Jack Hermon dies
Sir Jack Hermon who died suffering from Alzheimer’s for many years was the longest serving and the first modern professional native-born chief of the RUC of the Troubles, as successor to the Met policeman Sir Kenneth Newman, later to be Met Commissioner. Earlier old school Ulster-born chiefs were clearly subordinate to the army’s GOC of the day, even though the policy of “primacy of the police” nominally began in the mid seventies. No doubt Sir Jack’s critics have other descriptions of him.The RUC’s progressively greater role put them literally more in the firing line. The dossier of “shoot to kill” allegations compiled by deputy chief of Great Manchester John Stalker remains unopened and the collusion charges over the Finucane and other murders remain in limbo. No balanced account of the RUC’s role and of Jack Hermon’s leadership will be possible without greater disclosure. My impression of him was that that he always kept a tight command and there was no question of his not being briefed, like Sir Ian Blair over the de Menezes shooting.
This was an era of relentless conflict, only a little less grim than the previous decade, beginning with the hunger strike aftermath in 81, the Droppin’ Well bomb in 82, the Loughgall killings of 8 IRA men, the Enniskillen bomb which killed 11, 8 soldiers blown up outside Ballygawley in 87, to instance only a few of the biggest death tolls. The overall tally must include the local backwash of the IRA’s English campaign, from the Regent Park and Brighton bombs of 82, to the horrific cycle of death beginning with the SAS “Death on the Rock” killings of 3 in Gibraltar in 1988, followed by the Michael Stone graveside attack and the subsequent lynching of the two incognito solders following the second highly charged funeral procession to Milltown cemetery in a week.
I had no great love for the man, but im sure he has family who do and I wish them well.
I doubt this thread will remain civil. (Which im guessing has Mr Walker rubbing his hands. One can only imagine the depths to which this thread is going to descend.)
i was at many republican funerals at which our people were brutalised by the ruc under hermons watch, as we tried to bury our dead.
i hope his family are free to bury him without the brutality he heaped upon us
I remember seeing him in Cranmore Park some time after he had retired. He was pushing the kids on the swings. He looked content.
I doubt that we would be enjoying the peace that we have today without the efforts of Sir John Hermon. RIP
Predictably people will have different views of the man. He was Chief Constable through one of the worst periods of our history. Nationalists will remember the Hunger Strikes. Loyalists will remember that the Anglo Irish agreement. In both cases he held the RUC firm in enforcing the law and preventing all attempts to subvert the county, from whatever side.
Sadly in our history being impartial in policing often means that you end up with no friends on either side!
May he rest in peace.
One small aspect of the Stalker affair which amazed me when I read about it a few years ago has never been dealt with.
You’ll remember ‘Honest John’ Stalker famously recounting how he realised what he was up against in his investigation, he described how Jack Hermon took him, Stalker, out for a round of golf and halfway through the game, Herman stopped and pulled out a cigarette packet from his pocket whereupon he started writing on it Stalker’s Catholic Irish background, Stalker was naturally shocked and realised this was going to be a tough assignment.
I remember at the time thinking it odd that someone like Jack Hermon would do something so obviously idiotic and wondered how big this cigarette packet was that it could accommodate Stalker’s family tree.
Of course Hermon always dismissed this incident as a complete fantasy and something that for whatever reason Stalker had simply made up. I suppose I must have been taken in by Stalker’s permanently injured innocent look as I tended to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that there was more to Herman than met the eye.
Until I read somewhere a while back, Jack Herman didn’t smoke.
Not to totally disprove your thesis but he wouldn’t be the first or last “golf course smoker”!
martin wrote i was at many republican funerals at which our people were brutalised by the ruc under hermons watch, as we tried to bury our dead.
cynic wrote: he held the RUC firm in enforcing the law
Am I alone in seeing a contradicion here? Which law was being enforced above, the one that states, Thou shalt not bury thy dead unmolested? Maybe it should be removed from the statute book.
Larry Marley’s funeral was on Hermon’s watch. Luckily Sylvia Hermon will not face the same horrific funeral conditions imposed by Hermon’s forces on Kate Marley.
