THE NEXT big policing challenge is to prevent young people from being deceived into providing support for dissident republicans responsible for the recent killings in Antrim and Lurgan, PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde said last night.
Sir Hugh, in delivering the David Ervine memorial lecture in Belfast, said the actions of a “few desperate men and women” would only prove once again that violence doesn’t work and that the will of the people of Northern Ireland would prevail. Sir Hugh referred to the Real IRA murders of British soldiers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey in Antrim and the Continuity IRA murder of PSNI constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon in Co Armagh.
The challenge, he said, was to “prevent, for example, that poisonous little group of killers in Lurgan from tricking more young people into the downward spiral of serious crime, oblivion and incarceration”.
Sir Hugh, who is to step down as chief constable after the summer following seven years in the post, said there was no reason why the devolution of policing and justice can’t happen. “We are ready for it and I think that when local people take responsibility for local policing, the endgame of Patten has been achieved and policing with the community will go from strength to strength,” he added.
“It seems to me that the determination by those in positions of authority, both elected and unelected, to ensure that we move forward not backwards is clear and unswerving,” he said.
Sir Hugh spoke on the theme of resolving conflict through dialogue and “it’s good to talk”, lessons that he found reinforced by his contact with Mr Ervine, the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party who died two years ago. “Whilst David liked to talk, unlike many he was well worth listening to,” he said. “If there is one thing that I have become more convinced about during the past seven years is that the only means to end conflict in any enduring way is through dialogue,” he added.
The lecture was organised by the charitable trust, the David Ervine Foundation. A tribute to Mr Ervine written by Nobel Laureate Séamus Heaney was auctioned at the event. In it Dr Heaney wrote: “Education according to the poet Robert Frost, changed the plane of regard and David Ervine would have agreed. He was an exemplary man of our place and our peace, somebody who believed that where there was a right word there was a right way and acted accordingly.”
