In his new book, Decades of Deceit: The Stalker Affair and its Legacy (Beyond the Pale, 2024), Paddy Hillyard discusses how Greater Manchester Police DCC John Stalker uncovered key elements of state security strategy in NI during an official inquiry into three ‘shoot-to-kill’ incidents in the 1980s. He was removed from the inquiry before it was completed. A political conspiracy was denied, but extreme steps were taken to discredit him. Using new sources, Paddy Hillyard reveals how the Stalker affair continues to shape present-day events. The thread that links them – including the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane by two state agents – is MI5’s intelligence-led counter-insurgency strategy. By showing how governments and state agencies have been undermining the rule of law over many years, the book is a vital contribution to the defence of human rights and international law as they come under increasing attack.

Paddy Hillyard is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at QUB. He taught previously at Ulster and Bristol before taking up a chair at Queen's in 2005. His main research interests are in social order and control in modern welfare states, focusing on a number of substantive areas: ‘crime’, social harm, political violence, poverty and inequality.                                                                   

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