In addition it was decided that there should be special units in rural areas. The two RUC operational regions outside Belfast were given their own special units, known as Headquarters Mobile Support Units (HMSUs). The function of the two HMSUs was to give back-up in the RUC’s two rural regions where there were fewer DMSUs than in Belfast, and where the need for highly trained firearms squads was perceived at Knock to be greater. Each of the squads consisted of twenty-five to thirty police who received more advanced firearms training than those in the DMSUs and operated more often in plain clothes in response to SB information.
At the apex of the new structure was the Special Support Unit (SSU). Although it is believed many HMSU members were given firearms training by the Army, only the SSU sent men in any numbers to be trained by the SAS. The SSU is, says a veteran RUC man, ‘the back-up, they were trained up by the SAS to be the Special Branch’s own Reserve’. Many of those who had been in Bronze Section were apparently drafted into the SSU. When they were set up, the HMSU’s and SSU’s members received advanced training at Army camps such as Ballykinlar and at Aldershot where they were instructed by paratroopers and the SAS.
At a later trial the RUC’s Deputy Chief Constable Michael McAtamney described the training undergone by HMSU members. He said they were given four weeks of special training during which they were shown how to respond to various threats if they were seated, standing or walking. ‘Their training is on the basis that once they have decided they are entitled to open fire, that they should fire, in order to put their assailant out of action as quickly as possible,’ he added.
The soldiers who trained them formed the impression that the quality of SSU recruits varied widely. One says that while they regarded many as being reasonably professional, some were ‘Orange nutters’ about whom they harboured serious doubts. These reservations were not confined to soldiers’ bars in Aldershot or Hereford. One senior Army officer says that, in forming the SSU, the RUC failed to understand the complexities of such operations.
But the early 1980s saw the high summer of official optimism about what could be achieved under Police Primacy. The RUC’s special units were being formed at a time when the Army thought of itself, to some extent, as disengaging from Ulster. The number of regular battalions had decreased from fourteen at the beginning of 1978 to ten by the end of 1980. One of the brigade headquarters, 3 Brigade, was also disbanded as the Army’s strength fell below 10,000.
Despite its reservations, the Army leadership at Lisburn accepted that the RUC should develop its own covert units and that the SAS should help them do it. According to one observer at Stormont, ‘The SAS were reined back a bit to give the police a bigger role.’ Among ministers and generals confidence in the RUC was high; there was a feeling that it should have the ability to confront terrorists on the basis of its own intelligence, without Army help. This confidence was to be shattered in November 1982.
PART THREE: 1982–1984
16Stalker
Just after midday on 27 October 1982 three police officers were blown apart at the Kinnego embankment near Lurgan in County Armagh. They had been travelling in an unmarked car which was wrecked by a large bomb placed underneath the road.
A fortnight later three IRA members: Eugene Toman, Sean Burns and Gervaise McKerr, were intercepted by members of an RUC firearms squad, near Lurgan. Even years after the event the precise identity of the unit is still uncertain. Some sources speak of it as being part of the Special Support Unit, others say that it was the Southern Region Headquarters Mobile Support Unit (HMSU). The confusion may be due to the fact that the squad, one of two based at Lisnasharragh near Belfast, was under the administration of the SSU but was controlled from day-to-day under different command arrangements.
The police, riding in unmarked vehicles, were expecting Toman, Burns and McKerr, who had been under E4A surveillance. The overall operation was being run by Special Branch officers of the regional TCG at Gough Barracks, Armagh.
The police chased after the car, opening fire on it. Later examination was to indicate that 109 shots were fired at the three men, who were unarmed. As their riddled car came to a halt Eugene Toman stumbled from the vehicle, but was shot through the heart by a policeman. All three IRA men died.
On 24 November another group from the HMSU saw two young men approaching a hayshed near Lurgan. The police were keeping the building, which they believed was an arms dump, under surveillance on orders from the TCG. Shortly after Michael Tighe, aged seventeen, and Martin McCauley, nineteen, had entered the shed the police opened fire. Tighe was killed and McCauley seriously injured.
The incidents in Armagh continued on 12 December, when Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll, members of the INLA, were waved down by police after crossing the border from the Republic. This was also an operation directed by the TCG, in which members of the security forces had mounted surveillance operations against INLA members inside the Republic. A car pulled up behind the two men as they returned to the North.
In the unmarked police car was a Special Branch inspector and Constable John Robinson, a member of the HMSU. Constable Robinson got out of the car and walked towards the passenger side of the suspect vehicle, where Carroll was sitting. He fired his pistol through the window, killing the INLA man. Constable Robinson then walked around the front of
