We all of us live within narratives over which we have limited control. They draw from myth, from rumour, from folklore, from gossip and from palpable fact. Who enters the pantheon of a generally accepted narrative, as opposed to the myriad of our own individual narratives, depends on the mysterious determinants of popular culture. Seldom have those determinants been as successful as in the case of Rosemary Nelson, who within hours of her death was publicly metamorphosed into an indivisibly hyphenated entity: the-human-rights-lawyer-Rosemary-Nelson.
In every sense, her murder was a vile atrocity: for herself, of course, for her young family, for the nationalist community in Portadown, for the legal profession which undertakes many hazardous and unpleasant duties in the North, for the rule of law and for the RUC as well.
Rule of law
Rosemary Nelson might have been a critic of the RUC; but she was representative of the rule of law, and while those who have the grievous misfortune to maintain that rule in Portadown had her to deal with, they were dealing not with a mob nor a terrorist nor a frightened or hysterical individual, but with a composed and formidable woman. In places of conflict, such as Portadown, especially after a killing as Robert Hamill's in which RUC constables appear to have to have been negligent in the extreme, communities need leaders like her.
But would a unionist solicitor who had represented loyalists in such a dispute as Drumcree and was murdered for his trouble then be acclaimed within the popular narrative as a "human rights lawyer"? Would a solicitor who had largely represented people with Protestant paramilitary associations be similarly acclaimed?
Of course, such a solicitor is unlikely to have been threatened by the RUC. But then Rosemary Nelson was, apparently, not herself threatened by the RUC. This is the allegation she made to a US congressional hearing (the italics are mine): "These difficulties have involved officers questioning my professional integrity, making allegations that I am a member of a paramilitary group, and at their most serious, making threats against my personal safety, including death threats. All of these threats have been made to my clients in my absence . . ."
The popular narrative on Rosemary Nelson's murder holds: One, that she was repeatedly threatened in person by RUC officers. By her own account, she wasn't. Two, that she was murdered, with RUC collusion, though there is no evidence of this, and the collusion dimension is dependent very much on the Popular Narrative Allegation One. Three, that the RUC Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, acceded to independent police officers assisting in the investigation only under pressure (as reported most recently by the RTE News at One on Monday). Untrue. He announced the involvement of both English police officers en and the FBI on the very day of Rosemary Nelson's murder.
Tow inquiries
But what about criticisms of the RUC by the UN rapporteur Param Cumaraswamy? The chairman of the Northern Ireland Police Authority, Pat Armstrong, a Belfast Catholic, declared the report contained "misleading and inaccurate comments" which "undermine Mr Cumaraswamy's conclusions on a series of very sensitive issues."
There have been two inquiries already into the allegations of threats against Rosemary Nelson, and they revealed beyond question that many officers disliked her; indeed some co-operated with those reports only marginally. That much the Popular Narrative has firmly accepted; it miraculously fails to repeat the extraordinary finding of Commander Neil Mulvihill, the investigating police officer from London, that some of Rosemary Nelson's clients who made the most serious allegations against RUC officers simply refused to co-operate either with his inquiry or with the initial investigation by the Independent Commission for Police Complaints.
Nor does the Popular Narrative contain the FBI belief that the RUC is conducting a "thorough investigation" into her murder. The FBI's legal attache, John Guido, said of the investigation (under the Assistant Chief Constable of Norfolk) that he had had been "greatly impressed" by the efforts of RUC officers.
But was Rosemary Nelson not a human-rights lawyer? Well, of course she was; but then most lawyers working on terrorist cases in this country are. The accused have fundamental rights before the law. So has the state. So have the victims. The process of law in democracy sets the defence of human rights as its goal, even if not always successfully.
Lawyers murdered
Many lawyers have been murdered by the IRA in these Troubles - Rory Conaghan, the judge who first awarded damages to internees; my amiable landlord, William Staunton RM; his colleague, William McBirnie, RM; the Unionist law lecturer Edgar Graham; Lord Justice Gibson; Judge Willie Doyle, shot as he left Mass; Rory O'Kelly, of the Crown Prosecution service; the solicitor John Donaldson; and Mary Travers, murdered as she and her magistrate father left Mass, all murdered by the IRA because of its opposition to the rule of law, the basic shield of all human rights.
Rosemary Nelson did her duties as a conscientious lawyer and as a dedicated member of the nationalist community of Portadown. Would she have been less a "human rights lawyer" if her clients were unionists and Orangemen who, we must judge from their performance over the past year, genuinely feel that they have the right to walk down the Garvaghy Road? Would she have been less a "human rights lawyer" if she had represented the police officers who nightly risk murder by "loyalists" at Drumcree? Yet the Popular Narrative is never likely to elevate such socially essential solicitors into "human-rights activists". One wonders why.