STINGING Unionist response to Chris Patten's reforms aimed at making the Royal Ulster Constabulary more reflective of the community it serves is predictable.

But the reaction of Unionist leader and Northern Ireland's First Minister, David Trimble, is also dangerous as it jeopardises a peace process already hanging by a thread.

He calls the Patten proposals to change the force's name and badge and to remove the Union flag from outside police stations - so that it may become more acceptable to the minority Catholic community - a gratuitous insult to the memory of more than 300 officers who have been murdered.

But if the moves were looked at objectively, and compared to the reforms that have taken place in the armed forces, when proud and famous regiments have been merged and even had their names and symbols expunged without insult being perceived towards the thousands who have died in their service, then Mr Patten's reforms might be seen for what they are - moves to modernise, improve and, above all, de-politicise the RUC.

All of this is necessary for the advance of the peace process.

And Mr Trimble and the hard-line loyalists today venting their anger and pitching the quest for a political settlement in Ulster towards the edge of the abyss - as they well know - seem to forget that this review of the RUC is a key element in the Good Friday agreement to which the Unionists were signatories.

But, as ever, the hidebound loyalist attitude to reform is one that prefers the status quo that reflects and institutionalises the loyalist-Protestant dominance in the province. It was this bigotry-fuelled backwardness that 30 years ago blocked nationalist-Catholic demands for greater civil rights in housing, employment and, indeed, in citizenship itself.

And, with its almost wholly Protestant make-up, the RUC was - and is - perceived by the minority community as an arm of a biased system that denied them these rights.

That denial led to the bloody violence of the last three decades.

Because of this, change is long overdue - above all, Mr Patten's aim to recruit far more Catholic officers - and loyalist sentiment over the force's name, oaths and badges cannot contradict the basic truth that, for progress to be made in Ulster, the past and its old prejudices have to be forgotten.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.