To the people of
Hungerford
Satan hit the streets
again
In Hungerford last
week
And caused us all such
utter pain
In letting loose his
freak.
People wonder where
was God
When this event took
place
And seem to think it’s
rather odd
He didn’t show His
face.
But don’t despair I
beg of you
For God is well aware
Of what we let the
devil do
When we don’t take the
care
To notice all the evil
roots
Or worry who the devil
shoots
Until we’re on his
list.
All the folk that died
that day
Are up in heaven now
For God has taken them
away
As only he knows how
To keep them safe and
free from harm
Where Satan fears to
tread
Where everything is
calm
And no one’s ever dead.
So rest assured you
broken hearts
That everything’s
alright
And God will mend your
injured parts
With all His strength
and might.
But let us learn a
lesson please
To watch what’s going
on
And not allow bad
things to squeeze
Where they do not
belong.
‘That poem was written by a prisoner in Brixton
prison,’ the Reverend David Salt would later reveal, ‘and it arrived
at the parish of St Lawrence during the week following the tragedy. It
was one of countless communications I received at the vicarage. In
fact there were so many offers of help that the vicarage soon had
someone working in every room. We got a photocopier and another
telephone line pretty quickly. We would prepare mini-press releases,
and many of the letters we received also contained donations. They
just came flooding in. But of course they all had to be dealt with.
There was a tremendous spirit of cooperation. Someone came in to keep
up with the press cuttings. Much of what was reported was inaccurate.
Then a rumour went around that I had said that everyone should be
buried in a mass grave. I used the media myself to correct this, and I
sent people around the pubs to repudiate this stupid rumour. If that
had got to the bereaved, can you imagine the hurt it would have caused?’
A deeply spiritual man, the Reverend Salt had a
philosophy that was nonetheless pragmatic. His message was quite
simple. It was that life had to go on. So when, the morning after the
tragedy, the vicar was asked if the choir’s rehearsal for their
production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical Joseph and
the Amazing TechnicolorDreamcoat should continue, he immediately
replied that it should. In fact one of the girls in the show was
closely involved in the tragedy. She too carried on. Could it be that
the prisoner-poet’s assertion that ‘everything’s alright’ was indeed
the case? Not for one moment. For the reality was that in the
immediate aftermath of the massacre, Hungerford was anything but all
right.
As the newspapers set about preparing their
headlines that Wednesday evening, a fleet of car transporters passed
through the town’s darkened streets. Away went Sandra Hill’s Renault
5. Away went the Playles’ Ford Sierra. Roger Breretods patrol car and
Douglas Wainwright’s Datsun likewise soon disappeared into the night.
It was as if there was an unconscious attempt to make all evidence of
the afternoon’s carnage disappear. The following morning, flowers
began to arrive at the town hall, where the flag flew at half-mast.
Around the town, there remained traces of chalk marks where Ryan’s
victims had fallen, with stray bullets to be found here and there.
If there was indeed an attempt to sweep away all
evidence of the massacre, it was not to be successful. For the popular
press had been out in force and was now able to report the tragedy in
predictable style. The Sun proclaimed: ‘15 Dead and so is Mad
Rambo’. In the Daily Mail it was ‘Bloodbath on Market Day’,
while the Daily Mirror spoke of the ‘Day of the Maniac’. Many
photographs obtained by subterfuge were published. None of this did
anything to help the feelings of the people of Hungerford. Within a
few days, in the makeshift offices of the hastily established
Hungerford Family Help Unit, the telephone was ringing with sad
regularity. John Smith, the coordinator, spoke of a town on the verge
of a nervous breakdown. No more cheering and chanting now.
‘What we are beginning to see in Hungerford,’ the
head of that newly created Berkshire Social Services unit explained,
‘is the manifestation of fear, helplessness, sadness, longing, guilt,
shame and anger. What we have to get across is that there is nothing
abnormal about this. There is bewilderment too. We do not need
specialist facilities and we are trying not to make it a medical
problem. But people do need reassurance and to be told it is natural
to feel this way. The stiff British upper lip is, for some people, the
worst thing possible.’
