Reporting the Troubles 1

Journalists tell their stories of the Northern Ireland conflict

Deric Henderson, Ivan Little

• Publisher: Blackstaff Press Ltd
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781780732206
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Media & Communications Industry
• Index: History

In some ways, I didn't – don't – want to remember any of it. Which is not to say that one ever forgets. I don't know any journalist who worked through the Troubles, with its relentless cycle of murders and doorstepping the homes of the dead and funerals and yet more murders, who isn't haunted from time to time by being an eyewitness to evil, to heartache and, yes, to courage too.

GAIL WALKER, editor, Belfast Telegraph

In Reporting the Troubles sixty-eight renowned journalists tell their stories of working in Northern Ireland during the Troubles – the victims that they have never forgotten, the events that have never left them, and the lasting impact of the experience of working through those years.

The result is a compelling account of one of the most turbulent periods in recent history, told by the journalists who reported on it. Beginning in 1968 with an eyewitness report of the day that civil rights protestors clashed with the police in Derry, the journalists give candid accounts of the years that followed – arriving on the scene of major atrocities; knocking on the doors of bereaved relatives; maintaining objectivity in the face of threats from paramilitaries and pressure from the state; and always the absolute commitment to telling the truth.

This is a landmark book – a history of the Troubles told by the journalists who were on the ground from the beginning and including many of the biggest names in journalism from the last fifty years. Reporting the Troubles is a remarkable act of remembrance that is raw, thought provoking and profoundly moving.

Contributors:

Kate Adie, Martin Bell, Nicholas Denis, Sean O'Neill, David Armstrong, Wendy Austin, Trevor Birney, Suzanne Breen, Gordon Burns, Anne Cadwallader, Michael Cairns, Jim Campbell, Paul Clark, John Coghlan, Martin Cowley, Ed Curran, David Davin-Power, Deaglán de Bréadún, John Devine, Noel Doran, Noreen Erskine, Paul Faith, Robert Fisk, Derval Fitzsimons, Tommie Gorman, Katie Hannon, Deric Henderson, Eamonn Holmes, Gloria Hunniford, John Irvine, Jeanie Johnston, Alan Jones, Hugh Jordan, Richard Kay, Martin Lindsay, Ivan Little, Jane Loughrey, Eamonn Mallie, Ray Managh, Steven McCaffery, Justine McCarthy, Alf McCreary, Denzil McDaniel, Henry McDonald, Jim McDowell, Eddie McIlwaine, Susan McKay, David McKittrick, Ivan McMichael, Gerry Moriarty, John Mullin, Bill Neely, Miriam O'Callaghan, Conor O'Clery, Sister Martina Purdy, Ken Reid, Brian Rowan, Chris Ryder, Gerald Seymour, Sam Smyth, Peter Taylor, Alex Thomson, Chris Moore, Gail Walker, David Walmsley, Ian Woods, Robin Walsh.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Duke Street, Derry, 5 October 1968
• How an ex-B Special owes his life to a lady on the Falls Road
• The night Paisley said I worked for the Papist Broadcasting Corporation
• The ‘honey-trap’ killings of three Scottish soldiers
• An Irish Setter, a Palestinian hijacker, Derry and me
• The crews of old
• Bloody Sunday
• ‘Get that Irish bitch off the air or someone else will’
• Uncle Ted
• Were the murderers in the room?
• The little boy who witnessed an attempt on a neighbour’s life
• The Bloody Friday survivors who inspired me
• The day the army missed the IRA’s top commander
• When Edward Heath branded Paisley ‘a disloyalist’
• How Paisley turned the jeers to cheers for me
• My night with a loyalist drag queen and the ‘beast from hell’
• An almost fatal knockout
• The broken spectacles that trapped a Miami Showband killer
• The beginning of 1976
• ‘Why does there have to be bad people in the world? My daddy was good.’
• Hidden in the ashes – my terrible reminder of La Mon
• The day the IRA killed Lord Mountbatten, two teenagers, an elderly woman and eighteen soldiers
• Gunned down at a football match
• The murder of my neighbour, Robert Bradford MP
• ‘Daddy won’t get up’ – murder under a Christmas tree
• The dirty little secret and the tears of a cub reporter
• Taking flight with Margaret Thatcher
• The Maze jailbreak
• The massacre at Darkley – and the nature of certainty
• IRA war against border Protestants
• Death on my doorstep
• ‘We’ll get you next time, Campbell’
• Martin McGuinness in 1986
• The Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing
• Knocking doors and intruding on grief
• The lasting impact of the Troubles on my life
• Taking cover during Michael Stone’s attack at Milltown
• Remembering Jillian Johnston
• I still get flashbacks to ‘the corporals’ killings’
• The Gibraltar shootings: taking on the censors
• My brushes with Margaret Thatcher and Prince Charles
• The killing I’ll never forget
• Sean Graham’s, Ormeau Road, 1992
• The day the UVF told me, ‘We bombed Dublin and Monaghan’
• An Irish reporter in the English pack
• Torment in a country graveyard
• Ten funerals in one working week
• ‘The safest place to be was on the pitch’
• The Chinook air tragedy
• David Trimble – the unlikely peacemaker
• Clinton’s men tried to arrest me under the Christmas lights
• The five ‘P O’Neills’ who briefed me about the IRA
• How Drumcree changed my home town
• A birthday present for Billy Wright
• George Mitchell – the man who lit up the peace process
• We were uniquely privileged to do this work
• An epitaph of sorts
• Good Friday – a day and night like no other
• Omagh remembered
• And then there was Omagh
• A touch of magic as Hume and Trimble collect their Nobel Peace Prize
• Rosemary Nelson’s last interview
• Chronicling the lost lives of the Troubles
• The tears of Martin McGuinness’s mother
• The murder of Martin O’Hagan
• I could see the picture unfold before it happened
• Bringing Gerard Evans home to his mother
• My meeting with the woman twice widowed by the UVF
• Missing the obvious
• Remembering the victims in the postscript of peace
• Acknowledgements