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March/April 2022 35IntroductionCounty Armagh, 1982. In just over a month six men, one only 17-years-old, were killed in controversial circumstances by a RUC Headquarters Mobile Support Unit (HMSU). On 11 November, Sean Burns, Eugene Toman and Gervaise McKerr, all members of the Provisional IRA (PIRA) were killed after allegedly driving through an RUC roadblock in Lurgan, injuring one ofcer. The ofcers of the HMSU fred some 109 shots, killing By Nick CliftonThirty years ago this year, three IRA men were murdered by the RUC. John Stalker was appointed to investigate but he was set up, his report defused and the truth about the murders he was investigating confounded so that RUC impunity could prevailIn his trial summing up, Lord Justice Gibson controversially stated that the offcers were “wholly blameless” and celebrated that Toman, Burns and McKerr had been brought to the “fnal court of justice”Gervaise McKerr, Eugene Toman and Seán Burnsall three men. Two weeks later, 24 November, Michael Tighe was killed, and Martin McCauley seriously injured in a Hayshed, again in Lurgan. The HMSU opened fre because the two men allegedly pointed Mauser rifes at them. Lastly, on 12 December, Roddy Doyle and Seamus Grew, both members of the INLA, were killed after allegedly trying to fee a police checkpoint in Armagh City. Constable John Robinson claimed that he heard a loud noise emanate from the reversing car, so he opened fre and killed both men. Doyle and Grew, like Burns, Toman and McKerr, were all unarmed. Shoot-to-Kill?But all was not as it seemed. In McCauley’s subsequent trial for possession of the frearms in the Hayshed, the three ofcers involved admitted that large parts of their witness statements were untrue: they had claimed they had come across an armed gunman outside the Hayshed whilst on a routine patrol, when they had actually been keeping the location under close observation. The presiding judge, Lord Justice Kelly, decided the ofcers’ statements should not be considered as they were “tainted with lies”. McCauley painted a diferent picture of the incident. They had climbed through the open window of the Hayshed and seen the Mausers. Without warning they were sprayed with bullets, killing Michael Tighe. When the fring stopped, the RUC ofcers ordered the men to surrender but when McCauley attempted to, they delivered another burst of gunfre, seriously injuring him. Lord Justice Kelly also disbelieved McCauley’s testimony, handing him a two-year suspended prison sentence.This was not an isolated incident though. Constable Stalker NobbledPOLITICS
36March/April 2022attack on a RUC patrol at Kinnego Embankment. Tragically, Sergeant Sean Quinn, Constable Alan McCoy and Constable Paul Hamilton were killed instantly in the explosion.Casus Belli?Stalker revealed that the same informant had told Special Branch that four men were behind the attack; Eugene Toman, Gervaise McKerr, Sean Burns and Martin McCauley. Were their deaths part of an RUC vendetta? He was aware the Hayshed had remained under investigation following the Kinnego murders and strongly suspected that the informant had become an agent provocateur as all three incidents involved an ambush by HMSU ofcers. Damningly, Stalker also found that a report from the informer claiming Michael Tighe was a member of the Provisional IRA had been faked, as it had been forged after the entirely innocent teenager had been killed. But he found that the RUC Chief Constable would not allow to him listen to the tape or even read the fles relating to the informer. So, after months of failed negotiations with Jack Hermon, Stalker produced a 10,000-word interim report. It stated that new and extensive “independent forensic evidence” supported claims that all fve men “shot dead in their cars were unlawfully killed by members of the RUC”. He suspected that Michael Tighe was also unlawfully killed but could not confrm this until he had heard the tape. Hermon delayed handing the report to the Direct of Public Prosecutions, Sir Barry Shaw, but when he did Shaw unequivocally decided that Stalker would have access to anything he wanted. Conspiracy of LiesThis sent of an unforeseen chain of events. In late-may, 1986, Stalker was called into GMP’s HQ and suspended from duty. He was now being investigated for impropriety. He was not told what he was alleged to have done, but he was informed John Robinson stood trial for the murder of Seamus Grew. He too admitted that his witness statement had been fabricated by ofcers of RUC Special Branch. Three more HMSU ofcers stood trial for the murder of Eugene Toman and were subsequently cleared. In his summing up, Lord Justice Gibson controversially stated that the ofcers were “wholly blameless” and celebrated that Toman, Burns and McKerr had been brought to the “fnal court of justice”. Stalker by Name and