I don’t recall what I was doing on 12th February 1989. It was a Sunday, though, and we were living in Johannesburg so it was likely spent over a monster roast lunch or a braai. In the febrile climate of rising crime, violence, security and national angst, we had decided we were going to leave the country within months and return to Britain – not least for our own safety.
Then they murdered Pat Finucane.
Gunmen smashed in Finucane’s front door, burst in and shot him at the dinner table in front of his wife and children. Fourteen times. Mostly in the face.
In South Africa, crimes like this were increasingly commonplace. You carried a gun at all times. You arrived at work or at a friend’s house for Sunday lunch, and reflexively did a 360 degree visual check of the street before letting family out of the locked car and entering the office or friend’s house. It was so routine it was barely noticeable any more.
Ironically, the story barely made the news in South Africa, because it wasn’t in Jo’burg or Sandton, but six and a half thousand miles away, in the UK… nominally in the UK… Belfast in Ireland.
The publication of the 800-page da Silva Review on December 12th 2012 into Finucane’s murder was not well-received by Finucane’s widow Geraldine and their three grown children. Mrs Finucane said it simply ‘is not the truth’. Tellingly, the use of arcane language has been deployed in the commentary of pundits and politicos, in a clumsy attempt at sleight of hand. How disheartening it is for people of Irish descent who try and embrace Britain as their adopted country. Because suddenly Britain looks very unlike the fair, tolerant and safe place millions of immigrants and aspirant citizens want to call home.
Among salient points from the report are… Without the army and the RUC / Special Branch the murder wouldn’t have happened… Two of the killer team were agents (special branch)… a relentless attempt [on behalf of the British state] to defeat the ends of justice.
Sir Desmond da Silva QC goes on to say: “…despite the different strands of involvement by elements of the state, I am satisfied that they were not linked to an over-arching state conspiracy to murder Patrick Finucane.” But what is meant by the term over-arching?
This means there was never an official sanction; never anything in writing; or at best, a failure of command by which RUC, British military and civil commanders were ever to be discovered to be responsible. This is not an acquittal.
But State-sponsored murder belongs in the realms of 007, the Soviet Union and hard-line Islamic states, not here surely.
Northern Ireland might well become the last outpost of an insupportable and anachronistic British Empire many painful and costly years from now – after occupied Ireland goes the same way as India, Pakistan, Palestine, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the USA (just to name the major ones) and comes under the rule of Dublin. And at that time Unionists and Republicans will have no option but to co-exist or mutually self-destruct. But as of today, that business of genuinely ‘drawing a line’ and saying ‘no more violence, hatred and murder’ will have been deferred yet again by who-knows-how-many years.
The Finucanes will not let this matter rest. Twenty three years after Pat Finucane’s slaughter if the widow and descendants have not dropped the pursuit of justice now, they never will – especially after having been promised a public inquiry by a previous UK premier in the shape of Tony Blair. And Britain can likely not afford another investigation, despite Amnesty International and the US House of Representatives pushing for it.
Finally, in light of the world having witnessed the entire British establishment turning cartwheels in a hair shirt because a bunch of D-list celebrities had voicemails swiped by 5th-rate hacks (the Leveson Inquiry), what value do we assume Britain gives human life or even statesmanship? And how can members of such an Establishment dare hope to be trusted with regulating a press that has been free since the end of the 17th century.
The British government have taken a slap in the face from this affair. They could have turned the other cheek and delivered a public inquiry, but instead they showed themselves to be simply two-faced.
