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Posted by Jim on June 20, 2022
DAD, THE DAY BELONGS TO YOU
Posted by Jim on June 18, 2022
Dad, the Day Belongs to You
June 18, 2022 by Margaret M. Johnson
I’ve heard from a number of men that “the best gift you can give Dad on Father’s Day is a full stomach” — preferably one filled by someone other than himself! The day belongs to dad, so let’s let him step away from the grill: no standing over a hot BBQ making sure everyone’s steak is cooked to perfection. No flipping burgers or turning hot dogs for the kids. This year, Dad, the day is yours, with these mostly make-ahead meals that someone else has prepared!
PEPPERED PORK LOIN ROAST WITH ROASTED POTATOES
SERVES 6 TO 8
A pork loin roast comes from the area of the pig between the shoulder and the beginning of the leg. It’s sometimes confused with pork tenderloin, but they’re not the same. A loin roast is typically sold in pieces weighing between 2 and 4 pounds whereas a tenderloin is a smaller, long cut that usually weighs about 1 pound and is sold packaged in pairs. A loin roast, best cooked to an internal temperature of 145ºF to 160ºF, is delicious rubbed with a spice mixture, like this one made with mixed peppercorns, coarse-grained mustard and herbs. Serve it with a green salad or the mixed bean salad that follows.
6 tablespoons coarse-grained Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons mixed peppercorns, coarsely ground
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons fresh thyme
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon honey
1 (4 pound) boneless pork loin roast, patted dry with paper towels
Salt
2 pounds baby potatoes, washed and dried
1. In a small bowl, combine mustard, peppercorns, garlic, vinegar, rosemary, thyme, lemon zest and juice and honey. Coat pork with peppercorn mixture and let sit for about 2 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 375ºF. Place loin on a rack in baking dish. Surround with potatoes. Roast for about 1 hour, or until an instant read-thermometer inserted into center registers 150ºF.
3. Remove from oven and let rest for 15 minutes. Slice pork thinly and serve with potatoes.
CHICKEN CAPRESE
SERVES 4
For a new twist on the classic summer salad of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil — aka Caprese — add chicken and a quick finish to melt the cheese for a tasty main course. If you have a cast-iron skillet, use it for this soon-to-be Father’s Day favorite.
4 (5 to 6-ounce) skinless chicken breasts
Salt
Ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon chopped shallot
15 cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
8 to 10 basil leaves, thinly sliced
4 (1/2-inch-thick) slices mozzarella cheese
Basil leaves, for garnish
Arugula, for topping (optional)
1. Season chicken with salt and pepper. In a large ovenproof or cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat, heat oil. Cook for 4 to 6 minutes per side, or until golden and cooked through; transfer to a plate.
2. Add balsamic vinegar to skillet. Stir in shallot and cook for 1 minute, or until soft but not browned. Add tomatoes, season with salt, and simmer for about 5 minutes, or until tomatoes are soft. Stir in basil.
3. Return chicken to skillet and tuck in to tomatoes. Place a slice of mozzarella on top of each piece of chicken breast, cover, and cook for about 2 minutes, or until mozzarella melts slightly.
4.To serve, transfer chicken to a serving plate, spoon tomatoes on top, and garnish with basil leaves and a few sprigs of arugula, if desired.
MIXED BEAN SALAD WITH WALNUT VINAIGRETTE
SERVES 4 TO 6
Sugar snap peas are the sweet, crunchy cross between English butter peas and snow peas. They’re delicious in a summer salad combined with green beans, broad beans, butter beans or baby lima beans. Toss with this flavorful walnut vinaigrette or a splash of oil and vinegar. The sugar peas have strings on both seams that should be removed before eating; just snap off a bit of the stem and pull gently down both sides.
For the salad
1 pound fresh sugar snap peas, strings removed
1 pound fresh green beans
1 (10-ounce) package frozen butter beans
1 (10-ounce) package frozen lima beans
2 celery stalks, sliced
Salt
Ground pepper
Fresh chives, for garnish
For the vinaigrette
3 tablespoons roasted walnut oil
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
Salt
Ground pepper
Fresh chives, for garnish
Fresh mint, for garnish
1. Make salad. In a large saucepan over high heat, drop snap peas and green beans into boiling water; cook for 1 to 2 minutes, or until tender crisp. Drain and refresh in cold water. Transfer to salad bowl.
