Michael Finucane to deliver Bobby Sands Lecture

Michael Finucane, son of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane, will deliver the annual Bobby Sands Lecture at the Devenish Complex in Belfast on Friday 7 May at 7.30pm.

The theme of this year's lecture will focus on the issue of state collusion in the murder of hundreds of Irish citizens and the subsequent lengths the British state went to to protect their agents and conceal their activities.

Collusion has been part of the Six-County state since its creation, but in the 1980s, under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, it became much more controlled and refined. State-sponsored murder was established as a formal, politically sanctioned tactic at the heart of British policy in Ireland.

Bobby Sands and his nine comrades died on hunger strike in 1981 because Maggie Thatcher and her government denied prisoners their basic human rights. Pat Finucane was Bobby's solicitor and he was assassinated in 1989 because he defended people's human rights and challenged the same British State in the courts.

Families of the dead hunger strikers and those who have been directly or indirectly affected by the British States policy of state orchestrated murder are invited to attend the lecture. There will also been a video and photographic exhibition launched on the night which will demonstrate the impact of the British state's collusion policy.