March/April 2022 35
Introduction
County 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 ocer.
The ocers of the HMSU fired some 109 shots, killing
By Nick Clifon
Thirty years ago this year, three IRA men were murdered by the RUC.
John Slker ws ppoined o invesige bu he ws se up, his
repor defused nd he ruh bou he murders he ws invesiging
confounded so h RUC impuniy could previl
In his ril summing up, Lord Jusice
Gibson conroversilly sed h he
officers were “wholly blmeless” nd
celebred h Tomn, Burns nd
McKerr hd been brough o he “finl
cour of jusice”
Gervise McKerr, Eugene Tomn nd Sen Burns
all 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 fire
because the two men allegedly pointed Mauser rifles at
them. Lastly, on 12 December, Roddy Doyle and Seamus
Grew, both members of the INLA, were killed after
allegedly trying to flee a police checkpoint in Armagh
City. Constable John Robinson claimed that he heard a
loud noise emanate from the reversing car, so he opened
fire 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 firearms in the Hayshed, the
three ocers 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 ocers’
statements should not be considered as they were
“tainted with lies”.
McCauley painted a dierent 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 firing stopped, the RUC ocers ordered the men to
surrender but when McCauley attempted to, they
delivered another burst of gunfire, 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 Nobbled
POLITICS
36 March/April 2022
attack 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 ocers. 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 files 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 five 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 confirm 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 Lies
This sent o 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 ocers of RUC
Special Branch. Three more HMSU ocers stood
trial for the murder of Eugene Toman and were
subsequently cleared. In his summing up, Lord
Justice Gibson controversially stated that the
ocers were “wholly blameless” and celebrated
that Toman, Burns and McKerr had been brought
to the “final court of justice”.
Stalker by Nme nd by Nure
Though 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 flattened cigarette-packet highlighting
Stalker’s mother’s Irish Catholic ancestors, he
realised this would be an altogether dierent
proposition. In Hermon’s words, Stalker “was in
the Jungle now”.
Still, Stalker conducted a thorough
investigation, one that suered from constant
interference, obstruction and obfuscation, but
his team’s findings were alarming to say the least.
They found that the ocial narrative of the killing
of Sean Burns, Eugene Toman and Gervaise
McKerr, was entirely false. There had been no
roadblock and the ocers involved had been
removed from the scene immediately after the
killings to be debriefed by Special Branch ocers.
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 flagged down, Grew and
Carroll’s car. Robinson then proceeded to open
fire on them, calmly changed his weapon’s
magazine and finished o 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 ocers had rolled in the dirt to
bolster the claim the victims’ car had hit an ocer
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 ocers’ narrative,
but had a way to find 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 o 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 ws fully exonered of ny
wrongdoing. When Smpson’s repor
ino John Slker ws relesed, mny
inerviewees, including Cecil Frnks MP,
climed h quoes ribued o hem were
enirely unrue. The flwed repor offered no
evidence gins Slker side from hersy
Nobbled
March/April 2022 37
that he would not be returning to Northern Ireland
to finish 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 find no supporting
evidence. It appeared that the investigation was
a smokescreen, when GMP ocers 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
flawed report oered 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 Oce (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
diculties that he was having with ‘Mr Stocker’”.
Hurd was entirely supportive of Hermon and
instructed one of the Permanent Undersecretaries
to find 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
influence on the whole aair, 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 five years. Unless,
of course, they are seen as a flag of convenience.
Once Sampson finished Stalker’s investigation
into the RUC Shoot-to-Kill allegations it became
clear that removing Stalker had the desired
eect. Though Sampson recommended charges
of perverting the course of justice against some
RUC and MI5 ocers, 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 ocers 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 Slker Affir, long wih he PONI’s
recen suory repor on Bloody Sundy,
he murder of Prick Finucne, nd
counless oher scndls, re exmples of
culure of impuniy h pervded Briin’s
securiy forces during he Troubles
Conclusion
Essentially, 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 certificates have
been issued. The Stalker/Sampson report has
not been released and remains jealously
guarded by the Northern Ireland Oce. 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
conflict, 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 Aair
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
