Margaret Thatcher, British collusion and Pat Finucane's murder

Analysis: the solicitor's murder was one of several incidents where the British state under Thatcher was involved in collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries

By Stephen Kelly, Liverpool Hope University

The Council of Europe's decision to re-open a case concerning the 1989 murder of prominent Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane has resurrected a fiercely contested debate surrounding the extent of collusion between the British state and Loyalist paramilitaries during Margaret Thatcher's premiership. The decision to re-open Finuance’s case ensures that the body will monitor how the United Kingdom addresses "the fact there has never been an adequate investigation into the 1989 shooting".

This decision comes less than four months after the British government’s decision not to order a public enquiry into Finucane’s murder at the hands of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)/Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). Although secretary of state for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis has previously acknowledged state collusion and apologised to the Finucane family, he stipulated last November that there would be no inquiry into Finucane’s murder, pending a new review conducted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). This decision was reached despite a Supreme Court ruling that the British government’s failure to properly investigate Finucane’s murder was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In my new book, Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party and Northern Ireland, 1975-1990, I reveal the true extent of collusion between elements of the British state and Loyalist paramilitaries throughout Thatcher’s 11 years as UK prime minister.

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From RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday with Miriam, Pat Finucane's widow Geraldine and son Michael on the latest hurdles to establishing the full truth behind his killing

On February 12th 1989, Loyalist gunmen murdered Finucane in cold blood, as he sat down for dinner with his wife and children. A prominent criminal defence and civil rights Belfast solicitor, Finucane’s murder immediately sparked off accusations of collusion between elements of the British state and Loyalist paramilitaries, including baseless claims in later years that Thatcher, herself, 'ordered’ the murder of Finucane.

While Thatcher played no part in Finucane’s murder, the available evidence provides indisputable proof that elements of the British state ‘conspired to kill’ Finucane, to quote Darragh MacIntyre. A former Loyalist paramilitary, Brian Nelson, who was recruited as an agent (code name ‘Agent 6137’) by the British Army’s most secret intelligence wing – euphemistically known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) – put forward Finucane’s name as a credible target for his killers, providing them with a photograph and home address of their victim. At this time, Nelson had risen to become the head of intelligence for the UFF, the "killer" wing of the UDA. Operating at this rank, he used his position to identify targets, including Finucane, for the UDA/UFF dead squads.

Finucane was targeted for assassination because he had been investigating accusations of British state collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries in the campaign against the Provisional IRA. Over the preceding years, he had also represented many Irish Republicans, including Bobby Sands during the second Republican hunger strike of 1981. Two of Finucane’s brothers, Dermot and Seamus, were allegedly also senior members of the IRA.

From RTÉ Radio 1's This Week in 2012, how vital evidence in the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane was destroyed

Misinformation was also spread at the time by some within the British Army that Finucane, himself, was a member of the IRA. In fact, before Finucane’s murder, the Irish government had raised concerns on receiving information that Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) members based at Castlereagh Police Station were "encouraging Protestant paramilitaries to attack Irish Republican lawyers". According to a 1989 record of a conversation between UK Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler and Irish ambassador Andrew O'Rourke, Finucane's name had been specifically mentioned.

Finucane’s murder was only one of several incidents during Thatcher’s premiership in which the British state was involved in widespread collusion. This occured between Loyalist paramilitary ‘death squads’ and agencies of the British state, such as the FRU, the RUC special branch and the part-time Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), a ‘local’ infantry regiment of the British Army, established in 1970.

According to several sources, it was common practice during this period for the British state to share top-secret intelligence material, evidence, weapons and personnel with Loyalist paramilitaries. This included members of the UDA and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). During Thatcher’s premiership the UDA and UVF were believed to have easily infiltrated the UDR.

From RTÉ Archives, Póilín Ní Chiaráin reports for RTÉ News on the publication of the report of the Stevens Iniquiry

Raymond White, a former head of the RUC special branch, subsequently admitted that in 1986 that he raised the subject of collusion with Thatcher, while seeking legal clarification for the handling of British undercover agents who had penetrated paramilitary groups. The message that White received after his meeting with Thatcher was to "carry on, but don’t get caught" with the use of undercover agents. Indeed, in a 2015 interview, former Conservative Party MP and a minister at the Northern Ireland Office Michael Mates conceded that the scale of the collusion between the British state and Loyalist paramilitaries during the 1980s was much greater than he had believed it to be at the time.

The Stevens Inquiries, initially established in September 1989, were three official British government inquiries, led by Sir John Stevens, concerning alleged collusion in Northern Ireland between Loyalist paramilitaries and the British state security forces. In the findings of his first report, published in 1990, Stevens found that collusion was ‘neither wide-spread nor institutionalised’. However, the third and final of Steven’s report published in 2003 found that there "had been collusion in the killing of Finucane between members of the security forces, especially the FRU and Loyalists". One of the files from the Inquiries, 'The Stevens Inquiry (collusion between security forces and loyalist paramilitaries)' remains closed to the public until January 2075.

In 2012, the British government, under the chairmanship of Desmond de Silva, commenced an official review into Finucane’s murder. De Silva’s findings caused a political sensation. The De Silva Report claimed that employees of the British state "actively facilitated" Finucane’s murder, through a dark web of collusion between elements of the British security forces and Loyalist paramilitaries. The De Silva Report also claimed that successive British governments knew about such collusion in relation to Finucane’s murder but 'did nothing about it'.

From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime in 2012, Fergal Keane gets responses to the de Silva review into the killing of Pat Finucane from Geraldine Finucane, British prime minister David Cameron, then Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Fianna Fail's Micheál Martin and then Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore.

In January 2015, British prime minister David Cameron publicly placed on the record that "employees of the state actively furthered and facilitated Patrick Finucane’s murder". However, Cameron refused to order a public inquiry into his murder. Finuance’s widow, Geraldine, called the De Silva Report a "whitewash" and accused the British government of "engineering a suppression of the truth".

Fast forward to November 2020, and yet again, the Finucane family were left devastated by the British government’s decision not to order a public enquiry into Finucane’s murder. It was a decision that Amnesty International UK described as ‘shameful’. The decision of the Council of Europe to re-open Finucane’s case provides some hope and optimism for the Finucane family that justice may be rightly served.

One will never know the true extent of Thatcher's involvement with these controversial policies

Finucane’s assassination at the hands of his Loyalist killers, together with similar controversial murders by Loyalist paramilitaries during the 1980s, continues to cast a dark shadow over Thatcher’s legacy in Northern Ireland. Indeed, Thatcher’s association with Northern Ireland during her premiership is further complicated by accusations – which she strenuously denied – that she knowingly supported the British security forces’ ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy, in which many Republican paramilitaries were found in ‘compromising situations’ and were duly ‘executed’.

Frustratingly, one will never know the true extent of Thatcher’s involvement with the above controversial policies. Several relevant British government state papers remain closed - some indefinitely - while many of those directly involved either refuse to speak about these issues or have passed away.

The contents of this article are sourced from Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party and the Northern Ireland conflict, 1975-1990 (Bloomsbury, London, 2021).

Dr Stephen Kelly is Associate Professor in Modern History at Liverpool Hope University

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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