By Brendan Anderson

THE Sinn Fein leadership has not had an easy task in persuading members to accept the necessity for a change in attitude towards the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and it predecessor, the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Hostility between Repub-licans and the police force has been a major problem since the partition of the country, when Unionists viewed the force as “our police,” while Republican activists regarded them as “legitimate targets.”

Various Unionist governments’ use of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to impose internment without trial, enforce draconian legislation and stifle political opposition did nothing to endear officers to the Republican and Nationalist community.

More recently, opponents of Republican support for policing point to the now commonplace revelations of police collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries in the murder of Catholics. It is now evident in many cases that sections of the RUC and latterly the PSNI, have blocked the arrest of murder suspects because they were also police Special Branch informers.

The difficulties surrounding the policing issue were perhaps highlighted Monday when Gerry Adams was the main speaker at a commemoration to mark the anniversary of the death of two volunteers in the IRA campaign of the 1950s.

Feargal O’Hanlon and Sean South were members of a flying column which attacked a police barracks in the village of Brookeborough in Co. Fermanagh on New Year’s Day, 1957.

Two mines placed at the barracks wall failed to explode and the IRA unit came under heavy fire from police officers in the building. The unit escaped but O’Hanlon and South were so badly wounded they had to be left in a cow byre to await capture by police, whom it was hoped would rush them to hospital.

Shots were heard as police arrived and a decades-long controversy began. Some surviving members of the column claimed the men had been finished off by police. Others said the shots came from officers firing into the shed as a precaution before entering. Police said the men were dead when they arrived.

Against this scenario, Adams addressed supporters at the spot where the men died, asked for their backing for the new policing dispensation.

“Be sure of this, getting our strategy right on this is inevitably bound up with how we move forward beyond partition to the Republic,” he said.

“Despite major advances in recent years, Sinn Fein does not yet command sufficient political strength to realize our primary and ultimate aims. We do well to remember that struggles cannot be won without the support of people, and a huge battle for hearts and minds is still to be waged, to mobilize greater levels of popular support behind Republican aims and objectives.”

There appears little real danger of the policing issue causing a split in Sinn Fein. While there has been a trickle of departures, militant Republicans opposed to the move have long ago ceased to be Sinn Fein members.

There remains a rump within Sinn Fein opposed to supporting the North’s justice system, but there seems little doubt that Adams’ wide-ranging and perhaps history-making Ard Fheis motion will be passed.