15 May 1997 Edition
The real murderers
By Mary Nelis
When the RUC were sitting in their jeep in Portadown watching a loyalist mob jumping up and down on the head of the late Robert Hamill, they were probably feeling the fat pay cheques in their pockets.
The RUC remains higher paid than any police force in Britain. The average annual earnings for rank and file officers is approximately £33,500 or £600 per week. This includes a special allowance of £1,900 to meet the needs of policing the North.
Across the water, the ``English Bobby'' of comparable status would have to work their way through the rank of Constable Sergeant, Inspector and Chief Inspector to earn such wages. The yearly policing budget in the Six Counties is a staggering £600 million and it provides not only a luxurious lifestyle for its members but also the most modern methods and equipment to protect them from all types of attack.
Robert Hamill, the quiet, decent father of two children, had no such protection. He had no flak jacket, riot gear, special helmet, special boots. He had no baton, guns, riot shields or shelter in an armour plated jeep, with high tech communication equipment.
Robert Hamill's only protection, from the boots of the loyalist mob, was the frail body of a woman who threw herself across him in an effort to ward off the blows which killed him. From the safety of their armoured vehicle, the RUC observed the brutal attack by a mob of thirty people, and made a conscious choice not to intervene to save the life of the defenceless man and his cousin, who by this time had been knocked unconscious.
They would not have considered intervention as part of their policing role, for which they are so highly paid. Their primary function as a police force is to protect and underpin the sectarian state, which gives birth to the ``Die, Fenian, Die'' mentality of the loyalist mob who kicked Robert Hamill to death and of which they as police are an integral part.
The RUC never had a duty of care for the nationalist community. Their involvement, either individually or as a group in the loyalist muder gangs of the UDA and UVF, is well recorded.
In the aftermath of the savage attack on Robert Hamill and his friends, there were no house searches in loyalists areas of Portadown, no arrests, no attempts by the RUC to address this brutal sectarian attack, of which their members were at least collaborators, and at best, cowardly onlookers.
Fourteen days after the incident and four days after Robert Hamill died, amid a storm of criticism from the nationalist community, the RUC charged six people with murder. They announced the customary investigation of the incident by the ICPC, ``the performing poodles'', which oversees the £600 million budget expenditure in order to permit the RUC to fulfil its paramilitary function.
In an extraordinary statement in response to Robert Hamill's untimely death, the SDLP spokesperson for Portadown, Brid Rodgers, described the death as ``totally unnecessary and the product of a vicious cycle of sectarian hatred, which would further undermine public confidence in the security forces''.
Many people in the nationalist community may well ask Brid Rodgers, is there any public confidence left to be undermined? And is that her primary concern about Robert Hamill's brutal murder?
She would do well to listen to her colleague, the ex-MP for West Belfast, Dr Joe Hendron, who stated in 1996 that the RUC had become expert in inflicting pain without leaving marks and that the encounters of thousands of people detained in Castlereagh irrevocably formed the nationalist view of the RUC.
But the most illuminating insight into the political characteristics of the force came from an academic, Graham Ellison, who conducted extensive interviews with RUC constables during the Drumcree stand off. He found that deep seated sectarianism and anti-Catholic bias is rife among RUC personnel. Many supported the loyalist marchers. All had absolute hostility towards Catholic members of the force and Catholic neighbourhoods.
Robert Hamill's death is a direct result of this hostility and sectarianism, which has left a trail of death and destruction across the North in the past 30 years.
There is no doubt in the minds of the nationalist community that those charged with the savage murder of this young father took their cue from the passive onlookers to the muder as they sat comfortably in their jeeps. The RUC have a vested interest, both financial and political, in destroying all the efforts for peace in the north. They do not enjoy nor have they ever enjoyed the confidence of the Catholic community.
Will the real murderers of Robert Hamill please stand up?
When the RUC were sitting in their jeep in Portadown watching a loyalist mob jumping up and down on the head of the late Robert Hamill, they were probably feeling the fat pay cheques in their pockets.
The RUC remains higher paid than any police force in Britain. The average annual earnings for rank and file officers is approximately £33,500 or £600 per week. This includes a special allowance of £1,900 to meet the needs of policing the North.
Across the water, the ``English Bobby'' of comparable status would have to work their way through the rank of Constable Sergeant, Inspector and Chief Inspector to earn such wages. The yearly policing budget in the Six Counties is a staggering £600 million and it provides not only a luxurious lifestyle for its members but also the most modern methods and equipment to protect them from all types of attack.
Robert Hamill, the quiet, decent father of two children, had no such protection. He had no flak jacket, riot gear, special helmet, special boots. He had no baton, guns, riot shields or shelter in an armour plated jeep, with high tech communication equipment.
Robert Hamill's only protection, from the boots of the loyalist mob, was the frail body of a woman who threw herself across him in an effort to ward off the blows which killed him. From the safety of their armoured vehicle, the RUC observed the brutal attack by a mob of thirty people, and made a conscious choice not to intervene to save the life of the defenceless man and his cousin, who by this time had been knocked unconscious.
They would not have considered intervention as part of their policing role, for which they are so highly paid. Their primary function as a police force is to protect and underpin the sectarian state, which gives birth to the ``Die, Fenian, Die'' mentality of the loyalist mob who kicked Robert Hamill to death and of which they as police are an integral part.
The RUC never had a duty of care for the nationalist community. Their involvement, either individually or as a group in the loyalist muder gangs of the UDA and UVF, is well recorded.
In the aftermath of the savage attack on Robert Hamill and his friends, there were no house searches in loyalists areas of Portadown, no arrests, no attempts by the RUC to address this brutal sectarian attack, of which their members were at least collaborators, and at best, cowardly onlookers.
Fourteen days after the incident and four days after Robert Hamill died, amid a storm of criticism from the nationalist community, the RUC charged six people with murder. They announced the customary investigation of the incident by the ICPC, ``the performing poodles'', which oversees the £600 million budget expenditure in order to permit the RUC to fulfil its paramilitary function.
In an extraordinary statement in response to Robert Hamill's untimely death, the SDLP spokesperson for Portadown, Brid Rodgers, described the death as ``totally unnecessary and the product of a vicious cycle of sectarian hatred, which would further undermine public confidence in the security forces''.
Many people in the nationalist community may well ask Brid Rodgers, is there any public confidence left to be undermined? And is that her primary concern about Robert Hamill's brutal murder?
She would do well to listen to her colleague, the ex-MP for West Belfast, Dr Joe Hendron, who stated in 1996 that the RUC had become expert in inflicting pain without leaving marks and that the encounters of thousands of people detained in Castlereagh irrevocably formed the nationalist view of the RUC.
But the most illuminating insight into the political characteristics of the force came from an academic, Graham Ellison, who conducted extensive interviews with RUC constables during the Drumcree stand off. He found that deep seated sectarianism and anti-Catholic bias is rife among RUC personnel. Many supported the loyalist marchers. All had absolute hostility towards Catholic members of the force and Catholic neighbourhoods.
Robert Hamill's death is a direct result of this hostility and sectarianism, which has left a trail of death and destruction across the North in the past 30 years.
There is no doubt in the minds of the nationalist community that those charged with the savage murder of this young father took their cue from the passive onlookers to the muder as they sat comfortably in their jeeps. The RUC have a vested interest, both financial and political, in destroying all the efforts for peace in the north. They do not enjoy nor have they ever enjoyed the confidence of the Catholic community.
Will the real murderers of Robert Hamill please stand up?