Verbal Magazine

A Voice for the Voiceless

Imagine reading and listening to 365 different stories of people’s lives that were turned upside down by the Troubles. 

Not exactly comforting bedtime stories you may think. But the harrowing true life tales of ordinary men and women caught up in a long-running conflict of civil strife and whose families were changed for ever makes frightening and gripping reading.
The collection of BBC radio interviews from a series called Legacy first broadcast in 1999 has been published in a book with accompanying CDs. The dark days of the past are revisited in this anthology of lives lost that is a valuable addition to the scores of books about the Troubles.
When it was broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster at a time of unstable peace, Legacy was labelled as “a voice for the voiceless.” Personal testimonies reflect stories that had never before been told from people who never had the chance to explain how their lives were affected. Many were innocent people simply trying to come to terms with what they had been through. There are stories from grieving mothers and wives, distraught sons and daughters, heartbroken fathers and uncles. There is pain, anger and heartache. Whether it is the voice of a policeman, a paramilitary or a paraplegic, the anguish comes through forcefully.
Many of those interviewed are now carers who spend their lives looking after loved ones injured in explosions or shootings. They range from businessmen whose premises were bombed, to postal delivery workers whose vans were hijacked at gunpoint, and a mixum gatherum of prison officers and prisoners, teachers, soldiers, doctors, ambulance workers, fire-fighters, funeral directors, social workers, journalists and cameramen. 
For 30 years, life in Northern Ireland was a ritual of shootings, explosions, punishment beatings and bomb scares. The map is indelibly imprinted with a chilling litany of place-name atrocities: Omagh, Enniskillen, McGurk’s Bar, Oxford Street, La Mon, Milltown Cemetery, Claudy, Shankill, Greysteel, Loughinisland and many others.
As you read through these interviews or listen to them, frequent thought-provoking comments, often accompanied by heartfelt and declarative one-line sentences, stop you in your tracks:
“You never think you’re going to bury your kids.”
“The snow was pink where the blood had been on the road.”
“A lot of hope was taken away the Sunday that my son was shot.”
“My brother went out to look at a tank…his curiosity got him killed.”
“Three car bombs exploded in the village – the first one killed my daughter.”
The final comment is from Billy Eakin whose nine-year-old daughter Kathryn was one of nine people killed in the Claudy car bomb explosions on July 31, 1972. She had been outside their shop cleaning windows. Her father movingly captures her spirit:
“She was a lovely little girl. She was brilliant at school – the teachers couldn’t keep her in books. She went through them, one after the other, looking for another book and another book. And she was very helpful. There was an old lady lived in the village, in a wheelchair, and Kathryn visited her on regular occasions…we keep trying to rebuild our life, but you still keep sliding down the slope a little bit, into the past which is difficult to get away from.”
The audio aspect of the project is a fascinating case study into how people convey their feelings and emotions. The listener is conscious that this is not the speech of professionally-trained politicians or spin doctors, but ordinary people trying to reconcile the violence that suddenly and without warning engulfed their day to day lives. The editors have left in these pauses, colloquialisms and local quirks of speech, and have done a service by not editing the pieces too tightly producing a faithful transcription of each interview.
Given the trauma they have been through, it’s little wonder that some are suicidal. Remarkably, many are free of bitterness, hatred or ill-will. They still harbour pain and grief, but the futility of their loss is evident as well as a feeling of emptiness, despair and sense of bewilderment. Some tell of how they are tormented by continually wondering and trying to come to terms with so many unanswered questions: Why was my husband shot? What would have happened if he hadn’t gone to work that day or chosen that route? Why was she singled out? I often wonder what our son would be like today?
A recurring theme is the lack of counselling for victims. In the 1970s and 80s there was little, if any, support from the agencies. For some, the hurt will never go away. The cliché of time being a healer does not apply to a few. “Time never heals,” reflects one woman.
Legacy is supported by the Victims Unit of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. In producing it, the publishers took care to present a balanced selection of voices representing perspectives from all sections of the community. They hope that the book and 12-volume CD set (there is one for each month throughout 1999) will be a toolkit for promoting mutual understanding.
For many, there is a therapeutic aspect about telling their story. It is an opportunity to off-load, to share their burden and to pour out their hearts to listeners and readers. Like the best type of interview-based journalism these stories will comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Legacy is not easy or comfortable reading. It is a catalogue of sadness, of poignant testimonies, and of how a small society was torn apart by three decades of terror. These two-minute audio and 200-word cameos of tragic events and their impact on families are a vitally important social document and will be of significance to future historians. As an oral history and a moving but grim written record of the Troubles, it is an audio memorial, par excellence, to the past.

Legacy, the book and CD pack, is published by Elucidate Consultancy by arrangement with BBC Northern Ireland. Price £30.

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