Front pages in Northern Ireland on Tuesday this week were dominated by the news that Secretary of State Brandon Lewis blocked the holding of a public inquiry into the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucance. But while the story was the same, the treatment of it was very different.

The Irish News banner headline said: “Arrogant and cruel.”

The News Letter’s was: “Unionist relief at Finucane decision.”

I’ll nail my colours to the mast early and say I’m with the Irish News on this one, but the wider worry is that as society here struggles to cope with the legacy of a horrible past with unspeakable suffering on all sides, we seem to have moved further and further into political entrenchment in our approach to dealing with it.

If we can’t put people and their pain above party politics, we’re in danger of simply passing on the division to succeeding generations. And that will store up trouble for the future.

In considering the specifics of Pat Finucane, and indeed other cases, I think it’s important to consider the nuanced difference between an investigation, be it police or otherwise, and a public inquiry. A number of investigations has already put into the public domain many of the facts surrounding the 39-year-old solicitor who was at home having a Sunday meal with his family in February, 1989, when gunmen used a sledgehammer to break the door down, and shot him 14 times in front of his wife and three young children.

Years later a loyalist confessed to the murder, and it transpired that a British Army agent was involved in selecting him as a target, RUC officers proposed that he be killed, passed information to the killers, failed to stop the attack and obstructed other officers in their murder investigation.

None of this is in dispute, and when he was Prime Minister David Cameron apologised in the House of Commons for “frankly shocking levels of collusion”.

But the State has never properly investigated who colluded and how far up the claims go, so Pat Finucane’s son, John, says “We know who pulled the trigger, we want to know who pulled the strings.” Let us also not forget that the British Government has already promised a public inquiry, but has now reneged on that, and the idea that the family turned down an inquiry which would have been ineffective is a red herring.

If this was, for example, a doctor involved in the death of a child and there were accusations of a cover-up, a public inquiry would be a no-brainer.

But once murder in Northern Ireland enters the political realm, such certainty begins to unpick. Although he represented both loyalists and republicans, much of the narrative has been that Pat Finucane was a high-profile lawyer who defended IRA suspects – even in the recent news coverage. And it’s pointed out that other members of his family have paramilitary links. Nobody will actually come out and say that any of this justified his murder, they’ll say the opposite in fact, but the dog whistling is there.

To further muddy the waters, there are calls for John Finucane to condemn other murders; he has described the loss of all life as wrong, but it is as if only the condemnation of individual names will validate the Finucane family’s case.

Some Unionist politicians and commentators also talk about the many cases of other victims. Notably this week, the murder of another solicitor, Edgar Graham, a Unionist politician aged 29 in 1983 by the IRA was marked by a wreath laying ceremony. I heard Enniskillen mentioned by some politicians and the Remembrance Sunday bomb is something I’ve written about extensively over the years. I still believe that there are many unanswered questions about that dark day in 1987 in my home town.

It is important that every single victim in decades of bloodshed is not forgotten and the families and the many thousands who have suffered deserve the truth, but that does not preclude the public inquiry that must take place into the Finucane murder because if agents of the state colluded in the murder of a citizen it is a serious blot on that state’s character.

While the DUP MP, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson is opposed to that inquiry, he did call for a “holistic approach to legacy that enables all innocent victims to have access to truth and justice.”

This, however, has been a tortuous process which has been going on for some time, and the controversy over a legacy process has become bogged down in political wrangling. A proper legacy process is vital in which we recognise all wrongs, not just the ones perpetrated on “our side”, whatever that is.

This week, the journalist Brian Rowan said: “If we can’t depoliticise our past, then we will live in it for ever and bury ourselves and the generations after us in the conflict period.”

While it may be difficult to remove political confirmation bias completely from our deliberations, because it was after all a conflict over political ideals which descended into crazy bloodshed, consideration of the past should rise above politics and focus on creating a respect and tolerance for our differing ideals.

I have to say it worries me to see past and present divisions being played out with both sides often retreating further into their own silos. And often it includes the next generation, many of whom weren’t even born in the 1970s and 1980s when death and destruction were all around us.

Pardon the graphic language in the following quote, but a Facebook paged called 2nd Republic 1916 posted this: “Nothing I hate more than someone below 30 telling me what happened during the Troubles. It was shit. Nothing glorious about any of it. People died. People went to prison. It was shit. Anyone tells you different either weren’t there or don’t know.”

It’s why we need to know the truth, at least as far as it is within our power. Not some cover-up version or some romanticised version or some rewritten version, or even some denial that suits your political viewpoint on either side.

A week or so ago I was reading a piece which recalled the famous English journalist Robert Kee’s television series 40 years ago called “Ireland: A Television History.” The final episode, which interviewed old IRA men from previous campaigns and those who would claim to be their successors in the 1970s, was called “Prisoners of History.”

It’s a history which in many ways we’re still living. We are our past, we need to learn from it, but we don’t need to live in it or indeed become prisoners of it.