Shoot to Kill is a four-hour drama documentary reconstruction of the events that led to the 1984–86 Stalker Inquiry into the shooting of six terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland in 1982 by a specialist unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), allegedly without warning (the so-called shoot-to-kill policy); the organised fabrication of false accounts of the events; and the difficulties created for the inquiry team in their investigation.
The film, written by Michael Eaton, produced by Nigel Stafford-Clark and directed by Peter Kosminsky, was made by Zenith Productions for the ITV company Yorkshire Television, and screened in two parts over successive nights in June 1990. However, the programme was not broadcast in Northern Ireland itself, a precaution that Ulster Television said reflected legal advice that it might prejudice future inquests on the deceased, which had been suspended.
The programme was made with the co-operation of John Thorburn, Stalker's deputy with day-to-day responsibility on the inquiry, and was said to reveal significant new information about the underlying events and how the inquiry had progressed.
Shoot to Kill was widely applauded by critics. It won the 1990 award for Best Single Drama from both the Royal Television Society and the Broadcasting Press Guild, and a nomination in that category for a BAFTA Award. The score was written by Rachel Portman.
Synopsis The first two-hour part dramatises the events in late 1982 that lay behind the inquiry: the killing of three policemen by a massive landmine at Kinnego embankment in County Armagh; the fatal shooting of three members of the IRA, who turned out to be unarmed, in a car at Craigavon; the shooting dead of civilian Michael Tighe and wounding of Martin McCauley, also found to be unarmed, at a hayshed in Ballyneery near Lurgan; and the killing of two INLA members, again discovered to be unarmed, in a car at Mullacreavie Park, near Armagh; along with the creation of adjusted or fabricated accounts of the actions of RUC Special Support Unit members in the events, some of which unravelled in court in March 1984.
The second part shows Stalker, his second-in-command Thorburn, and the inquiry team, as they dig out more and more of what really happened, faced with a complete lack of encouragement from the RUC, a clash of views as to what was acceptable, and ultimately Stalker's removal from the inquiry before its conclusion.
Detailed synopsis
Part One
Northern Ireland, 1982. A surveillance team, tipped off by an informant, tracks a trailerload of improvised explosives to an isolated barn. During the night the barn is searched, and a listening device is placed in it, but the signal is erratic. A battery is stolen from a dumper truck on a construction site. Although the area has nominally been put off-limits by Special Branch, a car with three uniformed police is cleared to investigate. RUC Chief Constable Sir John Hermon is preaching to a school assembly nearby while the car approaches the site on the Kinnego embankment. His text includes the injunction to "render not evil for evil". As he finishes, the car is wrecked and blasted into the air by an enormous bomb − the explosives from the hayshed. In police cells, the informant is roughly hauled from a group with whom he has been picked up. But in the privacy of an interview room the mood is quite different. He holds out for £5,000 to name the men who set the bomb.
The RUC's Special Support Unit (SSU) undergoes practice training for a hostage release, briefed to use "speed, firepower and aggression". Constable Robinson goes in, but it is a dummy hostage he shoots. The IRA informant, who has named Eugene Toman, Sean Burns and Martin McCauley as the perpetrators of the Kinnego bombing, picks out a man to Toman and Burns, photographed by a surveillance operative. They are going to try to kill this man, an RUC reservist. The special support unit are briefed. The unit are to set up a roadblock when they get the signal from the surveillance group, and use what they have learnt to stop these men. After a long surveillance, the team are stood down − just as Toman and Burns leave the house for their car. They chase the car and open fire; but when the car is later examined, its occupants all dead, they are found to be unarmed − and the driver is not McCauley, it is Gervaise McKerr. A uniformed CID detective turns up, but is told to go away and get a cup of tea; the support unit have all been sent away, he can interview them tomorrow. At RUC headquarters, Sir John fixes a line with senior officers: they must conceal the existence of the source, so they will say there was a routine roadblock at which an officer was injured; this is given to the media. Meanwhile, at the SSU barracks, DCI Flanagan sorts out what they will say has happened with his team. They will say they saw flashes from the car; they assumed they were under attack; so they returned fire. This is what Constable Brannigan tells the CID officer the next morning, denying that he fired any shots after the car had stopped.
