John Finucane
Credit: Sinn Féin [CC BY 2.0]

Mr Finucane’s father was solicitor, Pat Finucane who was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries at the family home in 1989. The Ulster Freedom Fighters who admitted carrying out the murder, claimed they had killed “Pat Finucane, the IRA officer”.

Mr Finucane’s letter is reproduced below.

Dear David,

I remember meeting you in a Belfast courtroom in 2019. I was representing a journalist arrested by the PSNI after exposing collusion in the Loughinisland massacre. You attended in support, speaking passionately about justice, accountability and the rule of law.

I listened then as you spoke of those principles. Yesterday, you demonstrated how little they appear to matter when it comes to Irish victims seeking accountability from the British state.

In January 1989, your Conservative colleague Douglas Hogg stood in Westminster and made similarly sinister “IRA lawyers” remarks about solicitors. Less than four weeks later, my father, Pat Finucane, was murdered by loyalists acting in collusion with British state forces.

I was eight years old. I watched my father being shot dead in front of me, in our family home.

I grew up without my father. I became a solicitor, following in his footsteps, because I believed, as he did, in the rule of law. In the right of every person to legal representation. In the right of victims to challenge the powerful, including the state itself.

And that is what makes your words so contemptible.

Would you dare speak about English solicitors in this way? Or do you believe Irish lawyers deserve less protection, less respect and fewer rights when they dare to challenge the British state?

The lawyers you seek to discredit are doing precisely what you once claimed to defend: using the law to hold power to account. They represent families who have endured murder, collusion, cover-ups and decades of obstruction.

We know where this language can lead. My family knows. Rosemary Nelson’s family knows.

But we are not living in 1989. We are building a new Ireland founded on equality, rights and justice. We will not be intimidated, silenced or dragged backwards by the prejudices of British politicians.

Shame on you, David.

Withdraw your words. Apologise to my family, to Rosemary Nelson’s family, and to the lawyers and victims whose pursuit of justice you have sought to discredit.

And have the decency to own the disgrace of what you said.

John Finucane