I hope that John Hermon sleeps peacefully and that his family, in their grief, find some comforting solace in the fact that both he and they have been released from the frustrations and pressures of a terminal debilitating illness.
Probably the law that banned public paramilitary displays by armed and masked members of terrorist organisations, but then I’m only guessing Maggie.
Such a law could probably safely remain on the statute books.
Harry
Maybe Martin will fill us in on the details. Martin?
I don’t see why HF has to use the death of Sir John Hermon to take a swipe at John Stalker, a far better, more honest cop.
And, as often is the case, HF has changed what Stalker wrote about the man who ruined him.
It occurred during at a lunch at a golf club, not during any match. And there was no mention of Hermon stopping anywhere, and taking out a cigarette for a smoke. (The Stalker Affair, pp. 29-30)
“During the meal, Hernon handed me a handwritten note, sketched on the back of a flattened-out cigarette packet. It outlined my family tree on my mother’s side. She is Catholic, and her parents were born in the Irish Republic, No mention of my father, who is a Protestant from a Liverpool family…I found it very puzzling; I still do.” (pp. 30-1)
Sounds totally believeable to me, especially when HF makes up stories to discredit it.
I find myself in agreement with Trowbridge H Ford. There is no need to try to discredit Stalker here, and anyone who has read his book must know how he and his family suffered to try to bring out the truth.
As for Jack Harmon, may he rest in peace and be buried in peace and dignity the like of which was not allowed to others.
Yup, Trowbes old son, totally believable, precisely the sort of thing chief constables of police forces do every day, maybe Olaf Palme sent him the fag box that’s why the Bildeberg Group had him offed just before he released the fourth secret of Fatima.
Follow it up on your blog and I’ll have a read.
Pathetic response, HF.
Instead of admitting your recall was totally wrong and mean-spirited, you just compound it by taking about what appears on my blog.
I have no blog. I only write articles which people like Ed Chanter, John Young, Rixon Stewart, etc., chose to post on their blogs.
Hermon did a difficult jump attempting to provide Northern Ireland with law and order whilst its police force was under attack. If he has rest, peace and dignity in death, it will be more than he was afforded in life by certain sections of the community. Even relatively recently, as he lay dying and in the final few months of his life, he was subject to republican threats.
Jack was probably best known as what would be termed a ‘coppers copper’. At least he wasn’t reduced to fronting daytime ads on Channel 5 for window blinds.
*for jump job
Yup, Trowbes old son, totally believable, precisely the sort of thing chief constables of police forces do every day,
Police forces no….. paramilitary terrorists like the ruc YES
Posters really wanting Stalker’s assessement of Hermon should read what he wrote, starting at the bottom of p. 262, especially this:
“It should never have been a battle, although I respect, if not admire, the way in which Sir John Hermon took the fight to me. He protected the Force and himself from intrusion by me into its anti-terrorist efforts and practices, and he succeeded. I believe he was wrong to do so and that co-operation with me at the time I asked for it would have served those admirable aims much better.”
Harry Flashman
Yup, Trowbes old son, totally believable, precisely the sort of thing [sectarian] chief constables of [dodgy] police forces do every day
You left out two importance words which I’ve helpfully inserted for you.
And it would have been even better, Big Maggie, if you had replaced “son” with “coot”, as I shall be 79 on Sunday.
When one has to decide which of two Chief Constables is telling the truth (though I have never read that Sir John denied Stalker’s allegation, and he certainly didn’t sue over it), then it is probably best to accept the account of the one who grew up outside Northern Ireland.
If the man on the Falls Road alleges malfeasance by the RUC, then there are arguments why his testimony should be disbelieved, but when an English Chief Constable encounters the same thing there are no ad hominem arguments that can be advanced.
Or is Harry Flashman alleging that having a mother born in the Irish Republic does make you a pathological liar? Why then has none of the rest of Stalker’s book been disproven?
The sad fact is that partition, unless accompanied by something like the Good Friday agreement, turns NI’s Nationalists and their legitimate political aspirations into a fifth column, classified as traitors and criminals. Sir John’s cigarette packet displayed nothing criminal or even unethical. It was just an attitude that was so utterly at variance with normality in England that someone raised in England found it amazing.