The informant leaves Special Branch a message to expect another delivery at the hayshed. At the hayshed he meets Michael Tighe, a local who is there to feed the owner's dogs. Later a surveillance operative spots Martin McCauley in town; McCauley offers Tighe a ride on his bike. They go to the hayshed, where McCauley calls Tighe into the barn to look at some old rifles that he has spotted. The listening device operator informs DCI Flanagan, who gives the order to "clear the barn". The dogs outside bark, alerting the men, and then a track of bullet holes cuts across the door, and Tighe is hit. The SSU burst in, as the bugging operator listens, and warn McCauley to drop his weapons. The reels of the tape-recorder turn as an SSU man discusses whether to finish the wounded McCauley off. His colleagues counsel not: it is too open. But there is no ammunition, and there are no explosives. Tighe's house is raided, but the police find nothing. As they leave, they tell his parents that he drew a gun at a roadblock; the police had to kill him. At the barracks, the SSU men listen to a television news report: on a routine patrol, they had seen a gunman entering the barn, and heard the sound of a rifle being cocked. Entering the barn, there had been a man standing on a hay bale pointing a rifle in their direction. They had shouted two sets of warning, then opened fire. "This year's Nobel Prize for fiction", quips one of the SSU. In hospital McCauley listens to a television report of Tighe's funeral, which emphasises Tighe's lack of paramilitary links; McCauley is charged with possession of firearms and conspiracy to murder.
A senior officer carpets DCI Flanagan and his Detective Inspector for the failures of the SSU, culminating in their having "topped the only Taig in County Down with no connection to the paramilitaries". Flanagan thinks he can rectify the situation. He is told that those on high "won't wear it". Flanagan suggests they may be able to get hold of Dominic McGlinchey. The SSU is briefed. McGlinchey, head of the INLA is public enemy number one. An informer has suggested to two INLA men, Roddy Carroll and Seamus Grew that they cross the border and bring over McGlinchey "for some action". Their car will be tailed by Armagh Special Branch as it goes south of the border, with the SSU standing off close by − without being spotted by the Garda. Nobody is to touch it until it is stopped at a roadblock in the north. The SSU will be backing up the army, who will be handling surveillance. But the tail is held up going south at the border crossing and loses its target. That night an SSU car looking out for Carroll and Grew on the southern side of the border is spotted by the Garda; one of the SSU men telephones in from a call box to say he will be going back north, when Grew also comes to use the telephone box. The SSU pair hurry back to the north and switch cars, but are unable to confirm how many are in the target car. The Detective Inspector controlling the operation gives orders to the team to "crash out" the surveillance and get to their positions. But Constable Robinson is unable to find the checkpoint site, until he crashes his car into the back of an Army Land Rover. As he and the soldiers assess the situation, the suspect car drives through. He and his colleague are picked up by a second SSU car, and they catch up and overtake the target car, forcing it to a stop. The SSU open fire with their handguns, pockmarking the doors of the car with bullet holes. Robinson opens the door and shoots the driver several times. But there is no sign of McGlinchey; and Grew and Carroll were unarmed, with no sign of any weapons.
Back at barracks, Flanagan debriefs Robinson. Flanagan tells him that they were on a routine security patrol; they received a radio message to stop the suspect car, which had crashed through a checkpoint injuring an officer. They drove alongside the other car, and he had waved his cap out of the window to signal it to stop. Robinson protests that this is not what happened. But Flanagan tells him it is a question of national security, and he is bound by the Official Secrets Act: "The law requires that you say what I tell you to say." Meanwhile, an officer is made to roll on the ground by the roadside to establish forensic support, the armourer changes the date that the weapons were issued to hide the scale of the operation, and the transport officer is told to dispose of Robinson's crashed car without an accident report. Questioned by CID, Robinson asserts that he had shot in self-defence, initially from his car − Grew's car had revved up, its door had opened, and Robinson had heard a loud bang, making him feel his life was in danger. But the CID officer is unimpressed. According to forensics, Robinson had not shot Grew from a distance through the car door; Robinson had been three-foot away, and Grew had been unarmed. He needs a statement that fits the facts. Robinson protests that he is only saying what he has been told to say. Placed on trial for murder, Robinson tells the court how a superintendent, a chief inspector and other officers had told him to lie and given him a story to tell, to protect the fact that they were acting on information from an informer, so that it should appear as a chance encounter rather than a planned encounter.
In the Northern Ireland Office a meeting discusses how to deal with the fall-out from the trial. An outside inquiry is proposed, a suggestion supported by the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). The RUC's Sir John Hermon is not happy; but is mollified that it is to him the inquiry would report, with the RUC responsible for the implementation of any findings. John Stalker, deputy chief constable of the Greater Manchester force, is recommended to head the inquiry. Stalker is contacted, and assured that the minister wants an in-depth inquiry, and any findings will be acted on − a telephone call that Stalker records. Arriving in Northern Ireland, Stalker and his deputy DCS John Thorburn meet Hermon in an otherwise empty golf club restaurant. Over brandies after their meal Hermon warns Stalker that there is a shoot-to-kill policy all right − one carried on by the terrorists; and it is Hermon, not Stalker, who will decide what gets referred to the DPP. They are not in Manchester, they are in the jungle now, and should be prepared accordingly. Stalker and his team are shown to what will be their offices, in an old hotel that the RUC now also uses for band practice, and adjacent to an RUC firing range. As they start to move in, a reel-to-reel tape recorder is capturing their every word.
Part Two