Ruth Dudley Edwards: Calling Pat Finucane a human rights lawyer is an insult to decent lawyers slaughtered by the IRA
This month marked the 50th anniversary of the murders by the IRA of two fine men who represented people across the religious and political divide.
Magistrate Martin McBirney — chairman of the Northern Ireland Society of Labour Lawyers, who as a barrister appeared for civil rights activists — and Judge Rory Conaghan — whose decisions on actions against the British Army and the RUC in the words of the Irish Times, “restored the confidence of many members of the minority in the judicial processes in Northern Ireland” — were shot dead the same day at breakfast time.
McBirney’s young daughter saw his death.
That fine poet Michael Longley wrote of them later: “Both men were liberals, a good advertisement for the law. The IRA claimed they had been killed for ‘collaborating with the British war machine’.”
In 1989 IRA facilitator Pat Finucane was killed — just as wrongly — for collaborating with the IRA, but while the state long ago forgot about decent lawyers like McBirney and Conaghan, it has been bullied into pouring many many millions into pointless and unjustified investigations into Finucane’s killing because of increasingly wild accusations of state involvement which have been back by guilty English liberals.
My column last week suggesting to Secretary of State Hilary Benn that he should not have said Pat Finucane — murdered in 1989 in front of his family — was a “human rights” lawyer, pleased quite a few readers, but understandably incensed some others.
Some were very keen on lawfare — which republicans have been waging enthusiastically and unscrupulously since they mostly had to give up physical violence — but didn’t realise that — so far at least — dead people can’t sue: “Maybe @madden_finucane [the firm of which Finucane was a co-founder] should teach Ruth a wee lesson”, was one; “I hope John sues you bitter hag your a turncoat traitor” was another.
(Actually solicitor John Finucane had a go at taking me to court for suggesting he was an apologist for the IRA, but after the history of the party that he has joined, Sinn Fein, was published, I have not heard from his lawyers again).
There were others who had fallen for the claim that Pat Finucane represented people from all traditions. There may be exceptions, but the vast majority of his clientele were republicans who hated the state.
I always thought you a principled politician, Secretary of State, but you have gone public with an untruth presumably composed by appeasers or ignoramuses in the Northern Ireland Office.
Has anyone shown you this, from Sean O’Callaghan — the unpaid informer for the Irish state the veracity of whose account of how he saved the lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales was confirmed by Taoiseach Garrett Fitzgerald. “Pat Finucane was first and foremost an IRA volunteer, and he exploited his position ruthlessly to wage his war on the state.”
When officials tell you O’Callaghan was dodgy, point out that people who chose to attend his memorial service included defenders of the state like the Marquess of Salisbury and Secretary of State Ben Wallace and unionist leaders like Arlene Foster and David Trimble.
Have you been shown a BBC report (click here), from the widely respected one-time RUC Chief Constable Sir John Hermon, in which he said in 1999: "Pat Finucane was associated with the IRA and he used his position as a lawyer to act as a contact between suspects in custody and republicans on the outside."
To call terrorist-supporting Pat Finucane a human rights lawyer is an insult to the memory of decent lawyers slaughtered by the IRA.