Am I correct Harry in thinking that you had close relations in the RUC?
He certainly had to know about the duplicity of his agents, of judicial murders being approved, of innocent families/individuals being forced to get involved in intelligence work under threat, of funeral goers being assaulted and hassled, etc.
I cannot judge him, the task before him was immense and one where moral lines were easily blurred, if they existed at all (from all I have read I doubt they did for either side).
But…How he could condemn and pledge to rid NI of terrorism on one hand while using loyalists as weapons and/or doing nothing to stop them from attacking funerals and innocent Catholics is beyond me.
Was Stalker a Chief Constable?
I don’t think so, Surely he was an Assistant CC in Manchester.
Stalker was deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester. Repstones, you have obviously never read my comments.
Wasn’t he (Stalker) Deputy to ‘Gods Copper’ James Anderton who said that Homosexuals deserve to die of AIDS. He never had much to say about that. Heard John Hermon on Radio Ulster tonight, fairly disparaging about Paisley. I believe he was a fair man, he had views that some would dislike, but ultimately, he cared deeply about the RUC and all who served in it.
…and adding to what Driftwood says, if you were one of “the staff”, that’s all you can expect from your boss in what was a crazy, mad and maddening time.
To make judgements on the decisions of a man who had his head in a vise with the screw being tightened by both sides doesnt make much sense.
It did strike me that he seemed to enjoy it though.
He seemed to have had the capacity to be fair.
as I shall be 79 on Sunday.
Well done Trowbridge, many happy returns for Sunday!
Drawbridge H. Ford is 79 on Sunday….goes to disprove the maxim, that ‘folk get wiser as they get older’.
‘Wasn’t he (Stalker) Deputy to ‘Gods Copper’ James Anderton who said that Homosexuals deserve to die of AIDS. He never had much to say about that.’
Drift, im sure im not the only one who would like you to enlighten us, as to the relevance of Mr Stalkers superior’s views on homosexuality and the investigation Mr Stalker carried out here in the north regarding collusion????
Brian, apologies, I realise you’re more impartial than most.
William do try and grow up thats amature trolling at best
Thanks Ann, and all the best to you, though we still have some minor differences.
And William, age does not necessary make one more wise, only more focused, as I have demonstrated in the Stalker rigmarole.
RS
If Stalker had any conscience, he would have stood up and remarked on Andertons’ vile assertions. He didn’t, because he had ambition and wanted to make a name for himself. Would you buy ‘secure’ window blinds from this man? He was/is a huckster. Unlike Sir John.
I appreciate you may be sympathetic to James Anderton. I am not. I think he was a dingbat.
Driftwood, what you assert in your apparent, private conversation with RS is simply despicable, and if you want to continue it, would you please go offline???
So no doubt Drift, you’ll be so direct in your condemnations of Iris Robinson’s DUP colleagues.
Or maybe you just think ill of anyone who would dare to open the dreaded envelope marked ‘collusion’. On the basis of your attempt to sully Stalkers name, its pretty obvious what your game is.
RS
Yes I would condemn Iris Robinson and her colleagues for the same offence. Pure bigotry.
I also heard John Hermon refer to Paisley in much the same manner-if not as direct- for fermenting trouble. When his officers were under attack from so called loyalists after the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement. Jacks professionalism and loyalty to his force was in direct contrast to certain politicians who have since followed the money. A bit like Stalker.
Trowbridge, I’m not sure what part of my post you find ‘despicable’ Please elaborate.
You keep saying Drift about Mr Hermon’s loyalty to the ‘force’. Not in question. But as you have mentioned conscience, surely then you can criticise him in the same way you did for Stalker. Considering the nefarious activities some of his colleagues were getting up to?
raven
Caring deeply about the Ruc isn’t necessarily a compliment.Because he cared deeply about those involved in shoot-to-kill and disrupting funerals of only republicans doesn’t make him in any shape or form a fair minded man.Like any family suffering a loss we grant condolences to his family but let’s not start any revisionist nonsense that because he was a copper’s copper he was an impartial,objective chief constable.
