Ex-Labour MP Kate Hoey on Pat Finucane: Party must not side with those who want to rewrite Troubles history

She was speaking after Labour’s NI spokeswoman Louise Haigh sent an open letter yesterday to Boris Johnson, urging him to set up a full public inquiry into the 1989 murder of Pat Finucane.

Whilst Ms Haigh said this simply reflects long-standing party policy, her intervention now adds pressure on the government as it gets set to decide by the end of November on whether to have an inquiry.

Yesterday in the News Letter, former detective Alan Mains had wondered whether Ms Haigh was going to be similarly supportive towards the families of thousands of other murder victims, who expect no public inquiry and whose deaths remain unsolved.

CLICK HERE: Ex-top RUC man: Will Labour back public inquiries for other families – not just the Finucanes?

Mrs Hoey – now a baroness after entering the Lords this month – was originally from Newtownabbey and had been Labour MP for Vauxhall for 30 years.

However, she currently sits in the Lords as a non-party affiliated peer.

She told the News Letter: “Finucane was murdered, and no matter what he did and was, he should not have been.

“But there were also many innocent people murdered and their murderers never held to account.

“Louise Haigh would be better supporting calls for an inquiry into the degree of protection given to terrorist leaders from prosecution and the extent of ‘dirty deals’ made to deny victims justice by a previous Labour Prime Minister.

“Labour should be asking why there is continued harassment of members of the armed forces and the RUC who were trying to protect people in Northern Ireland and who paid a heavy cost in terms of the lives and limbs of friends and colleagues.

“The Shadow Secretary of State [Haigh] should not be aligning with those who wish to rewrite the history of the Troubles.”

According to the book Lost Lives, Pat Finucane was the 3,012th person killed during the Troubles.

In 2003, a report into the killing by Sir John Stevens (an ex-police chief constable) found there had been loyalist/security force collusion, that the murder had been preventable, that the suspects could have been apprehended early on, and that “I found absolutely no evidence linking Mr Finucane with any terrorist organisation”.

In 2004, another report, this time by Canadian judge Peter Cory, was published.

It found “strong evidence that collusive acts were committed” and called for a public inquiry.

A loyalist, Ken Barrett, pleaded guilty to the murder and was jailed in 2004.

This did not quieten calls for a full public inquiry; in 2012 another report was published into the killing by UK barrister Desmond de Silva, which found state agents were involved but that there was no “over-arching state conspiracy to murder Patrick Finucane”.

It was also noted that the Finucane family did not wish to participate in the de Silva Report, because they held out hope of such an inquiry (which would hold open hearings and be able to force witnesses to divulge evidence).

FINUCANE ‘WAS IN THE IRA’ CLAIMED INFORMER:

Pat Finucane had a brother, John, who died in a car crash in 1972.

He had been a “section leader” in F–Company, part of the IRA’s Belfast command.

Another brother, Dermot Finucane, was arrested alongside Bobby Storey in 1981 after a chase in Belfast, minutes after a gun attack on soldiers.

He was given an 18-year jail term for possession after weapons were found in the car (a charge of attempting to kill was dropped due to insufficient ballistic evidence).

He was one of the inmates who escaped during the mass IRA breakout of 1983.

He went on to argue in a court in the Republic that he should not be returned to Northern Ireland because he was at risk of ill-treatment from prison guards. As such, he walked free in 1990.

Yet another brother, Seamus Finucane, was arrested in 1976 alongside Bobby Sands (who was then leader of the IRA’s Twinbrook unit).

They were caught in a firefight with police and army following the bombing of a furniture shop. He was also the boyfriend of Mairead Farrell, an IRA bomber killed in 1988.

Sean O’Callaghan, a high-ranking informer in the IRA, has stated that he knew Pat Finucane “reasonably well”.

He claimed to have attended an IRA finance meeting with him present in 1980.

He said the solicitor “was not the blameless, innocent ‘human rights’ lawyer beloved of nationalist Ireland and the quasi-liberal chattering classes in the United Kingdom”.

He dubbed him “an effective agent for the IRA” who had been “wrapped in a halo” after his killing.

Mr O’Callaghan went on to write in the Daily Telegraph: “This was a war in all but name; often a secret, squalid war against a ferocious enemy that gleefully exploited every inevitable difficulty faced by democratic states in such bizarre and legally-clouded circumstances.

“How clever to be so wise, so lofty, when the great majority of the security forces carried out extraordinarily courageous work in the most dangerous of circumstances and, lest we forget, died in their hundreds to make these islands a safer and better place for all of us...

“How Pat Finucane would laugh at his continuing effectiveness.”

READ MORE FROM THE NEWS LETTER:

CLICK HERE: Night Jeremy Corbyn stood in honour of dead IRA terrorists

CLICK HERE: Widow of Stephen Carroll speaks out after Channel 4 News gives platform to his killer

CLICK HERE: NI motorists warned about travelling south of border due to hundreds of checkpoints

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