by NatureThough Gibson appeared to condone the killing of three unarmed men, it was Robinson’s false witness statement that had political repercussions. The RUC’s Chief Constable, Sir Jack Hermon invited the Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), John Stalker, to investigate the three Shoot-to-Kill incidents. Stalker was the 45-year-old rising star of Britain’s policing community with over 20 years’ experience as a detective. He had a great deal of experience in the GMP’s drugs and serious crimes squads as well as investigating other constabularies. But from the moment Hermon passed a fattened cigarette-packet highlighting Stalker’s mother’s Irish Catholic ancestors, he realised this would be an altogether diferent proposition. In Hermon’s words, Stalker “was in the Jungle now”.Still, Stalker conducted a thorough investigation, one that sufered from constant interference, obstruction and obfuscation, but his team’s fndings were alarming to say the least. They found that the ofcial narrative of the killing of Sean Burns, Eugene Toman and Gervaise McKerr, was entirely false. There had been no roadblock and the ofcers involved had been removed from the scene immediately after the killings to be debriefed by Special Branch ofcers. The original forensic investigation left much to be desired as it had initially studied the wrong crime scene, then Stalker’s forensic investigators found fragments of the bullet which had killed the driver of the vehicle in the headrest some 21 months after the killings had occurred.Similarly, the original investigation into the Killings of Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll was “slipshod and woefully incomplete”. Grew and Carroll had been under observation by Special Branch for a “long period” before the killings. The RUC’s E4A had followed the pair across the Irish border to meet INLA chief, Dominic McGlinchey. However, they had left McGlinchey in Ireland and returned to North of the border, their E4A tail close behind, certainly aware that McGlinchey was not in the vehicle. What happened next was both farcical and brutal: an undercover British Army unit collided with the vehicle stop the HMSU were erecting, and the two INLA men passed by unnoticed. But their tail collected Robinson amid the chaos, and they sped after, then fagged down, Grew and Carroll’s car. Robinson then proceeded to open fre on them, calmly changed his weapon’s magazine and fnished of Grew as he fell out of the passenger side of the vehicle. Stalker found evidence that, to add gravitas to the cover story, one of the HMSU ofcers had rolled in the dirt to bolster the claim the victims’ car had hit an ofcer at the non-existent roadblock. Stalker’s team found that the cover story had been formulated in the days before the incident and it had been fed to the media almost immediately after Grew and Carroll had been shot dead. Seemingly the ambush, and the cover story, were premeditated.It was the killing of Michael Tighe in the Hayshed that disturbed Stalker the most. It would also lead to his downfall. Like Lord Justice Kelly, Stalker disbelieved the HMSU ofcers’ narrative, but had a way to fnd out the exact chain of events: MI5 had planted a listening device inside the Hayshed that recorded the entire incident. The bug had been installed when an informer tipped of Special Branch that explosives had been concealed there. Unfortunately, it failed to signal to the authorities that the explosives had been removed. They were used in a landmine Stalker was fully exonerated of any wrongdoing. When Sampson’s report into John Stalker was released, many interviewees, including Cecil Franks MP, claimed that quotes attributed to them were entirely untrue. The fawed report offered no evidence against Stalker aside from hearsayNobbled
March/April 2022 37that he would not be returning to Northern Ireland to fnish his investigation. The man investigating Stalker, Chief Constable Colin Sampson of West Yorkshire Police, would also take over the Shoot-to-Kill inquiry. The allegations against Stalker would centre on his friendship with a Manchester businessman, Kevin Taylor. The GMP insisted that Taylor was a member of a Manchester crime syndicate called the Quality Street Gang and had arrested him in relation to an alleged mortgage fraud. It was alleged that he laundered the gang’s drug money, or even ran drugs using his yacht harboured in Florida. Taylor denied all these accusations and was cleared by the American Drug Enforcement Administration, who could fnd no supporting evidence. It appeared that the investigation was a smokescreen, when GMP ofcers raided his home, they only took a framed photograph of Taylor and Stalker together. Eventually, Stalker was fully exonerated of any wrongdoing. When Sampson’s report into John Stalker was released, many interviewees, including Cecil Franks MP, claimed that quotes