Geraldine Finucane
Clara Reilly of Relatives for Justice
On Wednesday
the de Silva review into the papers linked to the killing in 1989 of Belfast
Today a mural to Pat Finucane was unveiled in west Belfast by Pat's wife Geraldine. Pat was killed by a unionist death
squad in collusion with British state forces. I was asked to speak.
"I want to
thank Geraldine, John, Michael and Katherine and the entire Finucane family for
the invitation to speak today at the unveiling of this plaque to a very remarkable
and courageous Irishman.
Some people
measure heroes and bravery by their ability to be warriors in the physical
conflict of war. But there are also those whose courage is of a different kind,
of an extraordinary kind.
Pat was such a
person. He believed in the law. More so than the elites in the parliament in London
He came from a working class background. He and I went to the same
school, St. Finian’s on the Falls Road.
Pat went on to be a good, conscientious solicitor who worked long
difficult hours, under trying conditions, representing his clients.
He was a lawyer working within a unionist and Orange
All of these were designed to maximise the power of the state and reduce the rights of citizens. Pat worked tirelessly against this injustice. He constantly challenged the abuses of the state by seeking to use the law positively.
But this devotion to human rights, Pat’s diligence and his success,
also made him a figure of hate within the RUC and the British system. They
plotted against him.
On February 12th 1989 two masked gunmen forced their way
into the family home in North Belfast . Pat was
shot repeatedly. Geraldine was wounded in the attack.
And the RUC and the British they thought that was it. They thought they had silenced a good man, a brave man. That they could continue unimpeded in their use of agents and death squads. But they reckoned without Geraldine.
The Finucane family have been responsible for one of the most
effective and protracted justice campaigns ever mounted by a family against the
might of the British system and its apologists.
I believe that Pat would be enormously proud of Geraldine and his
family and their tenacity in the face of efforts by the British government to
silence them. He would also be immensely proud of how Geraldine reared their
two fine sons and their beautiful daughter.
The reason the British have worked so hard to avoid a public inquiry
is because this case goes to the heart of British state collusion with unionist
death squads.
The Pat Finucane case, through its disclosure of the connections between
the British government, its military and intelligence agencies, the RUC and
unionist deaths squads, exposes the use of those death squads at the highest
level of government; its involvement in the mass murder of citizens, and in the
smuggling of weapons to facilitate this.
Collusion was not just the occasional use of spies or agents by the
British operating within the IRA or loyalist paramilitary organisations.
Collusion was
a matter of institutional practise by successive British governments.
It involved the establishing of unionist
paramilitary groups; the systematic infiltration by the British of all unionist
death squads at the highest levels; controlling and directing these groups;
arming; training; and providing them with information on people to be killed.
It also involved protecting them and when occasionally they were
caught arranging for deals to minimise any court decisions.
The architect
of this policy explained it best.
Brigadier
(later General) Frank Kitson took command of the 39th Brigade, which
covered the Belfast
He argued that
all governmental structures, the judiciary, the law, the police and the media
had to become part of a co-ordinated strategy and that all government policies,
whether social, economic, cultural, infrastructural, had to be moulded to suit the
aim of defeating the enemy and suppressing citizens and our rights.
Kitson wrote:
‘The fundamental concept is the working
of the triumvirate, civil, military and police, as a joint and integrated
organisation from the highest to the lowest level of policy making, planning
and administration.’
But more significantly in light of the killing of Pat Finucane and
countless others, Kitson explained the use of death squads and the corruption
of justice: ‘Everything done by a
government and its agents in combating insurgency must be legitimate.
But this does not mean
that the government must work within exactly the same set of laws during an
emergency as existed beforehand.
The law should be used as
just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, in which case it becomes
little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the
public.’
This doesn’t
mean that all loyalists are dupes. They have their own agenda, much of it
anti-Catholic and based upon sectarian hatred or fears. But
the war aims of both were similar and so it made for an easy alliance.
British agencies helped establish the UDA
and re-organise the UVF.
New secret
organisations like the Military Reaction or Reconnaissance Force (MRF) were
established to foment sectarian violence and in 1982 the Force Research Unit
was set up within the
British Army Intelligence Corps.
One of the
first people to be recruited by FRU was loyalist Brian Nelson. He was a former
British soldier who had joined the UDA in 1972 and was convicted in 1974 of the
kidnapping and torture of a partially sighted Catholic man Gerald Higgins.
Nelson served just over 3 years in prison for this.
He was
recruited by FRU in 1983 and was told to rejoin the UDA. Two years later he was
appointed the UDA’s Intelligence Officer in its West Belfast Brigade.
Essentially his job was to gather intelligence information on potential
republican targets.
Later he
became the UDA Senior Intelligence Officer for the entire organisation. His
associates in FRU helped him to update his intelligence files.
