Name: Decades of Denial: Paddy Hillyard
Start: 2025-05-15T19:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-05-15T21:00:00+01:00
Location: The Quaker Meeting House

Decades of Denial: Paddy Hillyard

Writing on the Wallis a dynamic, Liverpool-based community organisation that coordinates projects and events that celebrate writing in all its forms. We work with a broad and inclusive definition of writing that embraces literature, creative writing, journalism and non-fiction, poetry, songwriting, and storytelling. Writing on the Wall works with local, national and international writers whose work provokes controversy and debate. We work with all of Liverpool’s communities to promote and celebrate individual and collective creativity.

Writing on the Wall

John Finucane MP, in conversation with Prof Paddy Hillyard.

The Quaker Meeting House

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.

An Evening with Colm Tóibín

The Black-E

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Decades of Denial: Paddy Hillyard

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Decades of Denial: Paddy Hillyard

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