Jude Collins, Irish News, April 8, 2004
Perhaps he was compromised. After all that's what happened to Douglas Hogg. You remember Douglas, who hopped onto his manly little legs in the House of Commons in 1989, to explain that some Northern Ireland solicitors were "unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA". Seamus Mallon immediately told Douglas to withdraw his remark, since it would make lawyers here "targets for assassins' bullets". But of course Douglas did nothing of the sort. Less than a month later gunmen broke into the Finucane home in Belfast and shot Pat Finucane 12 times in the head, neck and torso while his wife and children looked on.
But none of that was Douglas's fault – he was compromised. That's what Sir John Stevens said in his report into paramilitary collusion in 2003 : the Rt Hon Douglas Hogg QC MP was "compromised" by information fed to him by police officers. Certainly Hogg's Commons outburst doesn't seem to have done him any harm. He was a Cabinet minister in the Tory government, and on a website that gives biographical details for celebrity speakers, he's described as "a politician and advocate at the highest level". If you're thinking of hiring him, he'll talk on a number of topics, including home office and legal matters, and national and international law.
I shouldn't be surprised if Douglas wasn't at the back of David Trimble's mind when he got up on his own manly little legs and drew his prim distinction between Robert Hamill and "others [in the Cory report] who have a clear terrorist connection". Like Douglas, David stands by his statement. On Friday last he told the BBC he didn't think "anybody thought he (Mr Finucane) was simply a lawyer. I'm not saying he was (an IRA member), I'm just saying there's very clear evidence of a close relationship."
But remember, these may not really be David's words. Maybe, like Douglas, he was compromised by reports the police fed to him. Pearse McDermott , chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, doesn't care where or why Mr Trimble's words originated – they have "put certain solicitors lives at risk," Mr McDermott says. Sound familiar?
Admittedly, in the smoke and din following the Cory report, it's hard to know what's fact and what conjecture. However, a number of points we can be fairly confident about.
The dead can't sue. You can say pretty well what you like about people who are dead. Your words may be tasteless or without substance or total lies, but it won't matter, because if the person's dead, they can't touch you.
There's a section of the population here which loves this kind of talk.
The Birmingham Six? Guilty as hell, got off on a technicality. Guildford Four? Guilty again, slippery arguments got them released. Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson? Bound to be IRA sympathisers, didn't they defend IRA men? Forget about evidence, forget that Judge Cory said both lawyers did their work with complete professionalism, forget that Chief Constable Orde said there is no evidence of IRA involvement by Pat Finucane. If he associated with republicans, he must have been in the IRA. Nice simple thinking, no ifs and buts, strong words that feed an appetite for bigotry.
Douglas and David-type statements are intended to scare off others who might be similarly inclined. Willie McCrea took that line the day Martin McGuinness defeated him in a Westminster election. Refusing to share the platform, Willie warned the entire voting population of his constituency: "If you lie down with dogs, you'll get up with fleas."
So maybe we shouldn't be too taken aback when unionist politicians attempt to smear the dead. What is surprising is their inability to see the need for inquiries into the deaths of people like Finucane, Nelson, Hamill and Wright. You won't find a unionist politician who can't with ease distinguish between the need for loyalist decommissioning (maybe sometime) and republican decommissioning (essential now), because republicans would be part of a governing executive. Yet these same people find it impossible to understand why there should be inquiries into the deaths of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Billy Wright and Robert Hamill. They ask: What about the hundreds murdered by the IRA? Is there some hierarchy of victim?
No, but there's a hierarchy of killer. The people killed by the IRA were killed by those dedicated to overthrowing the state. Finucane, Nelson, Wright and Hamill appear to have been killed, Judge Cory says, by the state itself. And unionist or nationalist, if you can't see the definitive difference between those two instances, you're not just compromised you're codding yourself.