Collusion: The truth will out
By Fern Lane
The 11-page document, revealed by The Independent on 4 May, which was
sent by the Irish government to the Northern Ireland Office last
month and which detailed its suspicions that crown forces in the Six
Counties colluded with loyalists to carry out the murders of
nationalists, including Pat Finucane,
may be long overdue but is nevertheless likely to meet the same wall
of resistance from both the RUC and those who control it's activities
within the British government as all previous reports from bodies as
important as the United Nations and Amnesty International.
In the document, the Irish government says it has identified patterns
of behaviour ``which tend to confirm widespread suspicions that
elements in the security forces were used, at the expense of the rule
of law, to prosecute a campaign against those deemed enemies of the
state and to conceal what that entailed and who was culpable''.
Thus, Geraldine Finucane's refusal to co-operate with the new Stevens
investigation into the murder of her husband is well-founded, given
that Stevens has already investigated collusion and, according to
Ronnie Flanagan, exonerated the RUC. Any report compiled by Stevens
will have to go through Ronnie Flanagan before it can be presented to
the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Geraldine Finucane also made the salient point that a police
investigation, rather than an independent inquiry, is no more than a
diversionary tactic dreamed up in the face of mounting pressure on
the government to submit to an independent inquiry into the killing
of both Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson.
A criminal investigation suggests that the whole issue of collusion
is an unproven one, when of course it is not. There is already a
mountain of documentumentation on the matter, including, amongst
others, detailed submissions by Amnesty International, the United
Nations - which said there was ``prima facie evidence of collusion'' -
British and Irish Human Rights Watch, the trial of Brian Nelson, and
the televised admission by loyalists themselves that they received
information on nationalist and republican targets from the security
forces. To initiate another police investigation into whether
collusion might have occurred is, in the face of this evidence, a
ludicrous waste of time.
Colin Port, the British police officer called in by the RUC after the
murder of Rosemary Nelson, also forms part of the pattern of
deflecting pressure for a public inquiry into collusion through the
use of a British police investigation. His claim last week that her
murder is a ``human tragedy'' like any other murder and essentially
devoid of any political motivation beyond a sectarian hatred of her
by rogue loyalists is disingenuous and he knows it. More revealing is
his admission that his `Collusion Unit' is made up of RUC officers
who, he says, no doubt with unintentional irony, ``know the systems
that operate here''.
After a meeting with Mo Mowlam on Wednesday, 5 May, whowever, a chink
of light was visible in the comments of Geraldine Finucane. She said
that the Secretary of State had told her that the fact that the
latest Stevens investigation had started did not rule out a full
independent inquiry.
Further, Ken Maginnis did us all a favour with his cowardly and
incorrect comment that Pat Finucane was ``inextricably'' linked to the
IRA because it reveals to the world the ideological and psychological
milieu against which collusion has for so long been allowed to
flourish unpunished. His allegation was slanderous not because to be
associated with the IRA is ignominious or shameful - it is not - but
rather because he knows full well that it is factually incorrect and
because it was uttered with profoundly malicious intent, seeking to
tarnish Finucane's fine reputation, to somehow justify his killing
and that of Rosemary Nelson. It was also spoken in the full knowledge
that such attitudes endanger the lives of other lawyers who defend
those he believes should not be defended.
What is required is not that the British government hides behind the
skirts of more police `investigation' into already well-established
facts, but an acknowledgement that collusion was, and is, as Bairbre
de Brún says, ``systematic and endemic'', followed by an public inquiry
to expose the mechanics of collusion and to bring to justice those
responsible for authorising and implementing it. The Metropolitan
Police tried for a long time to promote the Bad Apple theory but,
because of pressure from the community it claimed to serve, it
ultimately failed. So will the RUC.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)