In 1985 he was involved in the negotiation of arms from the South
African apartheid regime. In return for money, and missile parts obtained from
the huge military production plant at Shorts in East
Belfast , the apartheid regime facilitated a massive arms shipment.
FRU was kept informed of all of this. The British Secret Service was
across the detail. And in late 1987/early 88 an arms shipment arrived here consisting
of 200 AK47 automatic rifles, 90 Browning pistols, 500 fragmentation grenades,
ammunition and 12 RPG rocket launchers. The shipment was divided up between the
UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance.
The impact of this weapons shipment can be found in the statistics of sectarian
attacks and killings which occurred in subsequent years.
In the three years prior to receiving this weapons shipment the unionist
death squads had killed 34 people. In the three years after the shipment they
killed 224 and wounded countless scores more.
The dramatic rise in the number of Sinn Féin activists and family
members being killed can be traced directly to this fact and to the information
FRU and the Special Branch were passing on to their agents within the loyalist
death squads.
In the following years three Sinn Féin Councillors, 11 party
activists, and 7 family members, including brothers, sons, spouse and partners
were killed. Many others were seriously wounded.
Republican homes and Sinn Fein offices became the frequent targets of
attack by loyalist death squads.
The role of Brian Nelson and in particular
of Brigadier Gordon Kerr (Colonel J ) who ran the Force Research Unit, are particularly
important in all of this.
Pat’s death came less than four weeks after Conservative government Minister Douglas Hogg MP, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, in a Committee Stage debate on the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Bill on 17 January 1989 said:
"I have to state as a fact, but with great regret, that there are in
And after Pat’s death as more and more
information emerged we learned that Tommy Lyttle, the leader of the UDA group
that carried out the killing was a Special Branch agent;
Ken Barrett, the man who was convicted of
killing Pat Finucane was a Special Branch agent; William Stobie, the UDA man
who supplied the gun used was a Special Branch agent; and Brian Nelson who
provided the information was working for FRU.
The family demanded a full public inquiry. The
British resisted.
At Weston Park
In April 2003 John Stevens in his third
report confirmed that he had evidence that there was collusion in the killing
of Pat Finucane.
There was also a cover-up, consistent and
deeply subversive and the destruction of evidence by the British system.
In 2004 Judge Cory concluded that there
should be an inquiry into Pat’s killing.
The British moved to pass a new law – the
Inquiries Act - giving Ministers the power to block evidence.
Judge Cory accused the British of moving
the goalposts. He said: ‘It’s like
playing hockey and instead of six to each team you have one team with eight and
one with four. See how your doing for ten minutes and then in the middle of
everything you move the goalposts and you change the rules of the game.’
Lord Saville who chaired the Bloody Sunday
inquiry criticised the British government’s decision. He warned that giving a
government Minister the power to block evidence would make ‘a very serious inroad into the independence of any inquiry and is
likely to damage or destroy public confidence in the inquiry and its findings…
As
a judge, I must tell you that I would not be prepared to be appointed as a
member of an inquiry that was subject to a provision of this kind.’
Last year the family met David Cameron
after months of protracted discussions in the expectation that he was about to
provide for the type of inquiry they were demanding.
Instead he told them that he was ordering a
review of the papers in the case by Desmond de Silva QC. This was a repudiation
of the agreement between the British and Irish governments. The Irish
government should have prevented this.
The family were understandably furious by David
Cameron’s action.
· This
was not the public inquiry promised at Weston Park
· It
was and is not independent and transparent.
· It
is the British Tory government investigating the British Tory government.
· The
family have been kept in the dark since de Silva commenced his review.
The day after David Cameron rejected the
families demand the British Secretary of State, speaking in the British
Parliament, accepted the Stevens report of 8 years earlier that Pat Finucane
was killed as a result of collusion.
But what they remain desperate to avoid is for
the depth of that collusion to become public or that it was cleared at the
highest political levels, including Downing Street .
The role of the Irish government in all of
this has not been helpful, strategic or as consistent as it could be.
The British government are in breach of an
agreement with the Irish government. The Taoiseach has repeatedly said that he
wants the British to fulfil their Weston Park Commitment but he has done little
about it although I have raised this with him regularly in the Dáil.
However, apart from an occasional
conversation with David Cameron on the margins of meetings there has been no
consistent, planned strategy by the Irish government to mobilise international
and diplomatic support for this.
This is not good
enough. Whatever the outcome of
the de Silva review all of us have a duty to fully support the Finucane
family’s response to it. The family demand for a full, transparent and
accountable public inquiry is a reasonable demand.
We wish Geraldine and her children well in these difficult times. You
know you can rely on Pat’s siblings and his close colleagues, Peter and others,
who have walked with you through all the challenges on your journey in search
of justice for Pat.
You should also know that all those citizens in this country and in Britain and the USA
That’s the least we can do.
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