Inside the R.U.C.

Police in divided societies have a paradoxical role. They continue to operate benignly in discharging routine police duties; at the same time they are forced to function as a militarized, repressive force to contain political violence. In Northern Ireland, controversy over policing is widespread. Policemen and women themselves recognize how their two roles often conflict. In this innovative study, based on Kathleen Magee's extensive interviews and research with an RUC unit, John Brewer explores the effects which "the troubles" have on routine policing and assesses how professional and modern a force the RUC is. In the process he gives an account of policing in Northern Ireland as it is perceived by those who carry it out, exploring in particular the views of those at the bottom of the police bureaucracy. The divisions in Northern Ireland have generated a large volume of sociological literature. Police studies are an important and growing field in British sociology and there is a considerable body of ethnographic research into routine policing in peaceful, undivided communities.