In Memory of Roddy Carroll & Seamus Grew Murdered 12th Dec 1982

The Mullacreevie Park Massacre 

What has become known as 'The Mullacreevie Park Massacre' tragically occurred 29 years ago, on the 12th December 1982 when 2 unarmed INLA volunteers Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll were shot dead by the RUC in Mullacreevie Park, Armagh city. Despite both men being totally unarmed, Roddy Carroll was shot from a distance of six feet while Seamus Grew was shot dead from a distance of two feet by the same RUC Constable, John Robinson,who claimed he had expected to find Dominic McGlinchey in the car that the two men were travelling in. Robinson, despite admitting to lying, fabricating evidence and altering notes was acquitted at the Crown court by judge MacDermott.

E4a, Shoot To Kill and Stalker

It is now beyond dispute that a heavily armed, SAS-trained RUC unit known as E4a, who were operational in mid-Ulster during the early 1980s were engaged in what became known as a 'Shoot to kill' policy that claimed the lives of Irish Republicans and civilians alike. On 11th November 1982 Provisional IRA Volunteers Gervase McKerr, Sean Burns and Eugene Toman were shot dead in Lurgan, county Armagh. In April 1984 three members of the RUC E4a unit in mid-Ulster, 26-year-old Constable Frederick Robinson, 35-year-old Constable David Brannigan and 28-year-old Sergeant William Montgomery stood trial for Toman’s murder in front of Judge Gibson. All three E4a members were predictably acquitted with Gibson grotesquely commending Robinson for sending the unarmed IRA men to the 'final court of justice' (a 'court' Gibson presumably became intimately acquainted with when a massive Republican landmine exploded under his car blowing him to pieces!)

Later that month on the 24th November 1982, two young men, Michael Tighe and Martin McCauley, were shot at a hayshed which had been kept under surveillance by the RUC on the Ballynerry Road North, Derrymacash, county Armagh. Tighe was shot dead and McCauley eventually recovered from his injuries, neither man was involved in the Irish Republican insurgency of the period.

Eventually the Greater Manchester Deputy Chief Constable, John Stalker, was instructed to carry out an inquiry into the three incidents involving the RUC E4a unit's killing of six young men within the space of a month. By all acounts Stalker's relatively equitable inquiry enraged the RUC and the north of Ireland's counter-insurgency community who successfully conspired to have him replaced on the basis of fabricated evidence. Stalker had condemned the actions of the RUC as 'out of control' and 'more akin a central American banana republic!'

Irish Republican Socialist Martyrs Roddie Carroll and Seamus Grew

The Manchester Guardian Weekly described the RUC E4a killers responsible for the deaths of INLA volunteers Roddie Carroll and Seamus Grew as no different from the death-squads operating in South America. INLA Volunteers Roddie Caroll and Seamus Grew are honoured and remembered by their comrades in the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

"Revolutionaries are dead men on leave" - Thomas Ta Powe

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Memorial to Roddy Carroll and Seamus Grew, Mullacreevie Park, Armagh, on the spot where they were shot.