As a telegram of sympathy arrived from the people
of San Ysidro, California, where James Huberty shot twenty-one people
dead and wounded nineteen others in the McDonald’s restaurant massacre
of 1984, commentators began to plough through Britain’s own criminal
records. The events of 19 August 1987 were without doubt the most
serious shooting incident ever to take place on British soil, even
bloodier than when Jeremy Bamber had slaughtered five members of his
family with a rifle back in September 1984.
Unused to the concept of counselling, a good many
of the people of Hungerford were nonetheless desperately in need of
help. Not that there is anything new about feelings of grief or
disorientation in the wake of a tragedy. Indeed, the condition has
acquired a jargon of its own, PTSI), post-traumatic stress disorder,
being the name given to it. The symptoms vary from one individual to
another, but two of its classic features are denial and the inability
to communicate. Another is the paradox of ‘survivor’s guilt’, whereby,
far from feeling thankful for being alive, survivors suffer remorse at
not having done anything to prevent the death of others. Or, they
insist, the little they did do was simply not enough.
Murder leaves behind much debris in the lives of
those it has affected. Mass murder, though is different: it succeeds
in spreading that debris throughout an entire community. This is
precisely what happened at Hungerford. Common symptoms are depression,
insomnia, nightmares and uncontrolled crying, while children wet the
bed and become terrified of strangers. Before long the doctors of
Hungerford were inundated with such complaints. Not one of them had
ever imagined that one day their surgeries would be overflowing with
sufferers from PTSD. Yet such a day had indeed arrived.
Jenny Barnard, whose husband, Barney, had been
gunned down by Ryan, reported sensations of anger and bitterness,
especially during the early days: ‘A few days after it happened, I
just could not understand - why him? I even got to the stage where I
was thinking that I could name people - it was probably irrational
thinking, I know - who it could have happened to, or who it deserved
to happen to. I just felt very cheated. We used to say things to one
another like: "Will you still love me when I’m sixty and wrinkled?"
And I got very angry and bitter thinking, well, he’s not going to see
me when I’m sixty and wrinkled and I won’t see him.’
Like many of his fellow citizens, Ron Tarry, the
Mayor of Hungerford, was also reeling in disbelief. He had witnessed
the bloodshed at the very closest of quarters, yet he found the
reality difficult to digest. His own house in Sarum Way was only yards
from where one victim had been gunned down, but still he struggled to
believe what had happened. How on earth was it possible, he wondered,
for the name of his beloved home town, with its unique and time-honoured
traditions, and where he had lived peacefully since the end of the war,
to have suddenly become synonymous with the very worst images of
carnage and slaughter?
‘I had no idea that I was going to have this role
of appearing on the television thrust upon me,’ Ron Tarry explains.
‘The first question I was asked on TV was, what about a tragedy fund?
To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about a tragedy fund at that stage.
We are a small community of 5000 people where everyone knows everyone
- so we were all affected. But I said that people don’t want the
knowledge that a tragedy fund is going to be set up; what they need is
immediate help from their family and neighbours. I said that for the
moment at least, money was not the priority. That was my gut reaction
and, looking back, I think it was the right one. Nonetheless, the
financial side of things obviously had to be addressed. And on the
Thursday morning people from the Round Table made contact and said
that they had some money immediately to hand - and what should they do
with it? We all went to the police station. They said not to visit the
families, to leave that to the social services, who are better trained
at that sort of thing. But the Round Table said that they would pay
for taxis, rent, TV rentals and so forth - with no red tape. I can
tell you that to a lot of people that was very helpful during those
first few days.’
The town council of Hungerford could hardly boast
an impressive administration. Its only salaried employee was Mrs
Fowler, a clerk from Newbury, and she was part-time at that. Yet
members of the council gathered spontaneously at the town hall, the
focal point of the town. They had come to decide what should be done.
The British public, however, had already made up its mind.
‘Before we had even asked for money,’ the former
mayor recalls, ‘cheques and cash, some from children, began to arrive
at the town hall. It just poured in. It was frenetic, chaotic there.
