Stardust tragedy families in Derry

Derry is to play host to family members of the 48 young people who lost their lives in the terrible fire in the Stardust nightclub in Artane in Dublin on Valentine’s night 1981. 

As part of the visit, the Museum of Free Derry will screen the film ‘The Stardust Story After the Headlines’ on Friday (October 28) at 3pm. 

This will be followed by a question and answer session with a representative of the Stardust families and their legal team.

Speaking to Derry Now, Maeve McLaughlin, the director of the Bloody Sunday Trust, said there was an open invitation for anyone who wanted to come along.

Explaining the relationship between the Trust and the Stardust families, which goes back a number of years, Maeve said:

“Knowing what happened all those years ago, I actually thought the issue had been resolved. However, through the work of the Derry Model, which dealt with justice and legacy, I started researching more about the tragedy.

“We had the families up here on three different occasions and they have learned so much from the experience of Bloody Sunday. First of all it was very apparent there were 48 young people who died in the fire. So there was huge community and collective grief.

“A young woman called Susan Morgan from Derry and two young men from Belfast died in the fire. If you could imagine, there were some of those families who lost two and three members of their family. That was then made even worse by the fact they tried to tarnish the community. If people remember the original media, photographs and images were about the doors being locked from the inside. There was nearly a suggestion people had done this themselves.

“It was an example of a working class community, which had been given absolutely no support and was up against a system in Dublin that promised them inquest after inquest after inquest and they never got it. 

“So, their learning over the last couple of years coming here was first of all to examine who they were lobbying and how. The Bloody Sunday families went with them. They gathered 48,000 signatures and took it to the Attorney General in Dublin. The families from here went with them and the inquest was announced.”
Maeve described the Stardust families as having been “abandoned”.

“The only person that actually got any criminal charges against them was Christy Moore, believe it or not because he wrote the song ‘They Never Came Home,’” said Maeve.

“We started engaging with the Stardust families. They got the inquest announced and since then the inquest has not started. There have been legal battles and political battles over payment of juries, venue, all that. Here we are, a number of years on, and these families still don’t have a start date.

“It is very clear this is going to be the biggest inquest in the history of the State. It is going to have huge emotional trauma for those families. Some of those families were never able to identify their loved ones. 

“It also seems very similar in that when we look at cases of injustice here, the likes of the Ballymurphy families, for example, did all of the groundwork themselves. The Stardust families did that too. They went out and started knocking doors. They tracked down the person who made the original 999 call. They talked to the Fire Service. 

“They also disclosed that there were chemicals in the building upstairs. So, the notion that the fire started downstairs was disproved because a lot of the ceiling had come down on top of people’s arms and legs. The fire actually started upstairs,” said Maeve.

According to Maeve, the Stardust families are going to go through “awful trauma” in the next few months.
She added: “What we are trying to do is make the demand heard that there is a date set. Also, I think the system in Dublin has to prepare itself for the emotional trauma these families will go through.

“For the Bloody Sunday families here there would have been counsellors on hand. There would have been counsellors on hand for the Ballymurphy families. That is new and alien for them. They need real practical support also. 

“Their grief is etched all over their faces. It is a similar story to experiences of Bloody Sunday in many ways because they were totally whitewashed, without getting any sense of justice. That grief can then impact on mental health, addiction, suicide, trauma, all that classic stuff, and to such a scale.

“What we are hoping to do by bringing the Stardust families to Dublin is to get a direct update from them regarding the inquest. We have their legal team coming with them as well. We are hoping as well to get Seanadóir Lynn Boylan, who has been very much a voice and an advocate for them over the last, from the point of view of flushing out the political obstacles which might be still at play,” said Maeve.

Over the weekend, the Stardust families will give the Bloody Sunday families and the wider community here an update.
According to Maeve, Derry will hear directly from the Stardust families about where their campaign is currently.

She said: “I would suspect the Bloody Sunday families will travel to their inquest as well to support them as much as practically possible, certainly on the first day.

“I would suspect the Ballymurphy families and even some of the McGurk’s Bar families might well want to do the same. 

“This is trauma, this is justice and legacy but there is also a sharing of practical information that can take place. I do remember John Kelly on their first visit saying to them, ‘Who are you lobbying?’ And he said, ‘There is a Presidential election on, go and talk to all of your candidates’. And because these families are so immersed in their own grief, we know what happens. One or two people are carrying a huge campaign. 

“John gave them that advice and they did go out and they did lobby and they did get the signatures. We did walk with them and they did get the announcement of an inquest. They are not going away. They are a force to be reckoned with. They have met every obstacle full on,” said Maeve.

Maeve was of the opinion the Stardust families had been denied the truth.

“The truth that these were only young people going out for the night. It wasn’t them that did anything wrong. Over the years they have talked to the Hillsborough families and Grenfell. They have shared information there. 

“I think that once these families get their truth and their justice on the public record, that one of the things that has to come out of that is the corporate responsibility to make sure these things don’t happen. 

“If you look at it right up until Grenfell, it is working class communities not being afforded the same basic living standards as others and then being denied access to truth whenever trauma happens. 

“There is something there about how we make sure as communities and societies make sure these things don’t ever happen again.”