IT will be an outrage if taxpayers’ money is spent on an inquiry into the vile murder of Pat Finucane. The only context in which further inquiry-style examination of this case is acceptable will be some far reaching probe into all Troubles murders.
And if anyone is going to claim that all of the almost 4,000 people killed were equal victims, then such a probe will have to verify that stance by comprehensively examining the backgrounds of those who were killed.
That would go some way to sorting those utterly innocent victims of the Troubles, such as Protestants blown up attending a Remembrance Service or Catholics killed by a bullet to the back of the head because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, from those whose background was more murky, from those who were themselves serial murderers, and so on.
Such an inquiry would take decades and cost billions. It would be an almost impossible undertaking, but it is the only acceptable alternative to murders such as that of Mr Finucane being viewed in isolation.
The IRA murdered almost 2,000 people and destroyed the lives of thousands more. Now Britain is assisting in retrospectively legitimising those murders.
A restrained anti-terror campaign is distorted and depicted as the response of a gangster state.
Every republican killer knows that this is a lie. They know that because they would have been long dead otherwise, and their associates would have been dead, and those who followed them would have been dead.
In truth, these murdering thugs were repeatedly freed by civilised British courts, and some even won damages.
A British prime minister must consider the possible insult to the many dead before he spends Westminster time talking about one murder victim.
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