But it became clear that there was going to be a need for a great deal
of money, because no one was going to be able to claim on their
insurance, and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board wouldn’t give
a lot of money - and in any case the little they do give can take a
year or two to arrive. People came in with cheques for several
thousands of pounds. So we decided to open a Tragedy Fund. Barclays,
Lloyds and NatWest, the three banks in the town, cooperated in setting
it up.’
Immediately, Peter de Savary, the financier who
owns the nearby Littlecote House theme park, where Ryan had once
worked for a few months as a labourer, contributed £10,000. Gareth
Gimblett, the chairman of Berkshire County Council, made a personal
contribution of £1000, the local authority itself adding a further
£4000. Pensioners wrote in with smaller contributions: £1 here, £5
there. Hungerford’s twin town of Le Ligueil, near Tours in France,
wasted no time organizing a campaign of support.
Three trustees of the Tragedy Fund were appointed
who lived in the area although not in Hungerford itself and were
therefore able to take a more objective view than those closely
involved in the tragedy.
Following a message of condolence from Buckingham
Palace, Her Majesty’s private secretary wrote to Mayor Tarry on 26
August, enclosing. a personal contribution from the Queen.
Interrupting her Cornish holiday, Mrs Thatcher was
soon on the scene. After flying from RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall to RAF
Lyneham in Wiltshire, the Prime Minister drove the ten miles to the
Princess Margaret Hospital. Having toured the streets of Hungerford
and met some of the relatives of Ryan’s victims, she was close to
tears. Looking grave and shaken after these, encounters, she spoke to
the assembled members of the press. ‘I am glad I have come,’ she said.1
had to come. It was so unbelievable and the only thing I could do was
to be with the people who have suffered. I feel rather like most other
people. There are no words in the English language which could
adequately describe what happened.’
While the Prime Minister was preparing for her
visit to Hungerford that Thursday, the Reverend Salt was preparing for
Holy Communion at St Lawrence’s. Reading from the Book of Wisdom, he
too struggled to find words which might give some comfort to the
bereaved: ‘The souls of the just are in God’s hands and torment shall
not touch them ... Their departure was reckoned as defeat and they are
going from us a tragedy. But they are at peace.’
The vicar was not to struggle, however, to find
words of praise for the role of the Prime Minister: ‘I am someone who
does not normally have many good things to say about Maggie. I used to
think of her as being brash and tub-thumping. But that day she was not
Maggie the politician; she was Maggie the human being. Whilst she met
with the bereaved, I took Denis around the garden. I was criticized at
the time for not being at the door to meet the PM. I said: "So what -
the people who matter here are the bereaved."’
A few days later Downing Street was again in touch
with the vicar:
Dear Mr Salt,
Thank you for inviting me to your home and enabling
me to meet some of the families who lost their loved ones in the
dreadful and tragic shootings at Hungerford. I appreciate the
tremendous burdens on you at present, and I know that my own visit
added to them. I know so well how little words can do at times like
this, but if my visit helped in any way at all I am more than grateful.
My thoughts and prayers will be with you as you
continue your work to help and comfort the families who are suffering
so much. Yours sincerely
Margaret Thatcher
Mrs Thatcher also wrote to the Mayor:
Dear Mr Mayor
I am most grateful to you for allowing me to visit
Hungerford and for accompanying me on Thursday. I was glad to be able
to thank so many of those in the town who risked their lives to
protect local people during those dreadful and tragic shootings.
Hungerford will never forget that day. But I also know from my visit
that the magnificent response of its people, and the depth of their
feeling and concern for all those who have been injured or lost their
loved ones, will never be forgotten either. I feel for you and all
those in Hungerford as you care for those who suffer, and as you face
the future together. My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Yours sincerely
Margaret Thatcher
Ron Tarry was in no doubt that the Prime Minister’s
visit had helped a great deal: ‘We were delighted that she had taken
the trouble to come. I was with her throughout. I was really stunned
by heir, absolutely stunned. I had previously -seen her as a strident
parliamentarian - and she was in fact a mother, a woman interested in
people and how they had suffered. I was impressed beyond words. She
was very kind to the families. It was not a question of a photo-opportunity.
