THE RUC marks its 75th anniversary this weekend with a concert and an ecumenical religious service in Belfast.

But whether the force, established on June 1st, 1922, will survive to celebrate its centenary, and in what form, depends on two crucial factors: how capably it controls events, "especially at Drumcree, during what looks to be an exceptionally difficult marching season; and a series of far reaching policy decisions about policing, currently being considered at Stormont.

The handling of Drumcree last July revealed the RUC to be impotent in dealing with widespread unionist protest and unevenly aggressive in handling nationalist reaction. This caused, for the first time, a clear majority of both Catholics and Protestants to support the proposition that the force should be comprehensively reformed.

As a result, the RUC'S standing is now so vulnerable that another battle across the North, with a renewed haemorrhage of support, could effectively prove to be its last stand.

But, however well it acquits itself in the trials over the next few months, it will still have to face up to radical reform of the legislative framework within which it is held to account as well as a shakeup of its overwhelmingly unionist internal culture. For instance, officers at the highest level have been playing pass the parcel for months with a file recommending that the permanent flying of the Union Jack over the force training centre at Garnerville, in east Belfast, should be ended.

This symbolises one of the most basic problems to be tackled: how to create a neutral policing environment which would enable the RUC to win the consent and cooperation of the entire community in the North and attract young Catholics into its 13,000 strong ranks, which are presently 93 per cent dominated by officers from non Catholic backgrounds. The reason for the disparity is rooted deep in the RUC's troubled history.

In the early 1900s, law and order in Ireland was maintained by the Royal Irish Constabulary, 11,000 officers and men with 1,600 barracks all over the island. After partition, it is disbanded. In a bold attempt to break from the past the Free State government decided to form an unarmed, community based police force, the Garda Siochana.

At the same time, the new Belfast parliament set up a committee on police reorganisation which recommended the creation of an Ulster Constabulary. Setting it firmly in the unionist firmament, the committee asked the King to award the Royal prefix because "it would give great satisfaction to the loyal population".

When the heavily armed, paramilitary style RUC formally came into existence on June 1st, 1922, it was tasked with protecting the Border and enforcing law and order.

The nationalist minority accepted the authority of the new state with resentment. Efforts to fill a one third quota of the RUC from Catholics serving in the RIC and Special Constabulary quickly foundered. Unionists, who wanted a force packed with reliable supporters, did not encourage them. The RUC wash thus committed from the outset to the unionist cause and remained, in nationalist eyes, its armed wing and an instrument of oppression.

FROM time to time, tensions in the North were all too easily rekindled. Two RUC officers were murdered by the IRA during sporadic violence in the 1930s and another seven died in more trouble during the second World War. The situation settled, down again until the late 1950s when the IRA mounted its most serious challenge since partition. Between 1956 and 1962 there were 605 incidents in which six policemen and 10 IRA members were killed.

The early 1960s were years of political change around the world but the RUC, still only 3,000 strong, whose procedures and practices had changed little since the 1920s, was singularly ill equipped for what lay ahead even though some senior commanders advised the government there was going to be a conflagration they could not handle. The crunch came on October 5th, 1968, in Derry when hundreds of police, with batons and water cannon, were deployed to halt a civil rights march. Senior officers were told by a government minister to "use the stick, use the stick".

Over the next nine months, the situation deteriorated, with disorder stretching the RUC to breaking point. By the summer of 1969, British troops had to be deployed on the streets. What followed was a highly traumatic period for the RUC. Its function was taken over by the army and its behaviour and tactics over the preceding months became the subject of official investigations. The most comprehensive of them, headed by Mr Justice Scarman, criticised the force for its conduct on six occasions, but concluded: "The RUC struggled manfully to do their duty in a situation which they could not control. Their courage . .. was beyond praise, their ultimate failure to maintain order arose not from their mistakes, nor from any lack of professional skill, but from exhaustion and shortage of numbers".

The task of reforming the RUC was given to Lord Hunt, who decided it should become a civilianised, unarmed police force. Before the reforms could, be implemented, however, breakaway republicans formed the Provisional IRA and launched a campaign of violence. Although British troops remained in great numbers, the RUC eventually resumed its frontline role in tackling violence. Since then, 298 officers have been, murdered and 13,000 injured.

Controversy has continued to talk the force as consistently as violence: allegations that terrorist suspects were tortured in the 1970s; claims that it operated a shoot to kill policy in the 1980s: and accusations, in the 1990s, that it colluded with loyalist terrorists by leaking intelligence to target and murder republicans.

Although the force is currently under fire from extreme loyalists for firm handling of some marches, and alienation from significant sections of the Protestant community is growing, the majority of unionists continue to take a proprietorial attitude to "their" RUC. Nationalists, on the other hand, believe that the RUC is beyond rehabilitation and want to see it disbanded and replaced.

With the British government committed to reform, the small print of which has yet to be unveiled, and the RUC's future being ever more intensively debated on all sides, police morale is at an all time low and there is a growing sense of job insecurity, hurt, isolation and even disillusion in the ranks.

With uncompromising attitudes on all sides, the policing mould must be urgently reshaped. The real source of nationalist alienation lies in the fact that the RUC was subjected to unionist political control from its formation.

If the mistake is repeated and the police are again allowed to become a political football by being subjected to a future local administration, as envisaged in the Joint Framework Document, then the problem will not be resolved.

New structures must contain checks and balances; guaranteeing fairness, by imposing a legal duty on officers to act in a neutral and impartial manner; and effective accountability to the law, through the courts, and to the community, through an independent body.

Its membership should consist equally of elected representatives from all the main political parties counterbalanced by apolitical individuals.

Such a body would provide a firm foundation for a new policing order for the benefit of the entire community in the North and help ensure that policing in the years ahead would be much less controversial than in the last 75 years.

Chris Ryder, a former member of the Police Authority far Northern Ireland, is the author of The RUC: A Force Under Fire (Methuen)