2. Refill saucepan with water, bring to a boil, and cook butter beans and lima beans for about 8 minutes, or until tender; drain. Transfer to salad bowl. Add celery and season with salt and pepper.
3. Make vinaigrette. In sealable jar, combine oils, vinegar, salt and pepper; cover and shake until blended. Toss salad with dressing; garnish with chives and mint.
OLIVE OIL CAKE WITH MASCARPONE CRÈME
SERVES 8
Add this rich pound cake to your Father’s Day menu for a perfect finale. Serve it with seasonal berries and a dollop of whipped cream or mascarpone crème.
For the mascarpone crème
1 (8-ounce) container mascarpone, chilled
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
For the cake
1 1/3 cups extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons grated orange zest
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 cups milk
3 large eggs
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup Grand Marnier
Fresh berries, for serving
1. Make crème. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or with a hand mixer), beat mascarpone, cream, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Cover and refrigerate.
2. Make cake. Preheat oven to 350°F. Coat a 10-inch springform pan with cooking spray; line bottom with parchment paper.
3. In a large bowl, combine olive oil and orange zest; set aside to infuse.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and baking powder.
5. Whisk milk, eggs, juice and Grand Marnier into olive oil. Stir in dry ingredients until just combined. (Mixture will be thick like pancake batter). Transfer to prepared pan and bake for about 1 hour, or until top is golden and a skewer inserted into center comes out clean.
6. Remove from oven, transfer to a wire rack, and let cool for at least 30 minutes. Run a knife around edge of pan and release sides. Invert cake onto rack, remove parchment paper, and then return to upright.
7. To serve, cut cake into slices; serve with mascarpone crème and berries.
Margaret Johnson’s “Recipes” page also includes “Ireland Hopping: Adventures in Food, Drink, and Travel.” For further details on her work, or to order a signed copy of her cookbooks, visit irishcook.com
‘ULYSSES’ AND ME
Posted by Jim on June 16, 2022
James Joyce in a 1922 photo by Man Ray.
‘Ulysses’ and Me
June 15, 2022 by Irish Echo Staff
In the first weeks of 2022, some leading publications were on top of the centennial of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which was published on Feb. 2, 1922.
“Love, soppy as it may seem, is the novel’s great subject,” author and academic Merve Emre commented in an admiring New Yorker essay. Meanwhile, novelist Anne Enright wrote in the New York Review of Books, “Joyce has been in our brains, playing in the place where meaning is made, and this can feel disturbing or delightful.”
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Many fans, though, have been waiting for Bloomsday 2022 to celebrate 100 years of “Ulysses.” And so as June 16 approached we asked nine people to describe their personal relationship to the novel.
DELIGHTFUL FEVER DREAM / RACHAEL GILKEY
2002. I first approached it with my hand held. A classroom. Guidance, dissection, discussion. A chapter a week. I loved it, but I lost something.
2003. In Galway, I sidled by Nora Barnacle’s childhood home. In Paris, I stepped amongst the shelves of Shakespeare and Company and saluted Sylvia Beach.
2007. I tackled it again, but this time submersion. Between Christmas and New Year’s I read a hard cover copy printed the year I was born. And it was a delightful fever dream. Yes I skipped the parts that bogged me down, yes, I did, yes.
2008. Bought a copy with the iconic blue cover. Why do I own three copies? One to mark up, one to admire, one to lend out.
2009-2022. Bloomsday on Broadway! Hearing the words spoken aloud and gaining a new access point. Begins a new tradition that grows to include other Bloomsday celebrations in New York, ones I get to collaborate on and ones I get to just enjoy, that begin in the early morning and end at midnight, traveling a figurative map of Dublin overlaid on my own beloved City. I read “Ulysses” again and again, in full, in segments, to edit texts for Bloomsday celebrations, or just to dig deeper. It’s possible I know it, better, now. But it’s also possible to not try to know it. And still love it.
Rachael Gilkey is Irish Arts Center’s director of programming and education.
