The truth is Margaret Thatcher likely ordered the Pat Finucane murder -- British can never reveal the truth about the killing of civil rights lawyer

Geraldine Finucane, widow of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane

The latest British inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane is again leaving massive questions unanswered.

The Guardian newspaper editorial headline said it best; “Pat Finucane murder: collusion, contrition, but not the whole truth.”

My strong belief is that the whole truth is that Margaret Thatcher ordered the Pat Finucane murder on February 12, 1989.

That is the key reason that no British Prime Minister will ever allow a public inquiry into the killing of the Belfast civil rights lawyer gunned down in front of his wife and children at his home.

He was shot 14 times while his widow, Geraldine, who was injured, tried to save him.

His only offense was to defend suspected IRA men and women too well in their court hearings.

I am not at all surprised that David Cameron uttered words of regret and then refused a public inquiry after the Da Silva report was issued yesterday.

Geraldine Finucane, a woman of immense courage,called it for what it was.

“This report is a sham. This report is a whitewash. This report is a confidence trick dressed up as independent scrutiny and given invisible clothes of reliability. Most of all, most hurtful and insulting of all, this report is not the truth,” she told reporters afterwards.

Read more: Inquiry into death of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane shows ‘shocking levels of collusion’

She knows what the truth is. The order to kill her husband came all the way from the top and David Cameron or any other British Prime Minister can never allow that truth to be revealed.

He can’t admit the British kill civil rights lawyers, can he?

Patrick Finucane was bringing the case of the Gibraltar 3, three IRA members shot dead in cold blood in March 1988, to Europe, which was going to be a massive embarrassment for Thatcher, who very likely gave the order for them to be shot dead also.

That court later found the three had been shot unlawfully. They had their hands up in surrender when they were shot down.

Finucane was doomed by a top government official. A member of Thatcher’s government Douglas Hogg, a Home Office minister, stood up in the House of Commons three weeks before Finucane was murdered and stated that some lawyers in Northern Ireland were "unduly sympathetic" to Irish Republicans.

He was directly referring to Finucane and signaling the killers to go ahead.

The new inquiry shows that MI5 was perfectly aware of the Finucane murder plot as were the RUC Special branch.

The Stevens inquiry into the Finucane killings stated, “My Enquiry team also investigated an allegation that senior RUC officers briefed the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Rt Hon Douglas Hogg QC, MP, that ‘some solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA.”

Mr Hogg repeated this view...and the Enquiry concludes that “the Minister was compromised.”

In this latest enquiry, Sir Desmond Da Silva wrote, "My review of the evidence relating to Patrick Finucane's case has left me in no doubt that agents of the State were involved in carrying out serious violations of human rights up to and including murder."

Those agents did not act alone, they did so on orders from on high -- all the way to 10 Downing Street.

Thatcher’s reaction to the finding that her minister was responsible for the death of a lawyer?

She promoted him to Minister for Agriculture, all the better to keep him quiet.

Hogg was not alone in fingering Finucane of course. It went much higher in the government, all the way  to the top.

It was a time when Thatcher apparently believed she could win the war if only those pesky lawyers would stop getting guilty terrorists off. She also faced massive embarrassment in Europe over the Gibraltar killings.

The killing was sanctioned and carried out by the British state. Of all the crimes committed in Northern Ireland, the Finucane murder is the one which successive British government, of whatever hue, have most resisted investigating.

Pat’s problem was that he was too good at his job of defending Irish men and women arrested for alleged crimes against the state.

He had to be got rid of. The leader of the gang that killed him was a British special branch agent named Tommy Lyttle. The man who confessed to being the Ulster Defense Association hit man was Ken Barrett, also a special branch agent.

The UDA man who supplied the gun was William Stobie, also a special branch agent. He was killed by the UDA, by a British agent  in 2001, when he threatened to tell the truth about what happened to Pat Finucane.

Hogg and Thatcher might as well have been in the room when the gun went off fourteen times - they were just as culpable. The naming was the equivalent of painting a target on Finucane’s back - everyone knew who Hogg meant.

The British government had made their preference known.

And all the whitewash in the world will never remove the truth about what happened to Pat Finucane

Margaret Thatcher movie 'The Iron Lady' for Best Movie pick at the Oscars - VIDEO

Meryl Streep in a scene from The Iron Lady.

It is Academy Award weekend coming up, time to sit back and enjoy the best that Hollywood had to offer last year.

