Opinion

I don’t begrudge Pat Finucane’s family a public inquiry, but other families feel left behind

Hundreds of still alive victims and thousands from the families of the dead remain deprived of the truth

Pat Finucane's widow Geraldine and son John following the announcement by Northern Secretary Hilary Benn of the establishment of an independent inquiry into the murder of the Belfast solicitor, who was shot by loyalist paramilitaries at his home in 1989. Photograph: Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press
Pat Finucane's widow Geraldine and son John following the announcement by Northern Secretary Hilary Benn of the establishment of an independent inquiry into the murder of the Belfast solicitor, who was shot by loyalist paramilitaries at his home in 1989. Photograph: Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press
Alex Kane
Thu Sept 19 2024 - 06:00

Last Wednesday, in the House of Commons, Northern Secretary Hilary Benn announced there would be a public inquiry into the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989. Finucane’s son John, now the Sinn Féin MP for North Belfast, the constituency in which the family lived, welcomed the announcement. Meanwhile, Benn, having acknowledged that it was hard for anyone to understand fully the trauma of victims’ families, said, “Nothing any of us can do will bring them back. But what we can do is seek transparency for them. We must work for a better future.”

But many victims’ families will probably have experienced, yet again, that sense of trauma on Wednesday afternoon. That sense that their loved ones are not as important as others. That sense of a huge and very expensive effort to bring some sort of closure to the Finucane family, while doing nothing about their own need for closure. That sense that while some people are granted transparency, the vast majority are left to deal with the opaque.

Which is why so many victims’ families believe there is a two-tier approach to addressing this particular strand within the much broader overall issue of legacy. I don’t think most of the families still searching for truth and closure have a deep-rooted objection to this public inquiry. What they don’t understand, though, is why so much attention is focused on this one killing. Or as the daughter of a man who had been murdered by the IRA put it to me: “This is the opposite of working for a better future, because it is leaving behind our family and hundreds like us from both sides of the conflict.”

It’s thirty years since the IRA and loyalist ceasefires in August and October 1994. That was the beginning of what is now understood as the “peace process” which led us to the Belfast Agreement and what was supposed to be a new era in Northern Ireland. Yet we are still stranded in conflict stalemate rather than conflict resolution. The past remains in front of us and will continue to remain there, because hundreds of still alive victims and thousands from the families of the dead are still deprived of the truth behind the murders and empty chairs. That’s why we continue to struggle with resolution and reconciliation; neither of which is possible in the absence of truth.

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I don’t begrudge Pat Finucane’s family their public inquiry. In the 35 years since his murder in February 1989 they have been pushing for an independent inquiry into the circumstances behind the attack. In April 2003, the Stevens Report said that rogue elements within the police and army helped loyalist paramilitaries to murder Catholics in the late 1980s. A year later the Cory Report concluded that police and military intelligence knew of the plot to kill Finucane but failed to intervene.

A report by Sir Edward de Silva, published on December 12th, 2012, confirmed that agents of the state were involved in the killing but claimed there was “no overarching state conspiracy”. UK prime minister David Cameron apologised to the family in the House of Commons, acknowledging that “on the balance of probability”, an officer or officers from the RUC did propose Finucane as a target to loyalist terrorists. Finucane’s family dismissed the report as both a “sham” and a “whitewash” and continued to demand a fully independent public inquiry in pursuit of the truth.

Yet truth in these circumstances is a complicated thing. Because truth requires the removal of layers of veils, redactions, secrecies and myths. That is always the case when societies try to move from conflict, to ceasefire, to post-conflict reform and, finally, to the new era. It was always going to be a long journey. Some even talked of it taking maybe three generations before we saw the demonstrable evidence of the new era in Northern Ireland.

Another complicating factor in the peace process is that there is never going to be a meeting of minds on the constitutional future. Unionists still want the union and nationalists still want Irish unity. In the absence of that meeting of minds there is always going to be difficulty when it comes to truth and reconciliation. Which is why I usually describe the post-1998 status quo as a conflict stalemate: we have exhausted the terrorism options, but have failed to deliver a genuinely coming together alternative. But truth – in the unvarnished sense of all sides taking responsibility, admitting and explaining what they did and then co-operating to build new relationships – looks increasingly impossible in the absence of an agreed future for Northern Ireland.

So I despair for those who feel both abandoned and constantly trampled upon. Whether the entire truth will ever be forthcoming is an open question (the state and terrorists are fond of keeping their own secrets), but we clearly need a damn sight more truth than we have had over the last 30 years.

I don’t think we’re in the right place for a truth and reconciliation commission (because we’re not reconciled on a jointly agreed future); but we do need a process in which all sides, including the governments, are questioned on their motives and tactics. I don’t think there will ever be full closure for victims and their families. So the least we can offer them is an explanation (not a justification) of what happened and the peace of mind that it will never be allowed to happen again.

Because when there is no truth there can be no trust: and without trust it is impossible to build stable structures of either government or reconciliation. And as we know, or should know from Irish history, if the ongoing narrative is built upon the unaddressed past then its disgruntled shadow will continue to hover over everything – even if Northern Ireland finds itself in a united Ireland. Which is probably the hardest truth of all to deal with.

Alex Kane is a commentator based in Belfast. He was formerly director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party