We can provide reconciliation to families of Troubles victims like my friend, Tim
4 min read
As an 11-year-old boy, I lost my friend to an IRA bomb. I want victim families like Tim's to get answers. The government's Legacy Commission offers hope of that possibility.
One Saturday in March 1993, I was an 11-year-old boy getting ready to leave the house to get on the little blue sprinter bus that would take me into town. I was meeting some friends and had probably told my Mum I needed to buy a Mother’s Day card for her or something.
The next day, I would walk my Border Collie dog, Gem, and maybe play some games on my computer, an Amiga 500.
I would normally have been playing football on the Sunday as well, but we were shortly moving house, and city, so I had stopped playing. Otherwise, it was a fairly normal weekend.
Just before I was about to leave the house, my Mum told me I wasn’t going. I was 11 years old and utterly indignant. I could do what I want; it wasn’t fair. The rage was ready to go.
But I saw an emergency news bulletin on the TV instead. Before the days of rolling 24-hour news, an interruption in programming. Rare then, but almost unheard of now.
The newsreader said a bomb had exploded in the town centre. I wasn’t going anywhere. Later, news bulletins said that the IRA had carried out a bombing, just as they had when they had detonated a bomb at an industrial site in the town a few weeks before.
The next day, I went out to walk Gem at the park just up the road. I saw someone I used to play football with and asked him why the team wasn’t playing that day.
He said the game was cancelled because one of the boys in our team had been critically injured in the bomb attack and was in hospital.
This was the first time I heard my friend, Tim Parry, was in intensive care having suffered life-threatening injuries on Saturday, 20 March 1993. The day before Mother’s Day.
I grabbed the lead on Gem and ran home. I crashed through the front door. I didn’t feel anything. I was totally numb. I don’t remember anything about my reaction or anyone else’s.
I now realise the news, five days later on 25 March, was inevitable. Tim had died after his life support machine was turned off. Another young boy, three-year-old Jonathan Ball, had also died at the scene of the bombing.
I missed Tim’s funeral as I was back with family in Scotland — something I regret to this day.
I don’t know what happened that day other than someone I played football with had been killed.
Since that, I have tried to understand. I studied the politics of violence. I completed my dissertation on the politics of Paramilitaries. I worked in Northern Ireland and, as part of that, had to meet and shake the hand of some of the people from the IRA ultimately responsible for the deaths of both Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball.
I don’t seek revenge. I have messaged with Colin Parry, Tim’s Dad, and I don’t think the Parry family ever expects to get justice.
I want answers, and so do hundreds of others, including the family members of UK veterans killed bravely serving and protecting their country.
Much of the focus of the government’s efforts over recent months has been on the importance of protecting UK veterans from harassment and malicious lawfare. It is right that it is a key priority, and I believe the proposed legislation being debated this week will deliver that.
I would like to see more focus on how the approach the government is taking can get the answers for the families of the victims. The government’s proposed Legacy Commission offers the hope of that possibility. With enhanced investigation powers and, finally, a substantial agreement with the Irish government to open up their records fully.
I hope this process will be able to deliver the answers needed to get to true reconciliation.
Those innocent victims who, like Colin and Wendy Parry, still live with the pain and injustice of what they have endured for so many decades. If the new Legacy Commission delivers truth for even one family, then it should be considered a worthwhile effort.
Graeme Downie is the Labour MP for Dunfermline & Dollar.