Which law was being enforced above, the one that states, Thou shalt not bury thy dead unmolested?
Maggie
Perhaps the one that said thou shall not produce guns in a public place and fire shots in the air? Or dress in terrorist uniform?
Strange you don’t comment on stopping Loyalist illegal activities. But I suppose it was always OK for the police to that
“it is probably best to accept the account of the one who grew up outside Northern Ireland”
….ah Paddy….nice to see a non racist comment
….you can never trust the Irish you know. Lord Brookborough would have been proud of you!
“doing nothing to stop them from attacking funerals and innocent Catholics is beyond me”
Strange viewpoint. I always thought that pro rata more Prods were convicted of sectarian murders than Catholics were.
And of course, PIRA murdered more Catholics than the Loyalists ever did…. buit you don’t mention those.
cynic
Perhaps you can tell us how many protestant funerals were disrupted by Jack’s ruc?And brian if Jack Hermon was so well briefed explain this.A young lad named John Boyle found weapons in dunloy graveyard.He immediately told his father who in turn informed the ruc.A couple of hours later the inquisitive teenager went back to the graveyard to inspect his find and was promptly murdered by the sas.Tell me the difference between Blair and Jack?
Mr. Herman’s job was to defend the indefensible and he had about as much success as anyone could have had given the circumstances and the quality against him. As a unionist RUCman he was fairly effective at what he did even if that wasn’t policing to nationalists. Didn’t the Libyan gear come in on his watch after all, and wasn’t that Unionism’s biggest disaster because it lead (indirectly) to the successful England campaign and forced negotiations? Nevertheless, I’m sure he was awful good to his mammy and anything else is now between him and his God and should be left there because his family weren’t combatants and should be left in peace. Anecdotally I’ve heard tell of an aughnacloy who had tea with him in his house one afternoon in Donaghadee and neither Jack nor his bould successor had a clue.
latcheeco,
explain how hermon was “a unionist RUC man”…..
Hermon, like it or not, did is duty and enforced the law.
Some people in this country may not have liked the law that was passed to ratify the AIA of 1985 but it was.
People may not like the law on paramilitary displays but it was there as well and Hermon enforced it too.
Probably the line that sums him up comes from the aftermath of the AIA when a senior civil servant said to Hermon that he was considering resigning…. Hermon’s response was “Do your duty as I will mine”….
This is a Chief Con of the Royal Ulster Constabulary was always going to be a target for the people whose activities he curtailed.
….ah Paddy….nice to see a non racist comment
It is nothing to do with the race, it is rather as Latcheeco succinctly puts it, his job was to defend the indefensible. This is the way partition works, turning legitimate political aspirations into treason, and making what should be a legitimate police force into an organisation as dubious as the ones it was intended to fight against. Senior RUC men were constrained to overlook police actions which in other societies would be considered criminal.
Getting into a long bout of speaking ill of the recently dead is not something I want to do, and of course Sir John’s actions and opinions can be defended by a long screed of whatabouting comments about the forces he was attempting to combat. However, just because Sir John is newly dead, doesn’t mean we have to characterise John Stalker as a liar, when he isn’t. The family tree on a cigarette packet story is not something that anyone from outside NI could dream up: it is so alien to modern thinking.
I hope that Sylvia’s unselfish work in looking after him all this time is rewarded in some sphere or another, and that she will now pursue her political career again in a liberal and reconciliatory fashion.
Skullion….thanks for helping me to understand what I wrote.
thankfully we seem to have moved from from the lowest of postings which were evidenced in the following link…….
http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/unionists_need_to_let_bygones_be_just_that/P25/
[i]“And of course, PIRA murdered more Catholics than the Loyalists ever did…. but you don’t mention those.[/i]”
Nice propaganda “truth”, cynic, but, alas, the Sutton analysis of those killed during the
Troubles tells a somewhat different story.
The PIRA killed 517 Catholic civilians. The Unionist thugs killed some 873 Catholic civilians.
I suggest you check your “facts” BEFORE posting