In 1984, John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, was appointed to investigate a series of killings in Northern Ireland by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, where it was alleged that a secret shoot-to-kill policy was in operation.
Shortly after making demands for intelligence files belonging to the RUC and MI5, he was removed from post. In his subsequent memoir published in 1987, Stalker went on to expose a conspiracy behind his sacking that would see additional mystery surround the events that he had set out to investigate.
Two years later, another killing raised further allegations of the British state’s involvement in murder. On 12 February 1989, the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association shot dead the Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane in front of his family, including his young son John. Subsequent inquiries by John Stevens, Chief Constable of Northumbria Police, got close to the truth, despite shadowy forces attempting to burn down his incident room. In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to apologise to both Patrick Finucane’s family and Parliament for the ‘shocking levels of collusion’ where state agents played key roles in the solicitor’s murder. More recently, the Labour government has announced that they will, finally, set up a Public Inquiry into the case.
This event sees John Finucane MP, in conversation with Prof Paddy Hillyard of Queens University, Belfast to discuss the impact of MI5’s secret intelligence-led counter-insurgency strategy in the context of both the Stalker investigation and the killing of John’s father Patrick.
Paddy Hillyard is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Queens University, Belfast and author of Decades of Deceit: The Stalker Affair and its Legacy.
John Finucane is a solicitor, a former Lord Mayor and since 2017, the MP for Belfast North. John is a long-term campaigner for a public inquiry into the killing of his father.