It was just me, the local MP Michael McNair-Wilson, Denis Thatcher,
the PM and the vicar. It was not a showpiece at all, because all of
this took place on the lawn at the back of the vicarage. She talked
about looking to the future and was superb. I had met the PM at the
police station, and naturally I was keyed up. She asked me to join her
cavalcade on the way to the ambulance station. My car was elsewhere,
so I said we should walk, since it was only 150 yards away. Michael
McNair-Wilson seemed to find the walk difficult, since he had been
having dialysis. The PM was not walking with Mr McNair-Wilson but had
driven on and was waiting at the ambulance station. I was, however,
amazed that she noticed what I hadn’t - that he didn’t feel well - and
she expressed concern about it. When we followed her around the fire
station someone yelled that she should do something to stop people
having guns so easily available, and that was the first time in
Hungerford that I heard her Parliamentary voice - it was her Prime
Minister’s Question Time voice! But all in all it was a very moving
experience. I was very emotional about the whole thing.’
Well received as it was, the Prime Minister’s visit
to Hungerford was such that any comfort she might have been able to
provide was of a transitory nature. Longer-term care was the
responsibility of the Newbury division of Berkshire County Councils
Social Services. Its director, Sue Lane, had been involved in the
tragedy almost from the outset. This was because her department was
responsible for the running of the Chestnut Walk old people’s home,
outside of which somebody had been killed. In fact two of her staff
had risked their lives by rushing outside in an attempt to help, but
only to be instructed to take cover again. Sue Lane’s advice was of an
eminently practical nature: ‘Don’t bottle up your feelings. Talk to
your children and allow yourself to be part of a group of people who
care. Try to take time out to sleep and rest and think, and be with
your close family and friends. And remember that there area, lot of
people who want to share and help.’
By Friday 21 August, two days after the tragedy,
the sharing and helping to which she had referred was to hand in the
form of the Hungerford Family Help Unit. Initially based in the town
hall, this was able to draw on support from a wide-ranging combination
of statutory and voluntary agencies, including social workers,
psychiatrists, doctors, the Victim Support Unit, the Samaritans and
the widows’ charity CRUSE. The precise purpose of the Unit was to
provide an immediate response for people in distress, taking account
of both practical and emotional needs, in addition to the planning of
continuing care and counselling services over an extended period. Soon
leaflets outlining the Unit’s role were being printed in preparation
for circulation to every Hungerford. household. That Friday afternoon
and evening, within just a few hours of its inception, social workers
started visiting families of the bereaved and those with a member who
had been injured. Although the social services deserve to be
complimented for acting with such rapidity, by-passing many a
bureaucratic procedure, their work was not always appreciated by all.
The Reverend Salt explains: ‘People didn’t always liase that easily.
Ron Tarry and I would try and sort them out every now and then. What
we didn’t want was a lot of bureaucracy being set up. And I have to
say that at least half the people who were supposed to be helping were
running around helping the wrong sort of people. I went into the
social services offices once, to find out the addresses of relatives.
All I wanted to do was to carry out my pastoral role, providing
comfort and so on. But when I would be told that this information was
confidential, this would really make me spit and see red.’
The Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, found his way to
Hungerford on the Sunday after the tragedy. He announced that he had
already summoned a meeting of senior Home Office officials to examine
the whole question of private individuals keeping weapons at their
homes. There was also talk of introducing an amnesty for illegally
held firearms. ‘We are also considering,’ he said, ‘the issue of
allowing civilians to have automatic and semiautomatic weapons.’
While the Home. Secretary was deliberating on the
issue, however, more than a dozen arms dealers from Dorset to
Gateshead continued to advertise for sale, in leading gun magazines,
versions of the Soviet-designed Kalashnikov assault rifle and American
M1 carbine used by Ryan. In fact, Mick Ranger, the sole UK importer of
the type 56 semi-automatic sold to Ryan, and who dealt directly with
its Chinese manufacturers, Norinco, reported that sales of the
Kalashnikov had increased significantly during the week following the
massacre. He insisted that this was entirely coincidental. Nonetheless,
he had sold an additional twelve such weapons since Ryan’s rampage
through Hungerford.