Rachael Gilkey [Photo: Rich Gilligan]
TOO UNSENSE TO BE OBSEEN / PETER QUINN
all in all it’s among the great iron knees of the litterature of the modern rage that the singletoast homohymn to the common man should get booed and booted for elitist uninteeligiblty, a rap first rapped by Gotham mouthpiece the Mighty Quinn when he told magistraight’s court JJ’s tome was too unsense to be obseen, when instyd it is the most elophant put down of the fauxknee fascist hiccups of blud and sooil, a cerebralation of the liffy dignitree and densitree of the shit and shinola of the extraordinarily ordinary me(and you)anderings through sheets and streets shared by paddy jew and molly too beneath the Doublean dark and blazes’ boiling sun, musta odor of jakes and gorgonzola, thick cobblestone, tombstone, library tome, hamlette and peenellopee, where lies in state the state’s lies and praying mantestes, and prelated prelates obfuse the obvious and Gerleen insired fireworks in a man’s pants squirts the ineffable inelucability of our cumings and goings, all in all, skinny and plump, stately and unsightly, shriveled and unshrivenable, she and he, no better or liviawurst than you and me as we make our way beneath the purabella sky to day’s end and the merciful yea of bed’s warm and welcoming spread, yes.
Peter Quinn’s “Cross Bronx: A Writing Life” will be published on Sept. 6.
The 1st edition.
LAW LESSONS / JAMES RODGERS
Although I studied “Ulysses” in high school and college I did not attempt to read the entire novel until well into adulthood. I read the first 50 pages. Then I put it on a bookshelf in our apartment hallway. Every day for 10 years I passed that book and reminded myself to read it. Eventually, the sense of failure became too strong and I picked it up again. When I finished the novel I wrote, “Finished reading Ulysses on April 2, 2005 at 9:56 pm. Yes, I did, Yes!” And then I signed my name.
“Ulysses” has many themes, styles, and is driven by an outline from a classic. But distilled it has two strings to be followed—the story of Leopold Bloom’s day and evening where he circumnavigates Dublin meeting a montage of friends and characters as he slowly heads for home and his Molly, and then the periods of dream sequences, streams of consciousness, literary sidebars, and a plethora of metaphysical transformations that take the reader into a web of bewilderment.
The second time around I found myself using a method gained from reading thousands of law cases. In many decisions judges go off tangent departing from the main issues and pontificating with legal reasoning that seems to have no bearing on the case. Lawyers learn by the time they finish law school that the key is to keep reading as the judge will eventually return to the issues and make the decision. The off tangent portion, while often seeming incongruous, is where the judicial gems can be found. So too is how one must read “Ulysses.” Rather than attempt to figure how the second string of the story fits in it is best to just read on, absorbing and enjoying the literary genius of Joyce as he will always return to Leopold Bloom in the flesh who will, late at night, return home to 7 Eccles Street where Molly lies upstairs contemplating her life in full erotic “bloom,” rendering her thoughts and passions a singular literary masterpiece worthy of its own stand alone dramatic performance.
To writers of fiction and students of creative writing the value of “Ulysses” is immeasurable. Besides illustrating to the reader an almost unlimited array of literary styles, which are instructive on their own, writers can be released from the shackles of formalistic methods of writing and begin not to copy Joyce but to find one’s own style and own voice free of the barriers that exist in writing conventional prose. Simply put, “Ulysses” gives the writer the confidence to shoot the literary moon. So trust Joyce, who will be peering over your shoulder saying, “Yes, you can, Yes!”
James Rodgers practices maritime law in New York City and is author of the novel “Long Night’s End.”
BLOOMSDAY BLISS / AIDAN CONNOLLY
Richard Murphy, professor of English at Providence College, introduced me to Ulysses in my junior or senior year, in a dazzling and challenging modern literature course that also offered an introduction to Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves.” With Dr. Murphy’s engaged, though wholly unpretentious guiding hand, both these works were revelations to me, inspiring a passion for form-challenging narratives of all kinds, and a belief that when our emotions are engaged, we humans have an incredible capacity for adapting to new languages of art.
I’d return to “Ulysses” just a few years later when I was invited by my future friend and mentor Isaiah Sheffer to be one of the readers in Bloomsday on Broadway 2001 at Symphony Space. Isaiah was a visionary in rendering the novel — for all its esoterica and peculiarity — accessible to audiences of all stripes, through the relentless mining of laughs to be found in the text, delivered by his ever-eclectic ensemble of actors, writers, and assorted Upper West Side characters (the latter of which was clearly my primary qualification!) I was invited to be a small part of a large ensemble (including, if memory serves, everyone from Barbara Feldon to Stephen Colbert), for a segment called “What They Ate and Drank,” featuring a selection of the more consumptive segments of the novel, curated and directed by an inimitable and relentlessly delightful fellow by the name of Malachy McCourt.
