Many disruptions in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) (Meade and the TFTR Group 1991 Proc. Int. Conf. on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion (Washington, DC, 1990) vol 1 (Vienna: IAEA) pp 9–24) produced populations of runaway electrons which carried a significant fraction of the original plasma current. In this paper, we describe experiments where, following a disruption of a low-beta, reversed-shear plasma, currents of up to 1 MA carried mainly by runaway electrons were controlled and then ramped down to near zero using the ohmic transformer. In the longer lasting runaway plasmas, events resembling Parail–Pogutse instabilities were observed.