Even by the low standards of the so-called Troubles, the 1989 loyalist paramilitary murder of solicitor Pat Finucane in front of his wife and young family was a particularly heinous and heartless act.
His wife, Geraldine, deserves considerable credit for never giving up in the pursuit of truth. She’s a woman of remarkable tenacity. Her children, like many other child victims from our unnecessary and wasteful conflict, had their family life shattered by evil killers.
The hail of bullets fired didn’t just travel though the slain body of Mr Finucane - they travelled through time, and the pain still resonates.
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Those who pulled the trigger were but one part of this crime. The trail of culpability goes to the very top of the British securocrat hierarchy and perhaps beyond, to the very corridors of Whitehall and the political establishment.
Former UK prime minister David Cameron described it as involving ”shocking levels of collusion” and therefore, the decision by the current secretary of state, Hilary Benn, to instigate a public inquiry into the Finucane murder is correct legally, politically and morally.
Collusion between the ‘deep state’ in Britain and loyalist paramilitaries is well documented. They were involved in a joint enterprise of murder, mayhem, menace and manipulation. Theirs was a world where simply being a Catholic was a sufficient reason to have one’s life snuffed out. Their game was a campaign of terror and its purpose was to strike fear into the wider nationalist community. The brutal savagery of loyalist paramilitaries could always be counted on.
Before the whataboutery brigade start reaching for their long list of IRA atrocities, let me make it very clear: there was no life worth taking or losing during an unwarranted and unwanted conflict.
There was a clear alternative to violence and John Hume provided it.
No amount of revisionist claptrap or latter day whitewashing by apologists for paramilitarism will ever justify any of the monstrosities or violations against human life carried out in the name of Irish unity (or against it) during the recent Troubles.
Retired protagonists seeking to rewrite recent IRA history with rose tinted glasses and a grá for the whiff of cordite may eulogise away in personal narratives but they cannot deny the facts of that bloody era. These facts were bravely and accurately recorded in the tome Lost Lives, brilliantly compiled by David McKittrick, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton, David McVea and the late Seamus Kelters.
When a government decides to flush its integrity down a toilet, to go sewer swimming with paramilitary rats, the orchestrators who authorised such clandestine and murderous activities need to be held to account
Whilst it may not seem so now, but a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane may well shine a light on the nefarious actions of the ‘deep state’ which, in turn, could unearth answers for the victims and families of other atrocities committed by paramilitaries of all hues. There’s a thin line between collusion and infiltration.
When a government decides to flush its integrity down a toilet, to go sewer swimming with paramilitary rats, the orchestrators who authorised such clandestine and murderous activities need to be held to account.
These individuals abused and misused the power with which they were entrusted by the public. In doing so, they shattered confidence in the system of justice by placing themselves above the law.
If the north is to develop a more informed, reflective and cohesive post-conflict society, historical reckoning is now due for these bad state actors. A democratic society demands no less.