Little did we know that night that in a matter of weeks the world would change so profoundly and unalterably. But for that night: laughter and bliss.
Aidan Connolly is the executive director of Irish Arts Center.
Bloomsday Breakfast, Bryant Park, 2011.
EMULATING BLOOM / GEORGE FOY
My grandfather’s stately, plump, 1934 Random House edition of “Ulysses” (freshly freed from the censor’s ban) came from the stairhead of my 20-year-old consciousness, bearing a bowl of linguistic lather on which notions of artistic freedom and narrative agility lay crossed; in other words, to this nascent writer, Joyce’s novel became forever an exhortation to scrap rules in favor of getting across the guts and steam of whatever character drives fiction, and I suppose it was that sense of liberty powering my excitement when I first dipped into the peregrinations of Leopold; more so when, celebrating Bloomsday in Dublin years later, I emulated Bloom by getting royally drunk on Burgundy wine, accompanied by Gorgonzola cheese sandwiches, with wife and toddler at Davy Byrne’s pub on Duke Street. The spell was still on me recently when, visiting Trieste to research the poet Rilke for a novel, I became fascinated with Joyce’s years scraping a living in that city which so curiously resembles Dublin–both being built in an arc upon a bay, one facing east, the other west, with a uterine canal in the center: both built around invaders’ castles … after drinking coffee in the Stella Polare café, where Joyce got thrown out after a reading of “Dubliners,” I made a pilgrimage to the house on Via Donato Bramante where he wrote the first words of “Ulysses”; a house, I noticed, whose windows looked out upon the dark, fake-Gothic tower of the Trieste National Observatory, which I was certain in my own mind had informed his choice of the Martello tower that started it all and my heart was going like mad as I saw it and yes I thought, yes, I will write that for the Echo, Yes …
George Foy teaches creative writing at NYU and is author of “Finding North: How Navigation Makes Us Human,” among other books.
George Foy.
BLASPHEMING THE BLASPHEMER / KEVIN HOLOHAN
“Oh God! Here it comes! Here’s where I gave up the last time!”
The steps on the National Library. All that smart banter. Can’t follow it. Can’t stand it. Just flick past it!
Oh God! What’s this now? More allusive banter about Parnell?!? Can’t follow it. Can’t stand it. Can’t be arsed!
[Hurls book to floor. Exit.]
And so it went. Each time a little further into the book. Each time a new stodgy bit to be blipped over or struggled through. Until, in the end, end of a long day, finally I realized, if that is not too strong a word, that Stephen Daedalus and his friends were mostly annoying, self-important little bolloxes, all glibness and ostentatious learning, best avoided or ignored. Mr. Joyce may have enjoyed writing them but that did not mean I had to enjoy reading them or, in fact, read them at all. The understanding that I much preferred the company of Leopold Bloom in his wanderings and could take or leave the ruminations of Mr Joyce or his mini-me Stephen was my way to enjoy Ulysses – well, about half of it.
As for the other half, maybe on some re-reading (and there probably will be another) I may find Stephen a little less annoying. Still, much more apt to turn to “Dubliners” to get a good Joyce fix. Frankly, though, life is too short and getting shorter, so, when it comes to books that endure and grow, trusted companions along the trajectory of life, I will probably always return to Mr. Beckett’s “I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now…” or Sr. Cervantes’ “En un lugar de la Mancha…” over Mr. Joyce’s “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan….” They are, admittedly, much more challenging to commemorate with a pub crawl, but, there you have it!
Kevin Holohan grew up in Dublin, where his novel “The Brothers’ Lot” is set.
Poets Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin at Monkstown Church on Bloomsday 1954.
FOR THE RECORD / ELIZABETH O’REILLY
Bloomsday celebrations always bring me back to the book, and to my 22 CD boxed set of Ulysses. For me they go hand in hand. Jim Norton reads the bulk of the book, and I was a big fan of his prior to this purchase, but Marcela Riordan reads Molly’s soliloquy and it is truly immersive. I just listened to Molly’s soliloquy and my preference is to read along as I listen. Listening takes care of punctuation cues. It’s great to read, but the auditory component really adds to the experience. The CD sleeves also show how sections are broken down, so it’s easy to take a break or to re-listen to something in particular. As often happens I’m out of town for Bloomsday. I used to love to go to Symphony Space in Manhattan for Bloomsday, but there’s something intimate about reading and listening to Molly somewhere quiet, on my own. It is hilarious, poignant and sensual in equal measure.
