Poppies in the wind

Straws in the wind set to disturb efforts to build support for a new era in policing come from the most unexpected sources.

The sporting of poppies is a political statement in Britain but in the North of Ireland it is also, sadly, often used as a sectarian symbol. Wise counsel would suggest that an impartial police force avoid wearing poppies in republican areas — not least because they evoke memories of the despised RUC officer, machine gun in one hand, baton in the other, poppy on the helmet.

Apparently, those who support the wearing of poppy on the PSNI uniform won that argument. Last week in West Belfast, before the official poppy season kicked in, officers were patrolling the streets  — where their welcome remains tentative — with the poppy on show, two weeks before the official appeal kicks off.

Similarly, the vindictive efforts to railroad dissident republican Gerry McGeough into jail for an IRA attack carried out a lifetime ago smacks of the worst actions of securocrats. How strange that anyone who raises the slaughter of civilians by the British Army is dismissed as living in the past while enormous resources are deployed to put Gerry McGeough behind bars in connection with an incident from those same dark days. When Mr McGeough's trial starts on 1 November, don't be surprised if it collapses swiftly. All the evidence is that while paper-thin cases were sufficient to imprison republicans in the seventies along the conveyor belt of Castlereagh and courts, things have tightened up considerably since then. Let's see