attributed to them were entirely untrue. The fawed report ofered no evidence against Stalker aside from hearsay and the Greater Manchester Police Authority, and the GMP itself, distanced themselves from the debacle. But the damage had been done, the attempt to smear him had been successful, just as Seamus Mallon had predicted in parliament months earlier. Although he had received massive support from the public, Stalker found himself increasingly isolated at GMP and just three months after his reinstatement he resigned. However, the controversy did not stop there. It soon became clear, in fact undeniable, that Stalker had been the victim of a conspiracy reaching, in his own words “to [British] Cabinet level.” Recently, I uncovered archival material from the Northern Ireland Ofce (NIO) which supports Stalker’s assertion. In a series of notes, two NIO Permanent Undersecretaries discuss the investigation though it was bizarrely concealed under the title of the “Stocker Inquiry”. In one exchange, they state that Jack Hermon had spoken over lunch with Douglas Hurd, then Northern Ireland Secretary, “about the difculties that he was having with ‘Mr Stocker’”. Hurd was entirely supportive of Hermon and instructed one of the Permanent Undersecretaries to fnd out from Barry Shaw exactly what Stalker’s intentions were, despite the apparent confidentiality supposed to surround the investigation. Clearly, Stalker would never have received the tape and high, Cabinet-level interference had been a constant factor in the Shoot-to-Kill inquiry.He noted that there was no ongoing investigation into Kevin Taylor’s alleged fraud before he had handed over his interim report to Hermon, and the investigation did not start in earnest until after Stalker was granted access to all evidence relating to the Hayshed by Sir Barry Shaw. Despite insistence there was no outside infuence on the whole afair, the informant who made the allegations about Stalker and Taylor, David Burton (AKA Bertelstein), had extensive links as an informer to the RUC. Interest was only given to his claims when Stalker’s battle for the tape began. Burton had previously told detectives that members of the Quality Street Gang were gunrunning on behalf of the IRA, a claim that had absolutely no foundation. It does beg the question why his allegations about John Stalker and Kevin Taylor were given any credence, especially as Stalker had been positively vetted by MI5 twice in the previous fve years. Unless, of course, they are seen as a fag of convenience. Once Sampson fnished Stalker’s investigation into the RUC Shoot-to-Kill allegations it became clear that removing Stalker had the desired efect. Though Sampson recommended charges of perverting the course of justice against some RUC and MI5 ofcers, Attorney General Patrick Mayhew refused to prosecute on grounds it would be against the public interest. Eighteen middle and junior rank RUC officers were disciplined, but no senior ofcers were held responsible. Though Stalker and members of his investigation team did not believe there had been a RUC shoot-to-kill policy per se, there was certainly an appetite “to shoot suspects dead without warning.” There was also, clearly, a willingness to conceal this behaviour. A culture of impunity instead of a shoot-to-kill policy. ‘The Stalker Affair, along with the PONI’s recent statutory report on Bloody Sunday, the murder of Patrick Finucane, and countless other scandals, are examples of a culture of impunity that pervaded Britain’s security forces during the TroublesConclusionEssentially, the whole truth of what happened to Gervaise McKerr, Sean Burns, Eugene Toman, Seamus Grew, Roddy Carroll and Michael Tighe may never be known. Inquests have started and promptly halted, often when Public Interest Immunity certifcates have been issued. The Stalker/Sampson report has not been released and remains jealously guarded by the Northern Ireland Ofce. What we can say is that whatever Stalker found, it was enough for Britain’s security state to ruin his career, striking a similar chord to Colin Wallace’s treatment. Also, Stalker’s Shoot-to-kill investigation represents just a miniscule portion of the many shoot-to-kill incidents throughout the confict, be that RUC, Army or UDR. Tellingly, it was, and is, very rare for security force personnel to be convicted for them.. Unfortunately, this culture of impunity is the hallmark of the Troubles. The recent Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland’s Operation Greenwich report shows that the Stalker Afair was far from an isolated incident; that collusion, perjury and criminality were part and parcel of the British security apparatus. It was a culture of impunity, a truth that the British State seeks to conceal even now.Nick Clifton is a PhD researcher at Kingston University, London

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