Big Iron

national | crime and justice | opinion/analysis Friday February 02, 2007 19:35 by Sean Crudden - impero sean.crudden at iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 087 9739945

The State Police

When Louis XIV made the statement "L’etat c’est moi" (I am the state) he diminished himself because whatever way you think about it the state is a smaller and less important thing than any one of its individual citizens.

Perhaps no-one wants to be a collaborator or conspirator - almost certainly nobody want to be seen as a collaborator or conspirator. And I think that those who cosy up to the police are courting trouble further down the road not only for themselves but for the police as well.

People have a subliminal feeling that the police are aggressive and supremacist.

Perhaps the police are encouraged to a loud, braggart, and overblown posturing in front of the public?

For example a summary of the policing plan 2007 came through my letter-box (and probably everyone else’s) this bright sunny morning from An Garda Siochana. First of nine commitments outlined in the leaflet was

"Providing a secure democracy."

So I faced the day today a winner twice over. The weather is lovely and the guards will be providing me with a secure democracy.

Earlier in the leaflet in a section headed "Strategic Objectives" number 1 was

"To maintain national and international security."

I always have an uneasy feeling about those who are smug and satisfied with the status quo. In any forward looking organisation or community there is an important place for subversion and alternative thinking.

Statism is the province of dictatorial, small-minded monopolists who think that they are the state or that they somehow have a kind of a divine right to office in this humble land. And I need not harp on about "security" with its connotations of censorship and social control.