If some time was still to pass before such weaponry
was outlawed, then there was considerably less hesitation about the
withdrawal of gratuitously violent videos from public sale. Yet two
days after the massacre Martins Newsagents in Hungerford High Street
was continuing to display videos such as Annihilation, Wheels of
Fire and Wanted Dead or Alive, all depicting violent action
on their covers. While the shop’s manager continued to insist that he
was obliged to wait for instructions from head office before being
able to remove them, the Cannon Cinema in Newbury acted on its own
initiative, withdrawing the latest Mel Gibson film, Lethal Weapon.
It was the same story at national level too. The
BBC postponed the screening of certain programmes with a violent
content. Michael Grade, the then controller of programmes, announced
that the three-episode serial The Marksman, starring
David Threlfall as a father hunting his son’s killers, was to be
delayed for several months. A New Zealand film, Battletrack,
about a futuristic marauding gang, was likewise postponed by BBC2. It
did not escape the attention of some, however, that it was the BBC
which had paid £800,000 for the Rambo film First Blood, and
that it was Michael Grade himself who had presided over its screening
in September 1986. Everybody, it now seemed, was beginning to learn
some lessons from Hungerford.
On the Sunday after the massacre representatives of
the three religious denominations associated with Hungerford offered
words of comfort to the afflicted town. Each battled hard to reconcile
the random massacre with belief in God. The Reverend Salt was well
aware that the eyes of the world would be firmly focused upon him that
day: ‘On that particular Sunday I knew there would be a lot of press
interest. So I thought I might have to be a little bit careful as to
what I said. But something would just shoot out of a biblical text.
That hasn’t happened to me since the tragedy. I was just so busy that
I simply didn’t have time to sit down and meditate. And yet it just
flowed. It is God-given. You are just given the additional strength.
In fact the best sermons always come out of your actual pastoral
situations.’
Among the passages chosen for the day in the
Alternative Service Book was II Timothy, Chapter 1, verse 7: ‘God has
not given us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, and love,
and selfcontrol’ Psalm. 34, verse 18, reminded parishioners and press
alike that: ‘God is near to the broken-hearted and saves those who are
crushed in spirit.’
‘Humanity produces Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin as
well as Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King,’ the vicar went on to
tell more than 300 people who crowded his parish church to overflowing.
‘God gives us the power to do good and the power to do evil. God
respects us as his sons and daughters and gives us freedom of choice.
The events of last Wednesday leave us numb and empty. We mourn those
that have been killed and grieve with those who still suffer, whether
physically or mentally. I think all of us feel weak and helpless and
we come before God asking for His help and healing.’
A church assistant, Mrs Trudi Pihlens, then read
out a slow litany of the names of all sixteen victims. After a
momentary pause, she added: ‘Michael Ryan: may God have mercy on his
soul.’
In Hungerford’s Roman Catholic church, Father Tim
Healey was likewise asking a series of questions to which he was quite
unable to provide any answers.
‘What are we to think - that God did not love these
people? To think that is to suppose that God did not love his own Son.
To conclude that their deaths were devoid of meaning and purpose is to
suppose that the death of Christ is devoid of meaning. Can we say that
God lost control of events last Wednesday? This would be to deny that
God is God.’
The Church of Our Lady of Lourdes stands in Priory
Road, where Ryan killed four of his victims. The priest was clearly
shaken by the sheer proximity of the killings, saying: ‘We all
acknowledge that we live in a somewhat violent society but we never
believed events such as these could come so very close. Thus it was
that death and injury was to visit and stalk even the very road in
which this our small church is situated. It is a nightmare from which
we want to wake up.’
The Superintendent Minister of the Newbury and
District Methodist Church, the Reverend David Hawkes, addressed
himself, by contrast, to Michael Ryan’s state of mind: ‘Such are the
impossible questions that plague us and would undermine our struggling
faith. But surely no one would want to suggest that Michael Ryan was
anything but insane at the crucial moment, and a berserk mind is as
much a natural.
