The arrest of Martin McCauley, pending extradition to the North to face trial for murder, is a reminder of the enduring significance of the Stalker affair.
Forty years ago, the deputy chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, John Stalker, was appointed to lead an inquiry into three Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) “shoot-to-kill” operations in Co Armagh. These followed an IRA bomb attack at Kinnego embankment which killed three RUC officers and were seen by some as retaliation.
Over a five-week period in November and December 1982, SAS-trained RUC squads killed six young men. Five were unarmed. The sixth was killed, and another seriously injured, in a hayshed in which some old pre-war rifles were found. The wounded man was Martin McCauley, who later had his conviction for the possession of firearms quashed. There was a public outcry over the killings and widespread accusations that the RUC had adopted a shoot-to-kill policy for those suspected of being in the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
Stalker soon found out that the hayshed had been bugged and there was a tape recording of the shootings. He also suspected that informers were involved. He doggedly pursued MI5 and the RUC for further details and a copy of the tape, but was blocked at every turn. In September 1985, he submitted an interim report while still demanding more information about the hayshed incident. Eight months later Stalker was removed from the inquiry pending disciplinary charges of associating with “known criminals” in Manchester.
Stalker’s sharp intellect as well as his knowledge and experience of policing often left the arguments of Anderton’s defence barrister in shreds
Stalker had discovered many of the key elements of a secret security strategy introduced by MI5 in 1981. At a time when much is being written about the positive role played by MI5 in achieving a settled peace in Northern Ireland, my book is a reminder that its role throughout the conflict was much less benign. The recent announcement that MI5 had discovered further files which had not been handed over to Operation Kenova – the police investigation into state agent Stakeknife – adds further weight to this point.
MI5′s new strategy was based on intelligence gathering and the protection of sources, and privileging these over the detection and prosecution of crime. Stalker’s inquiry threatened to reveal the central role of informers in providing intelligence. It was exposing the extensive use of cover stories, that Special Branch was a “force within a force” and the general failure to pass on key information to CID officers investigating murders. Crucially, Stalker understood that there was no legal framework controlling the activities of informers or their handlers, whether in RUC special branch, the British Army or in MI5 itself. Overall, the strategy bypassed the sovereignty of parliament completely. As later became clear, informers and state agents were permitted to kill with impunity.
Contrary to official briefings, the prevailing view at the time was that Stalker’s removal had little to do with events in Manchester and everything to do with the politics of policing in Northern Ireland. Many suspected that there was a conspiracy to remove him, with possible conspirators including MI5, RUC special branch and the top echelons of government. Various motives were suggested: to prevent the possible prosecution of the officers involved in the shoot-to-kill incidents; to hide the numerous illegal cross-Border incursions into the Republic by the RUC and army; and to avoid any criticism of the RUC when they were required to police loyalist protests against the recently signed Anglo-Irish Agreement. There was no mention of protecting MI5′s intelligence-led policing strategy from scrutiny as this was not public knowledge.
One prominent dissenting voice was the well-known journalist Peter Taylor. In a BBC Panorama programme broadcast in August 1986 and a book published the following year, he concluded that there was no conspiracy but rather a coincidence of two parallel and unconnected sets of events involving, confusingly, another Taylor.
Kevin Taylor was a Manchester property developer and one-time chair of the Manchester Conservative Association. Stalker and Kevin Taylor knew each other because their children went to the same school. They became friends and their relationship came under scrutiny following rumours that Taylor was involved in smuggling drugs and fraternising with members of a Manchester criminal gang. The probable source of the rumours is revealed in the book.
Peter Taylor’s main argument was that these rumours started to be investigated by the Manchester police months before Stalker made significant progress with the shoot-to-kill inquiry. Using new documentary evidence and interviews, my book contradicts this argument in minute detail. It is a detective story that probes every claim and piece of paper surrounding the coincidence theory.
Above all, it describes the extraordinary efforts made by the Greater Manchester Police to prove Stalker guilty by association with his friend Kevin Taylor, who was subject to intense surveillance for months. When the police could find no evidence of drug smuggling, they charged Taylor with defrauding a bank instead, even though the bank itself had raised no concerns. On the contrary, the bank considered Taylor to be a good customer. The matter eventually came to trial in October 1989 but the case collapsed when it was shown that the police had committed perjury in obtaining access orders to Taylor’s bank accounts and were also in contempt of court.
Stalker’s inquiry threatened to reveal the central role of informers in providing intelligence. It was exposing the extensive use of cover stories
Just as the Greater Manchester Police had no evidence against Taylor, they only had rumour and innuendo as the basis for attempting to discipline their own deputy chief constable. The Police Authority was unimpressed and reinstated Stalker, but the damage was done. The “thorn in the flesh” of RUC special branch was gone from the Northern Ireland inquiry and Stalker’s standing as a senior officer was fatally undermined. He resigned a few months later.
