Family may never get truth as no Government in London, whatever its hue, wants to open this can of worms
HAD a solicitor in London, Edinburgh or Cardiff been murdered in such circumstances, it is impossible to believe that there would not have been a public inquiry.
But Northern Ireland is a place apart for the British Government. Even after 31 years, a solicitor shot dead in his home, with what a former Prime Minister called “shocking levels of state collusion”, doesn’t merit the only mechanism his family believe will deliver truth and transparency.
Pat Finucane’s murder was horrific. Two gunmen burst into the family home as they were gathered around the kitchen table for Sunday dinner.
Big brother Michael tightly hugged his younger siblings John and Catherine as the shots rang out. Their father died with a dinner fork still in his hand.
Such brutality was by no means unique during the Troubles. Children witnessed similiarly appalling scenes in shootings and bombings carried out by the IRA and others over a quarter of a century.
But seeking a public inquiry into the Finucane murder is not about creating a hierarchy of victims. We expect paramilitaries to act outside the law, and to carry out heinous crimes. We do not expect the state to be involved in the murder of its own citizens. The evidence that we have so far is that, at every twist and turn, police or British Army agents were involved in the killing of Pat Finucane.
Brian Nelson who supplied the intelligence, William Stobie who supplied the gun, Ken Barrett who was part of the murder team — they all worked for a wing of the security services.
Weeks before Finucane was shot dead Home Office minister Douglas Hogg told the House of Commons that some solicitors in Northern Ireland were “unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA”.
On a trip to Northern Ireland he had been briefed about “rogue” lawyers by the then RUC Chief Constable Sir John Hermon. Ken Barrett was taped
by BBC Panorama saying: “The peelers wanted him whacked. We whacked him and that’s the end of the story as far as I’m concerned.”
Barrett claimed that an officer had said of Finucane: “He’s a thorn in everyone’s side, he’ll have to go.”
It is not that Finucane was a lawyer, a Catholic or a nationalist that makes his case special.
It is that there is a mountain of evidence suggesting that something very unsavoury transpired behind the scenes in the corridors of power in the lead-up to, and following, his murder.
Labour Governments have refused the family a public inquiry, so it was always highly unlikely that a Tory administration led by Boris Johnson would grant one. Any other decision would have been deeply unpopular with his backbenchers.
Geraldine Finucane last night said that when she first raised collusion allegations in 1989 she was regarded as a “poor wee widow woman clutching at straws”.
Nobody thinks that now, but the family certainly have a massive job of work ahead if they are to secure a public inquiry anytime soon.
‘Such brutality was not unique during Troubles’