Artist Elizabeth O’Reilly, who is originally from West Cork, lives in Brooklyn.
Jim Norton in 2001. [Photo by RollingNews.ie]
DEFENDING THE NOVEL / STEPHEN BUTLER
My individual history with “Ulysses” begins in the summer of 1993, when I purchased, at the Shannon Duty Free, a bargain book housing “Dubliners,” “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and “Ulysses,” all in the one volume. For the next few years, I struggled through all three texts, but struggled most mightily of course, with the Blue Book of Eccles. I’m fairly certain I had the Cliffs Notes on “Ulysses” borrowed from the Maspeth Library for the better part of two years. In my senior year of high school at Cathedral Prep my AP English teacher, Brian Payne allowed me to compose my first, forgettable work on the subject. Later, when I was a graduate student at CCNY, I took a wonderful seminar on the novel with the late and much lamented Bill Herman. As a PhD candidate at Drew I wrote a piece defending the novel against a savage attack by a literary critic (and Drew alumnus) named Dale Peck. Over the last decade and a half I have presented conference papers on the pirating of “Ulysses” by the notable American pornographer Samuel Roth, and on the role of American Irish Catholics such as John Quinn, Martin Conboy and Martin Manton in the three obscenity trials surrounding “Ulysses.” I covered the reception of Joyce in general, and “Ulysses” in particular, in my book “Irish Writers in the Irish American Press.”
But this listing of the scholarly work I’ve done with the novel obscures to a large extent the greatness of “Ulysses.” Yes, Joyce self-consciously set out “to keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what [he] meant.” But he also set-out to write an epic of ordinary everyday life in a contemporary city. While the novel begins with the dense theological and philosophical ruminations of Stephen Dedalus, the patron saint of would-be young artists rebelling against faith and family and homeland, the bulk of the book is actually about a much more accessible character, a husband and father whose profound concerns are much more mundane: family, politics, religion, work, birth, death, love, loss, marriage, sex, memories. The day celebrating the novel is called Bloomsday because Leopold Bloom is the fully formed human character at the center of the book. And of course his wife Molly is the fully formed human character whose sleepy monologue ends the book.
After almost 30 years since I first laid eyes on Joyce’s words, here’s my advice. Forget the professors and the Cliffs Notes. Take “Ulysses” down off the shelf and turn to a random page in the middle of the book and take pleasure in reading something deeply insightful about being a human: “Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder!” (8: 897-904)
Stephen Butler is Clinical Associate Professor of the Expository Writing Program at NYU.
James Joyce and Nora Barnacle with their children, Lucia and Giorgio in 1924.
CRITICAL SUPPORT / JANE APPLEGATE
We all know “Ulysses” tells the tale of Molly Bloom, her husband and her lover…and we know James Joyce openly loved and appreciated the women in his life. I had not read the ground-breaking novel in school. I started reading it while doing research for a television series I’m developing about famous men and the women who contributed to their success. The pilot, “Remarkable Women: The Tale Behind Ulysses,” will screen in Dublin on Bloomsday.
Our film describes the six women who supported the writing and publication of “Ulysses”: Nora Barnacle Joyce was his muse and mother of his children; Sylvia Beach published early editions of the novel, with help and guidance from Adrienne Monnier; Harriet Shaw Weaver, a British heiress and activist provided the Joyce family with more than €1.5 million in today’s money; two American publishers, Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, were convicted of obscenity in a New York Court for publishing extracts of the novel in The Little Review.
Justice campaigns ‘up against the clock’
Posted by Jim on
Relatives of nine of those killed by the British Army in Ballymurphy, west Belfast are to receive “significant” undisclosed damages as part of settlements reached in their civil actions.
Confidential resolutions were confirmed at the High Court in claims brought against the British Ministry of Defence over the shootings in August 1971.
Following the announcement, Justice Humphreys told the victims’ families: “As well over 50 years have elapsed since these events occurred, I’m acutely aware of the significance of today as part of the process that all of you have had to go through.
“My congratulations to all of you, for having reached the end of a very long road.”
