Following the 1979 UK General Election, the Labour government of James Callaghan was brought down (by the SDLP) and an explicitly right-wing administration replaced it – headed by Margaret Thatcher. There’s no doubt that she had a clear economic agenda at mind upon taking office, but she also sought to bring her own stamp to the situation in the North of Ireland. Prior to her election, there had been a more open form of confrontation between the British Army and the IRA, with regular gun battles in Belfast and Derry. However, Mrs. Thatcher recognised the potential of another form of warfare – covert operations and counter-insurgency barbarism: using SAS hit-squads to cleanse the “enemy within”.
Indeed, the 1980s saw a marked change in how nationalists were targeted, with a new and darker concentration being placed on intelligence-gathering activities and the use of British mercenaries in the form of Loyalist juntas. The entire justice system had been politicised even worse than what existed previously in the Orange State, with Diplock courts jailing people on perjured evidence and forced confessions beaten out of people following periods of routine torture. Super-Grass trials allowed for paid state agents to have people locked up based on dubious allegations, financials rewards and blackmail. Judges, like Lord Maurice Gibson, both commended and acquitted security service personnel for shooting dead unarmed nationalists and even Catholic children, ensuring no accountability even to basic British law therein. It was an absolutely awful environment to say the least; but out of such dire circumstances emerged many working class heroes.
I’ve always admired brave men and women who make difficult and painful choices when easier alternatives are at hand. The oppression of the nationalist people in the Orange Statelet motivated some to educate themselves in ways which could be deployed to expose the situation for what it was – a jingoistic nightmare. One such man was Patrick Finucane, the renown human rights advocate. Few would disagree that Mr Finucane was one of the finest lawyers his country ever produced and the greatest Minister of Justice which Ireland never had. Born in the working class streets of Belfast as the eldest child in a family of eight children, Pat knew what toil and suffering the ordinary nationalist people were subjected to following the mutilation of their country. Having studied law at Trinity College Dublin, he went on to practice in Belfast, gaining a reputation for being one of the fairest and most brilliantly articulate Solicitors in the North.
Pat was unique in that he used his legal brain and oratory to represent both republican and loyalist clients. He had won several cases against the discriminatory practices of Belfast City Council, who sought to ostracise republicans and their electorate throughout the 1980’s. Always calm and measured, people spoke of how he could hold a court in the palm of his hand. Working long hours and balancing his vocation with family life, he was the quintessential Irish intellectual – grounded in life with firm values and dedication.
Following a number of high profile cases in which he represented republicans against Orange State injustice, a Minister in the Thatcher government, Douglas Hogg QC, stated under parliamentary privilege that “some Solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA.” Refusing to withdraw his remarks, which were a clear reference to Pat, Hogg remained adamant over the government’s position even when warned that his outburst could lead to bloodshed against legal professionals. No sooner than a few weeks later, masked gunmen attacked the Finucane family home, shooting Pat fourteen times in front of his wife and young children after Sunday mass; turning the security service guns on Mrs. Finucane too before fleeing the scene uninhibited. Despite being on a Loyalist hit-list, no protection was offered to him or his family; leaving them as ‘sitting ducks’ in their North Belfast home.
At the time and for many years following the murder, the U.K. Government stringently denied any involvement whatsoever, as though Hogg’s sentiments came out of nowhere. However, a former RUC Special Branch Agent, Ken Barret, has admitted that he was a part of the Crown murder gang which slaughtered Mr. Finucane and brutalised his family at the behest of his handlers. Some of the other British mercenaries and proxy agents involved are now dead, which in itself is telling. For the lives of working class Loyalists were expendable in Britain’s dirty war.
In Japan, there was always a tradition where a junior man would accept responsibility and fall on his own sword to save the reputation of his boss. Likewise, nobody really believes that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy and look what happened to him. In 2001, the Labour government of Tony Blair conceded to holding a full public inquiry into the assassination, with the knowledge that there was reasonable grounds to believe an overarching state conspiracy existed in the murder. To date, this has been reneged on, with the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, claiming that “people in these offices (Whitehall) won’t let us hold it.” One of his most senior advisers confided in the media that the collusion involved in the Finucane murder was more sinister than any of the atrocities associated with the war in Iraq.
It’s highly questionable whether the party which was in power during the murder should be allowed to decide the basis for any inquiry into the assassination it saw fit to perpetrate. The De Silva report, which was a superficial review into the murky underworld workings of the British establishment by a key pillar of the establishment, is nothing short of a white-wash, confined to placing all the blame on renegade security service personnel and the farcical conclusion of just a few bad apples. No government Ministers were questioned; no arrests or trials have been instigated and it offers no clarity by way of reconciling facts on who wanted Finucane killed and why. I thought it at the time as being like sending a rabbit to fetch a lettuce.
But let’s examine that point abstractly – Who exactly would want Patrick Finucane dead? And why? What is at risk of the truth being revealed?
Briefly, I invite you to ponder;
– Was there any body within Loyalism, as alleged by some journalists, led by the “aristocrats of Ulster” who were deciding upon targets as a means of “putting the fear of God” into the nationalist population?
– Was this killing and that of Rosemary Nelson, being used as a deterrent to scare solicitors away from representing republicans or nationalists altogether?
– If a confession to the murder has been made, why have no arrests or trials taken place? Surely Mr. Barret can confirm who supplied the guns and information to facilitate the slaughter.
– And, who exactly, in London or Ulster, is being protected by this opaque and sinister process?
These are startling issues, to learn that a British government that is signed up to both the UN and European Human Rights protocol is, on the other hand, running Latin-American style fascist deaths quads in “their own jurisdiction”. To learn that Irish people, including their legal representatives, were viewed as vermin in the system of British-state vigilante “justice”. But the most pertinent thing of all is why they don’t want the full facts to be revealed – the least of their worries would be embarrassment or compensation. So, perhaps the real motivation for concealment is that an inquiry into Pat’s death would establish a clear precedent, opening the proverbial “can of worms” for other victims to seek answers. And of course, many ordinary people would then seriously question whether they want to be a part of a state which perpetrates such blood-spattered cleansing against other human beings. But one thing’s for sure, the search for truth and justice for the Finucane family will be one very bright light into the sheer darkness which existed here.
“Some of the other British mercenaries and proxy agents involved are now dead, which in itself is telling. For the lives of working class Loyalists were expendable in Britain’s dirty war.”
Most died conveniently in the loyalist feuds around the time of the ceasefires.
Could these feuds have been orchestrated by agents to tie off loose ends and remove the first point of contacts for security force instructions as I have long believed?
It seemed incredible to me at the time that so many of those directly involved in Pats murder were being bumped off in loyalist feuding leaving only a lesser participant alive in that of Mark Haddock.
I just don’t believe in co-incidence.
Judging by the standard of solicitor produced these days I would say the British state scaring of the nationalist community has worked a treat. I have heard of solicitors interrogating their client during police interrogations, i.e “are you sure it wasn’t you”?
Btw, the dogs on the street know how much influence the spooks had over unionist terror gangs. Billy Wright etc were there to do a job for them. Once they went beyond their usefulness or didn’t toe the line they were dealt with, one way or another.
I don’t know WT, I think the legal pressure and persistence of it has got them rattled.
We must escalate things as far as street protests if necessary in my view.
The nationalist electorate woke up ok, but will they be able to mollify it or is the will there to make real change happen?
There is no future for the north while this cover up remains in place.