Friday, November 07, 2008
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.
Brian Walker @ 10:49 AM
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.)Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 12:24 PMi 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 usPosted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 12:26 PMI remember seeing him in Cranmore Park some time after he had retired. He was pushing the kids on the swings. He looked content.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:10 PMI doubt that we would be enjoying the peace that we have today without the efforts of Sir John Hermon. RIP
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:12 PMPredictably 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:15 PMOne 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:18 PMNot to totally disprove your thesis but he wouldn’t be the first or last “golf course smoker”!
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:31 PMmartin 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:55 PMLarry 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 01:58 PMProbably 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:00 PMHarry
Maybe Martin will fill us in on the details. Martin?
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:08 PMI 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:11 PMI 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:22 PMYup, 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:22 PMPathetic 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:29 PMHermon 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:31 PMJack 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:31 PM*for jump job
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:31 PMYup, 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 YESPosted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:32 PMPosters 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.”
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 02:55 PMHarry 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 03:10 PMAnd it would have been even better, Big Maggie, if you had replaced “son” with “coot”, as I shall be 79 on Sunday.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 03:14 PMWhen 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?
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 04:05 PMHe 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.
Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 04:30 PMWas Stalker a Chief Constable?
I don’t think so, Surely he was an Assistant CC in Manchester.Posted by on Nov 07, 2008 @ 04:31 PM
