Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Dublin’s fears after Tory MP linked Ulster lawyers to IRA
Corbyn ‘not helpful’ on prisoners Note sent weeks before Pat killing
FORMER SDLP leader John Hume felt Jeremy Corbyn’s intervention was “not helpful” to the Birmingham Six, Irish state papers reveal.
The documents, from 1989, also detail the current Labour chief’s campaign to free the Guildford Four.
A letter to Dermot Gallagher, a representative of the Anglo Irish Division of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, from David Donoghue, press and information officer of the Irish Embassy in London, detailed a conversation with Mr Hume, then MP for Foyle.
It said: “On the Birmingham Six case, Hume commented that the involvement of people like Jeremy Corbyn in the B6 Campaign [he was referring to a press conference held by
Corbyn and Gerard Conlon yesterday] was not helpful.
“The Birmingham Six have no chance of release, he remarked, unless like the G4, they get church leaders and other establishment figures behind them.”
The letter goes on to detail Mr Hume “remains absolutely certain” that John Walker, one of the Birmingham Six, is innocent.
Mr Corbyn, MP for Islington North, campaigned for both groups in parliament and visited the prisoners, who were wrongfully convicted of IRA attacks in Britain and later had their convictions quashed.
Another letter found in the papers, released this month under the 30-year rule, said Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four, had been comforted by the help of Mr Corbyn.
THE Irish government raised concerns over claims made by a British minister that some lawyers in Northern Ireland were “unduly sympathetic to the IRA” weeks before Pat Finucane was killed.
An official note, released under the 30-year rule, revealed then Taoiseach Charles Haughey and members of his cabinet were worried about the implications of Douglas Hogg’s remarks.
Mr Finucane was shot dead in front of his wife and children by UFF gunmen in 1989.
After the murder, Irish ambassador Andrew O’rourke asked UK Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler to issue a statement “correcting any impression” the British Government considered lawyers defending paramilitaries as acting on anything other than a professional basis.
In a meeting at the London Embassy, a journalist was told by senior staff inside Number 10 that there would be no retraction of Mr Hogg’s remarks.
It also emerged Mr Hogg believed he was safe because he “acted on official advice”.
Mr Hogg told journalist Des Mccartan he had contemplated naming names but had decided not to as this would be an abuse of parliamentary privilege. Mr Mccartan believed the advice came from the RUC through the British state.
Michael Cowan, of the National Lawyers Guild, wrote to then Prime M i n i s t e r Margaret
Thatcher in 1989, stating the body deplored the “callous and inhuman” conduct of Mr Hogg, which he claimed encouraged murderous attacks.
He said: “We are appalled at the indifference displayed by Northern Ireland Secretary Tom King in defending Mr Hogg’s refusal to retract his libel.”
The letter called for the resignation of Mr Hogg and Mr King.
Days after Mr Finucane’s murder, Brendan Mcmahon from the Anglo/ Irish division met solicitor Paddy Mcgrory.
Mr Mcgrory said the RUC were convinced the threat to him, Oliver Kelly and Pascal O’hare was “very real”.
Mr Mcmahon went on to say: “He showed me a copy of a message received from the UFF naming all three of them using a code to verify its authenticity.”