Ten people were shot dead during three days of British Army gunfire in the west Belfast neighbourhood which became known as the Ballymurphy massacre. Members of the Parachute Regiment launched the assault following the introduction of internment.
The victims included a priest trying to aid one of the wounded and a mother-of-eight. Another man later died of heart failure. In May last year an inquest found that the victims were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. The coroner ruled that the soldiers’ use of force was not justified.
Lawyers for those bereaved in the massacre brought civil actions against the Ministry of Defence and chief constable of the PSNI, claiming damages for negligence and misfeasance in public office. The cases had been listed for a week-long trial, due to get underway at the High Court on Monday.
But confidential settlements were announced in actions relating to the deaths of Fr Hugh Mullan, Frank Quinn, Joan Connolly, Noel Phillips, Daniel Teggart, Edward Doherty, Joseph Corr, John Laverty and Joseph Murphy.
Meanwhile, litigation in connection with the deaths of John McKerr and Paddy McCarthy, as well as others shot and injured by the British Army in the same incidents, is ongoing.
Outside court Padraig O Muirigh of O Muirigh Solicitors, who represented eight of the nine families, said: “The confidential nature of the settlement of this legal action prevents me disclosing the settlement figure.
“I can confirm, though, that the figure is significant and that our clients are satisfied with the outcome of this litigation.”
Mr O Muirigh added: “Whilst nothing will bring back their loved ones or reverse the traumatic impact these events have had on these families, it would be hoped that with the satisfactory conclusion of this litigation, following the milestone inquest findings last year, can bring some small degree of comfort to the Ballymurphy families.”
‘DELAY, DENY AND DESTROY’
In a separate development, relatives of a Catholic man murdered by loyalist paramilitaries 30 years ago have secured a hearing for their High Court action over Crown force collusion in the killing.
Michael Gilbride (36) was shot dead by the UDA as he visited his parents’ home in the Ormeau area of south Belfast in November 1992. Mr Gilbride’s widow, Roseann, welcomed the development but also expressed frustration that it has taken so long to get to this stage.
She said even 30 years after the killing, the state was attempting to conceal information through secrecy measures.
“Perversely, we are the lucky ones as, with the British Government’s proposed legacy legislation, many families will never receive a Police Ombudsman’s report, nor will they be able to pursue a civil case.
“The British Government’s strategy of delay and deny has been upgraded to delay, deny, and destroy.”
‘RUNNING DOWN THE CLOCK’
And only a public inquiry into the murder of Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane will uncover the full extent of a state-operated policy of “extrajudicial executions”, the High Court has heard.
Counsel for the lawyer’s widow described him as the victim of a scheme where loyalist paramilitaries were infiltrated, resourced and manipulated to target those identified for murder.
Geraldine Finucane is challenging British Direct Ruler Brandon Lewis’s decision not to establish a public inquiry into events surrounding his killing in February 1989, arguing it breached her human rights.
Fiona Doherty QC argued: “The available evidence suggests that employees of the state, responsible for law enforcement, devised and operated a policy of extrajudicial executions.
“In other words, a policy of murder by proxy whereby the state itself engaged in terrorism through the agency of loyalist paramilitaries.”
In November 2020, Lewis announced there would not be a public inquiry “at this stage” because he wanted other police review processes to run their course.
He was ordered to pay £7,500 damages to Mrs Finucane for the excessive delay in reaching his position.
The current challenge centres on the legality of his decision to await the outcome of reviews by the PSNI’s Legacy Investigations Branch and the Police Ombudsman.
Referring to the level of collusion in the lawyer’s murder, the barrister contended that it was hard to imagine a more serious allegation against a liberal democracy founded on the rule of law.
“Patrick Finucane was a victim of this policy, he was identified by state agents as suitable for assassination and duly shot dead in front of his family in a particularly brutal fashion,” she said.
“The army, the police and the security services have been implicated to varying degrees in the events surrounding his death, in the operation of the policy that led to it, and in attempts to prevent the truth about it emerging.
“Questions remain as to the identities and culpability of those who authorised the policy, allowed it to happen, and what level they operated at.
“Questions also remain about the extent to which the policy was known and authorised by government.”
Urging the judge to quash Mr Lewis’ decision and order him to set up such a tribunal, she added: “This court shouldn’t allow matters to get to the stage where the state effectively gets what it wants by running down the clock on this investigation.
“In other words, the passage of time and the loss of evidence makes any investigation pointless.”