Finucane inquiry will raise tough questions for British intelligence
Finucane family press conference, 12 September 2024 (Youtube/Madden & Finucane Solicitors).
In May 1984, an English policeman, John Stalker, was appointed to investigate a series of police shootings in Northern Ireland. During a court hearing in Belfast, he spoke to a survivor of one of the shootings, Martin McCauley, and his lawyer. According to Stalker, he was rebuked by a sergeant in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) who witnessed the exchange.
The solicitor is an IRA man - any man who represents IRA men is worse than an IRA man. His brother is an IRA man and I have to say that I believe a senior policeman of your rank should not be seen speaking to the likes of either of them. My colleagues have asked me to tell you that you have embarrassed all of us in doing that. I will be reporting this conversation and what you have done to my superiors.1
Similar opinions filtered up through RUC briefings to government. In January 1989, Home Office Minister Douglas Hogg told the House of Commons that some solicitors in Northern Ireland were ‘unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA.’ SDLP MP Seamus Mallon immediately warned that ‘there are lawyers walking the streets or driving on the roads of the north of Ireland who have become targets for assassins' bullets as a result of the statement that has been made tonight.’2
It took less than a month for Mallon to be proved right. The target was the same lawyer Stalker had spoken to several years earlier. Pat Finucane was shot dead by gunmen who broke into his house on 13 February 1989.3
Over the years, it would become clear that a number of state agents were involved in the killing. According to the De Silva Review, gunman Ken Barrett was only recruited by the RUC after the killing, but a gun was provided William Stobie, who was a police informant at the time. An army agent, Brian Nelson, provided intelligence used in the attack.4
The Finucane case was one of a number examined by Canadian judge Peter Cory at the request of the British and Irish Governments. His report concluded that a full inquiry should be held.
Ironically, the most immediate effect of this recommendation was a fundamental alteration in the institution of the public inquiry in British law, when the Blair government legislated to give ministers the power to restrict publication of certain evidence. As a result, the Government was unable to agree terms for an inquiry with the Finucane family.5
In 2012, the Cameron government appointed an eminent lawyer, Sir Desmond de Silva QC, to review the evidence. His report is the most comprehensive account of the case, and an important document for anyone interested in the intelligence history of the Troubles. However, the courts have since ruled that is does not amount to an investigation of the kind required by Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Britain’s incoming Labour government accordingly announced a public inquiry last week. If the new process is to get to the bottom of the case, one if its key tasks will be to resolve some of the contradictions in the evidence laid out by the De Silva report.
One such conflict concerns the extent of MI5’s involvement in the the agent-handling operations of the Army’s Force Research Unit (FRU). According to De Silva:
Whilst there is no dispute about the overall framework governing relations between the FRU and the Security Service, there is no consensus between the two organisations as to the Service’s awareness of, and responsibility for, the handling of Brian Nelson.6
The FRU’s commanding officer told a police investigation that there was ‘close monitoring and support of our work by the Security Service.’7 This officer, given the cryptonym A/05 by De Silva, was probably Gordon Kerr, the subject of a profile by Neil McKay in yesterday’s Herald.8
The top MI5 officer in Northern Ireland, probably the late John Deverell, told police that A/05 ‘was not a man who sought our advice (or that of anyone else).’9 Significantly, two RUC officers interviewed by De Silva backed the FRU, suggesting that MI5 officers would have been in a position to monitor Nelson’s handling.10
This was probably a factor in De Silva’s conclusion that while there was no evidence of collusion by MI5, ‘the Service failed to carry out its advisory and co-ordinating duties adequately in the Nelson case.’11
Recent developments in relation to another FRU agent support the contention that MI5 underplayed its involvement with the unit. Until recently, MI5 claimed not to have been aware that the Army was running Freddie Scappaticci, codenamed ‘stakeknife’, a member of the IRA’s internal security unit, the so-called ‘nutting squad.’
Only last month did it emerge that the service had disclosed new files to police which, according to the BBC, ‘are expected to reveal that MI5’s knowledge of Scappattici went back to the late 1970s when he was first recruited by the Army's clandestine Force Reaction Unit (FRU).’12
Little has been publicly revealed about the nature of these files, so it is not clear whether they could also shed light on Brian Nelson and hence the Finucane case. That is another one of the many questions the inquiry will have to answer.
John Stalker, Stalker: Ireland, “Shoot to Kill’ and the ‘Affair’, Penguin Books, 1998, p.49.
Hogg compromised over RUC briefing, BBC News, 17 April 2003.
Geoffrey Bindman, Thirty-one years ago: 1989, Lawyers Under Pressure in Northern Ireland, Socialist Lawyer #86 2020-3, pp.44-46, archived at ResearchGate.
Sir Desmond De Silva QC, The Report of the Patrick Finucane Review, December 2012, p.275.
Clare Dyer, Finucane widow urges judges to shun inquiry, The Guardian, 14 April 2005.
Sir Desmond De Silva QC, The Report of the Patrick Finucane Review, December 2012, p.222.
Sir Desmond De Silva QC, The Report of the Patrick Finucane Review, December 2012, p.222
Neil Mackay, Scottish spymaster at heart of Ulster dirty war may be in spotlight, The Herald, 13 September 2024.
Sir Desmond De Silva QC, The Report of the Patrick Finucane Review, December 2012, p.224.
Sir Desmond De Silva QC, The Report of the Patrick Finucane Review, December 2012, p.223.
Sir Desmond De Silva QC, The Report of the Patrick Finucane Review, December 2012, p.230.
Julian O'Neill, MI5 finds new documents on Army's IRA spy, BBC News, 7 August 2004.