historical development of the changing relationship between Irish republicans and the various police forces that have upheld the rule of law in the North of Ireland. Accepting that there is an inherent link between state legitimacy and police legitimacy, it traces how changing relations with policing mirrored changing relations with the state. Views of policing are, after all, shaped within broader ‘value systems’ that include perceptions of state institutions and the political system that decrees the rule of law that the police force enforces. Building on that observation, this chapter will critically examine how the Irish republican position on the legitimacy of policing evolved in tandem with a changing political world view of the Northern Ireland state. Many of the issues later examined in greater detail are initially established herein; an understanding of that examination relies on grasping the trajectory of a wider changing relationship identified in this chapter. Rather than being an immediate or exhaustive exploration of those issues, this chapter sets out a framework that draws on the development of divided-society policing in Northern Ireland and the Sinn Féin process of buying into the post-GFA Northern Ireland state in order to contextualise the arguments made later in this book.

‘Planters and natives’

To truly comprehend the fraught historical relationship between Irish republicanism and policing, it is necessary to begin with the seventeenth-century British colonial policy of plantation: that of dispossessing and displacing the hostile Irish Catholic native and redistributing their land to imported loyal Protestants of English and Scottish extraction. Ross notes that early narratives about plantation were constructed along obvious fault lines, notably a narrative of civilisation and advancement, and a competing narrative of displacement and dispossession. Consequently, competing ethno-nationalist narratives have across generations corresponded to diametrically opposed frameworks. For Unionist descendants of the ‘planter’ it is one of providential delivery from the repeated threat of Catholic rebellion, while for Nationalist descendants of the ‘native’ it has been a redemptive one to atone for centuries of heroic defeats. These recurring motifs of repelled assaults while under siege and avenging historical defeats created narrative friction that persists today. The privileging of the ‘planter’ over the ‘native’ heightened religious and political tension, giving subsequent conflict an unmistakeable ethno-nationalist flavour.