Sir John Gorman, the Ulster Unionist Party Assembly member, was on the stage in the Ulster Hall on Saturday dramatically displaying a poster of the RUC standard, with its crown, harp and shamrock symbols. Violet Taylor in the body of the hall was weeping.
Mrs Taylor had taken the 7.30 a.m. bus from Enniskillen to be in the Ulster Hall with her daughter Helen for the noon rally in support of the RUC. "I think it's dreadful what they are going to do to the force," she said after the meeting.
Two years ago her son, Gregory Taylor, a 41-year-old off-duty RUC officer, was kicked and beaten to death outside a pub in Ballymoney, Co Antrim, by, as she said, "so-called loyalists". Unarmed and unable to summon help, he was attacked by drunken bandsmen in an assault bizarrely related to the parades issue.
She said it was of great emotional and personal importance to her and to her family, and for her son's memory, that there be no change to the RUC's name, badge and symbols.
Reasoned points were made by the speakers but the rally wasn't about a cool appraisal of the Patten report; it was about raw emotion. It was about no tampering with the culture, ethos and symbols of the RUC.
The speakers - Mr Gorman, a Catholic and former RUC officer; the former RUC chief constable Sir John Hermon; Mr Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Tele- graph, himself a Catholic; Mr Vincent McKenna of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau; and Queen's University academic Mr Alistair Cooke - dissected various aspects of the report.
The audience nodded in agreement as Sir John Hermon queried how Mr Chris Patten could speak about taking politics out of policing when he wanted to create a Policing Board that would have 10 politicians on it, as well as nine independent members.
Sir John Gorman also had their assent when he said Patten was premature because it "presupposes a peace that does not exist". They clapped when Mr Cooke complained that Mr Patten's report was appeasement of the IRA. They liked Mr Moore making a point of addressing them as "my fellow Britons". They were impressed by Mr McKenna, a former republican prisoner who is now a scourge of the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries.
But while careful attention was paid to the different analyses, it was references to the name change and the loss of the symbols and the Union flag that provoked the gut reaction. It was condemnations of those proposals that brought the crowd to its feet.
Judging by the speakers' comments, one would imagine there was no need for Patten. One could understand the impassioned response from the audience but one also would have expected from the speakers at least some detailed consideration of the fact that the RUC is not representative of the society it polices.
The Friends of the Union group, of which Mr David Burnside and Mr Moore are leading members, organised Saturday's rally. Focus was placed on what the organisers viewed as the non-sectarian nature of Saturday's gathering, with three of those on the platform being Catholics - Sir John Gorman, Mr Moore and Mr McKenna.
But while the five speakers were all eloquent in exposing what they saw as wrong in the report, they did not rise to Mr Patten's challenge. No realistic alternative proposals were heard that would bring more Catholics into a force still called the Royal Ulster Constabulary, still flying the Union flag, still with the symbol of the crown over the harp and shamrock.
In a debate with Mr Moore in the Daily Telegraph last week, Mr Patten spoke of the "distinction between citizenship and nationality . . . every citizen has a primary loyalty to democratic government, but is allowed secondary loyalties to his own national aspirations". That was why the name change was required, he argued.
And he concluded: "I remain passionately convinced that democratic government in Northern Ireland and the return of a more normal style of policing are intimately linked."
These are the sort of arguments that those in favour of Patten will need to push if there is to be any hope of community acceptance of police reform. It would have been interesting to hear Saturday's speakers deal with those points.
But when opponents of Patten know they have won the emotional argument, why should they dispassionately deal with the central issue - according to the Belfast Agreement at least - of building a police service attractive to Catholics and Protestants?