The Irish as always will be well represented with Glenn Close nominated for the film Albert Nobbs, set in Dublin.

I found the film slow moving and pretty predictable and will be surprised if Close manages to finally win the most coveted award in the business, the Best Actress Oscar.

My personal favorite is Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

Streep gives a riveting performance, the best she has ever given, and that is truly saying something. She IS Thatcher in the movie, capturing the imperious persona who ruled Britain for over a decade.

The callousness of her decision to attack the Belgrano during the Falklands War is wonderfully portrayed by Streep, as is her utter indifference to the IRA hunger strikes which, ironically, was the spark that led to the resurgence of Sinn Fein in electoral politics after Bobby Sands starved to death.

We hear these days that Thatcher, now 86, has become feeble minded and indeed the film portrays her as such, imagining conversations with her late husband, Denis.

The opening scene in the film has her sneaking out and ordering a bottle of milk at the local store, a tired and run down old lady far removed from her imperial power days.

Streep succeeds in making her both sympathetic and repelling in almost equal measure.

Thatcher did what no woman before her ever did, climbing to power in a country where a grocer’s daughter from Grantham had no right to run a kingdom.

She has had no equal since. Hillary Clinton would, perhaps, be the closest in terms of making it in a man’s world, and Thatcher’s achievement in obtaining power is all the more remarkable as a result.

Sarah Palin would doubtless imagine herself in such a role someday, but she has none of Thatcher’s intellect. (Indeed, The Daily Telegraph reported that Palin, when briefed as the 2008 vice presidential candidate on the possibility of Britain pulling its troops out of Iraq, said she would personally pressure the Queen not to do it – a clear indication of how little she knew about the workings of British parliamentary democracy.)

Thatcher’s Falklands/Malvinas victory was her major military “triumph.”

I remember one of the finest pieces of ironic writing I’ve ever read being about her and Ronald Reagan walking on the beach at Normandy on the 50th anniversary of that incredible World War II landing – hallowed ground indeed.

“There they strolled, the conquerors of the Falklands and Grenada respectively,” wrote a writer for The Guardian, tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Yet Thatcher got it dead right on Europe, and her insistence on retaining British independence and its currency looks positively inspired these days.

She will always remain a hate figure to many, a heroine to others, but the reality is that she remains a major figure of the 20th century, especially in the ranks of British prime ministers

If you haven’t seen Streep portray her you should do yourself a favor. Rarely has art imitated life so well.

Here, view the trailer for 'The Iron Lady':

Meryl Streep gives amazing performance as Margaret Thatcher -- Iron Lady, warts and all, exposed in new biopic

Run don't walk to see Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in the new movie 'The Iron Lady.'

If Streep doesn't win the Oscar for this performance there is no justice in Hollywood.

She portrays the demented Thatcher who sees her dead husband and carries out imaginary conversations with him.

She paints a picture of a sad old woman, desperately holding on to her last vestiges of sanity.

In flashback we see her life unfold as she remembers it.

After superbly acting out the old and semi deranged Thatcher Streep plays the most powerful woman in the world at her very height. She plays it so well that never for a moment do you not think it is Thatcher.

That is quite a trick, especially for an American, to pull off, the imperious gestures, the grating upper class voice, so inimical to most Irish people, the perfectly coiffed presence, who crushed or charmed every powerful man in her path.
______________

READ MORE:

Hoboken, NJ, cancel St. Patrick’s Day Parade after 26 years - POLL

Immigration reform for Irish American community - current bill must be passed

Do these St Patrick's Day t-shirts depict Irish as drunk and dumb?
______________

The scope of Thatcher's achievement is clear. A grocer's daughter entered a male-dominated world in the mother of parliaments and somehow found a way to be the first ever female Prime Minister of the world's oldest democracy.

The faults and flaws are clearly outlined too. The inability to understand the anger she created among the poorest in Britain with her savage social cuts, the cold blooded decision to let ten Irish hunger strikers die, the equally cold blooded decision to sink the General Belgrano, steaming away from the battle in the Falklands War among them.

Her husband Denis comes across as the hero of the piece, a man who was an infinitely calming presence on his megalomaniac wif.

He persuaded her finally she had outlived her popularity and was facing certain defeat in an election for Tory Party leader.

Thatcher finished power for a generation of Tories, so hated was she when she left office. yet her legacy has grown larger, especially here in America since she stepped down.

Meryl Streep's portrait warts and all is among the best work she has ever done-- no easy claim to fame that.