Taylor’s reputation was also ruined and he was made bankrupt. Eventually he decided to sue James Anderton, chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, for malicious prosecution and the case came to trial in 1995. After 21 days in court, the case was suspended with Taylor reluctantly accepting £2.4 million in compensation. It was one of the biggest compensation awards for malicious prosecution in British criminal history.
As a young academic, I had witnessed at first hand the whitewash of the Widgery tribunal over Bloody Sunday. I had taken witness statements on the Monday morning in Derry for the National Council for Civil Liberties. I was therefore sceptical of the official narrative about Stalker’s removal. I decided to research the affair and took the opportunity to attend the first day of Taylor’s civil action in Liverpool. He complained bitterly that despite the rumours about him, he still had not had his day in court. He was looking forward to being called and was determined to clear his name. He subsequently granted me access to his personal papers.
Although Stalker cut off his friendship with Kevin Taylor once he knew Taylor was being investigated by the police, he agreed to appear as a witness in the civil action for which Anderton’s defence team submitted more than 110,000 documents. Stalker’s sharp intellect as well as his knowledge and experience of policing often left the arguments of Anderton’s defence barrister in shreds. He frequently drew attention to the numerous documents which were suspiciously unsigned or undated, contrary to basic police procedures. He constantly made a distinction between information and intelligence, and the need for intelligence to be supported by accompanying evidence, which was sorely lacking.
One of the strangest findings of my research concerned Anderton’s behaviour during the investigation of the Taylor/Stalker relationship. He never once confronted Stalker about his friendship with Taylor. For two years, he ignored the legal and constitutional requirement to bring in an outside police force to investigate a complaint against a senior officer. His report to the Inspectorate of Constabulary in May 1986 – a report that provided the trigger for Stalker’s suspension from office – included the absurd and groundless phrase that “some may think that Stalker had reason to be sympathetic to the IRA”.
The Stalker affair continued to shape events long after Stalker left the police. The thread that persisted was the determination of MI5 and subsequent governments to keep the intelligence-led counter-insurgency strategy secret at all costs. Stalker’s inquiry team had recommended that a number of senior police officers should be prosecuted for inventing cover stories and perverting the course of justice. However, in 1988 the attorney general announced that prosecutions would not be in the public interest. It was feared that officers would reveal details of the strategy as part of their defence.
An even worse egregious act occurred in 1989 when two state agents murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane. Although MI5 had received intelligence that his life was being threatened, he was not warned. MI5 later tried to recruit another of those involved in his murder as an agent. Subsequently, successive British governments failed to set up a public inquiry – a commitment made as part of an international agreement with the Irish government in 2001. Shockingly, it is estimated from official inquiries that of the hundreds of informers and state agents recruited over the years, four were involved in over 160 murders.
The prevailing view was that Stalker’s removal had little to do with events in Manchester and everything to do with the politics of policing in Northern Ireland
In 2011, the Cameron government set up a desktop review into Finucane’s murder under Desmond de Silva. While limited, de Silva concluded that there was “an abject failure by successive governments to provide the clear policy and legal framework necessary for agent-handling operations to take place effectively and within the law”. Thatcher herself was aware of the issue, as a member of RUC special branch had raised it with her in the late 1980s. Thatcher’s response was “don’t get yourself caught”.
In the early 2010s, perhaps in anticipation of de Silva’s criticism of a lack of a legal framework, MI5 introduced, again in secret, a system of authorisations for informers and state agents involved in crime. But it was not until Westminster passed the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act in 2021 that a statutory framework for running informers and state agents was introduced. Nothing had been learned from Northern Ireland as the new law permits many more state bodies to run agents and there is no limit on the types of crimes which they may be authorised to commit.
In 2023, the Conservative government introduced the Legacy Act which stops any further conflict-related police investigations, inquests and civil actions, effectively abolishing the rule of law for the period of the Troubles. Along with the lack of a public inquiry into Finucane’s murder, it is designed to stop any further detail of MI5′s deadly security strategy from emerging and will prevent those who devised the illegal strategy, and the handlers of murderous agents, ever being prosecuted. How this will be affected by the Starmer government’s commitment to partially repeal the Legacy Act remains to be seen.
My book leaves the notion of MI5′s “positive role” in tatters. By showing how governments and state agencies have been undermining the rule of law over many years, it is written as a defence of human rights and international law as they come under increasing attack.
Decades of Deceit: The Stalker Affair and its Legacy by Paddy Hillyard is published by Beyond the Pale Books
