Drawing Drew - Village Magazine

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July-August 2018

NEWS

Drawing Drew

HE CONTROVERSY over the appointment of

former Deputy Chief Constable, Drew

Harris, as the new Commissioner of the

Garda Síochána failed to elicit any detailed

examination of his senior role in policing

in the North over the past decade. Harris has over

34 years of policing experience, ﬁrst with the since

disbanded RUC and more recently with the PSNI.

Media and political commentary failed to properly

explore the potential personal and political conﬂicts

he may face as he deals with sensitive security and

intelligence issues in this jurisdiction while dealing

with his undoubted former allegiance to the securit y

services of the UK.

As Deirdre Younge has written in

Village

(July and

October 2016) Harris made an important intervention

as the Smithwick Tribunal was coming to a close,

apparently pre-determined to ﬁnd collusion and on

the verge of mistakenly deﬁning Owen Corrigan as

the colluder. Harris made it clear to the Tribunal that

there was another colluder who had been paid a lot

of money for providing the information that led to

the murders; but did not specify who he was. The

Tribunal was running out of time and on the basis of

this apparently informed view was stymied from ﬁnd

ing any speciﬁc colluder. The Tribunal

concluded, absurdly, that there had been

Garda collusion in the murder of RUC ofﬁc-

ers north of the border af ter they’d visited

the Garda station in Dundalk. But it did

not feel obliged to say who the colluders

were. This made it almost impossible for

anyone to prove that the conclusion of

collusion itself was unfounded.

In his previous role as Assistant Chief

Constable in charge of the PSNI Crime

Operations Department, where his respon-

sibilities included intelligence, major

investigations and specialist operations,

Harris worked closely with the British

security service MI5, as such a position requires. He

gave evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal in 2012 that

“I have overall responsibility for Intelligence within

the PSNI…but I am also responsible for the interface

with the Security Service”.

It is this relationship that has reportedly raised

eyebrows among senior as well as retired civil serv-

ants and gardaí, not known for their radical approach

when it comes to criticising sensitive government

appointments.

Much media coverage, however, focused on the

tragic loss for Harris of his father, Alwyn, who was

killed when the IRA blew up his car in October 1989.

His mother escaped with minor injuries in the blast.

It al so recalled the f ac t that when he was appointed

as PSNI Deputy Chief Constable in September 2014,

Sinn Féin MLA, Caitríona Ruane, withdrew from the

Policing Board selection panel af ter claiming that the

“process may have been compromised”.

Rather than examining what was being alleged by

Ruane, the focus was turned on to the role Harris

played in the arrest of Gerry Adams, some months

previously, in connection with the abduction and

murder of Jean McConville in December 1972.

The decision by Ruane to withdraw, in fact, related

to the manner in which Harris defeated Will Kerr, an

Assistant Chief Constable and a rival candidate for

the job of Deputy Chief Constable.

According to some of those involved, Kerr emerged

from the ﬁrst stage of the selection process ahead

of Harris in the assessment of those present, who

included members of the North’s Unionist and

Nationalist parties and independent members.

Ruane withdrew because she suspected that politi-

cal pressure was being applied on the elected

by Frank Connolly

“I have overall responsibility for

Intelligence within the PSNI…but I am

also responsible for the interface with

the Security Service” – Drew, 2012

Rather than examining

Ruane’s allegation that Harris

had been elevated by political

pressure, over Kerr, in the

interview process, the focus

was on Harris’s role in the

arrest of Gerry Adams

Ireland’s new Garda Commissioner has –

in the PSNI – been too close for comfort

to MI5 and MI6, whose agenda is often

inimical to that of the Republic

July-August 2018

1 7

members and on the executive of the Polic-

ing Board to choose Harris, which they did.

In December 2014, Kerr lodged a complaint

to the Fair Employment Tribunal alleging that

he had been the victim of religious and politi-

cal bias af ter he failed to land the job as DCC.

As the substantive hearing of the FET

approached, Kerr’s legal team sought and

obtained details of the selection process

during the deliberations of the Policing Board

which included the weightings that placed

him ahead of Harris during the competition.

The Policing Board settled the case and Kerr

moved on to a senior position with the

National Crime Agency.

When Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDon-

ald, raised questions about the recent

appointment of Drew Harris as Garda Com-

missioner, she acknowledged that he “comes

to this with his own story of loss and pain

from the conﬂict in the Nor th and that cannot

be minimised”.

Her main concerns about Harris, however,

related to his role in dealing with those she

termed the victims of British State violence

in the North and in the Republic, including

the Miami Showband members, those killed

in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings of 1974

and others killed by the Glennane gang made

up of loyalists, including serving RUC and

UDR members in the 1970s.

As the key ofﬁcer in charge of the PSNI

Legacy Support Unit, set up to examine alle-

gations of collusion in scores of deaths of

nationalist and other civilians across the

island, Harris has been accused of withhold-

ing critical information, by the survivors of

these attacks and the relatives of those killed

in numerous atrocities.

In 2014, Harris was asked by lawyer, Frank

O’Donoghue QC, acting for the senior coroner

in Northern Ireland why his ofﬁce was still

refusing to release to various inquests the

Stalker and Samson reports into alleged col-

lusion by police ofﬁcers in a range of killings

across the North in the 1970s and 1980s.

Defending the decision, Harris maintained

that the documents continued to be classi-

ﬁed as “top secret” despite an order for their

disclosure upheld by the Lord Chief Justice.

O’Donoghue asked during the 2014 hearing

of the Coroners request for information on

the classiﬁed material: “If I might just say

this to you, Deputy Chief Constable, you see

at each turn, whether it be an inability to

apply resources, whether it be the failure to

re-classify material that really ought to the

re-classiﬁed, each step of the way there has

been delay occasioned by decisions that

appear to have been consciously taken by

the PSNI”.

Harris replied: “Well I don’t particularly

accept that point. We have acted in good

faith in managing very complex and dif ﬁcult,

complicated material that we have very

onerous responsibilities in respect of

handling.”

Asked why there had been no review of

the classiﬁcation in 32 years and after sev-

eral such requests by Coroners and others

in the intervening priod, Harris said:

“I will inquire into the matter as I have

said.”

Harris also landed in hot water when it

emerged that he had attended meetings of

the Northern Ireland Retired Police Ofﬁcers

Association where former RUC members

were advised on how to deal with questions

posed by the Legacy Support Unit about

their role in controversial killings.

Among the assurances given to the retired

ofﬁcers by LSU members, who included

Harris, were that:

“Legacy is one of the deﬁning issues of

our future. We all have a stake in this. We

are all proud of our service in the RUC. The

PSNI is determined to play our part in the

defence of the RUC”.

Harris went on to assert that: “We don’t

dissociate ourselves from what happened in

the past. I have great pride in my RUC

service”.

These comments were subsequently

released to the Senior Coroner as part of his

investigation into delays in the disclosure

of relevant information to inquests. The long

delayed inquests involve cases in which

Sampson and Stalker uncovered evidence of

police, particularly RUC Special Branch and

MI5, collusion in the killing of Nationalists

and Republicans, including IRA members and

civilians.

The transcripts above were discussed at

a seminar entitled

‘Transitional Justice in the

Context of European Convention obligations:

Article 2 and the Package of Measures’

in a

paper delivered by Niall Murphy of Belfast

ﬁrm KRW La LLP in November 2014 in the

Ulster Hall, Belfast.

no room for MI5 any more

more room there

Will Kerr, Assistant Chief Constable

4 6

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