Four of Northern Ireland’s political parties (Sinn Fein, the equally nationalist but anti-violence SDLP, the Greens and the liberal Alliance) have sent a letter to Secretary of State Brandon Lewis calling for a public inquiry into the 1989 murder by the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association of Pat Finucane –  an anti-state solicitor who defended mostly Republican paramilitaries and was posthumously rebranded as a human rights lawyer.