While the churchmen were having their say, Michael
Stewart was preparing to have his. The Coordinator of the Bradford
Fire Disaster had travelled down to Hungerford to see if he might be
able to help. In fact he helped a great deal, and his talk at St
Lawrence’s church entitled ‘Sharing the Experiences and Problems after
a Tragedy’ was particularly well received. He was anxious to ensure
that the lessons learned at Bradford were passed on without delay, and
he did his best to encourage people to think of the longer term.
Don Philip, however, a social worker with Newbury
District Council, made an important distinction between the football-stadium
fire at Bradford and the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise
off Zeebrugge, which had taken place a few months earlier: ‘They
were terrible accidents. Whereas this incident had an element of evil.
One problem which we have to face here is that whereas people were
looking for scapegoats in the other disasters, here they haven’t got
anything other than a corpse to blame.’,
And it was certainly true that to many people the
crazed gunman was indeed nothing more than an evil corpse. Not to his
relatives, however, for whom matters were far more complex. Ryan’s
cousin, David Fairbrass, explains: ‘We feel mixed emotions about what
happened. My own feeling is that he was sick. No normal person would
do that sort of thing. My mother is a victim as well. We are all
victims. Life won’t be the same again. This will always stay with us.’
In the Fairbrass household there was an atmosphere
of stunned silence and disbelief. Although they had first heard Ryan’s
name mentioned on the BBC’s nine o’clock news bulletin, they had not
been informed officially that their relative was indeed the
perpetrator of the massacre until two o’clock the following morning.
Throughout that night and afterwards, they remained in shock. Stephen
Fairbrass, Ryan’s uncle, was initially too upset to make any public
comment on the matter, despite an avalanche of requests by the media.
But eventually he too spoke out:’1 can’t believe he could do this. He
didn’t seem big enough in any sense of the word to go out and do such
a terrible thing. He never seemed to have the will to do anything
properly. Now we must live with the shame of being connected to this
man. I still can’t believe that the Michael Ryan knew is the one who
gunned down these people, including his own mother. There was no doubt
that Michael was spoiled, but surely this does not explain what he did.
I have met many spoiled children and they don’t turn into killers.’
Ryan’s suicide in the John O’Gaunt School had not
heralded the end of the police operation. For the emergency response
now gave way to the twin roles of supporting the people of Hungerford
and the huge task of investigating the incident. Over the next three
weeks, more than fifty CID and other specialized officers were to be
involved in bringing the investigation to a satisfactory conclusion.
Enquiries were carried out to locate next of kin and witnesses. A
sweep search ensured that everyone was accounted for and that no
injured or dead person had been overlooked. The Casualty Bureau,
opened at three o’clock that grim Wednesday afternoon, operated
continuously for the following forty-eight hours, dealing with almost
a thousand enquiries. A CID Major Incident Room was set up at the
Thames Valley Police’s Training Centre, using the Auto-Index
computerized crime investigation system. And in addition to the four
vehicles of the deceased, a further eleven cars were recovered from
the various scenes of crime.
‘On the Sunday I met Douglas Hurd at the police
station,’ Ron Tarry recalls. ‘He was quizzed about the gun law by the
press. Because we all went along to the shell of Ryan’s house and saw
his gun cabinet and so on. He asked some very searching questions. I
was moreimpressed by the Prime Minister’s visit, though. In fact after
her visit, one town councillor, a local Tory, asked me in for a drink.
I told him how well I thought she had done. This chap said that this
was what he had been telling me for years, and that he would go off
straight away to get me an application form to join the Conservative
Party. We often used to kid one another, so I replied: "No thank you -
she wasn’t that bloody good"’.
Sue Broughton, then the assistant senior librarian
at Newbury and community librarian at Hungerford, realized early on
that the town’s library, situated just off the High Street, could have
an important role to play in the immediate aftermath of the, tragedy.
Acting on her own initiative, she assembled a unique body of material,
turning the small library there into a comprehensive information
centre. All of her documents had at least one theme in common: how to
help people rebuild their lives after the tragedy. It was a facility
which was to prove extremely effective during the next few months,
widely used and appreciated as it was by the people of Hungerford, and
for which she would later be honoured.
Ernie Peacock, chairman of the Hungerford Town Band,
wondered whether the fete and dog show planned for the Sunday after
the massacre and originally intended to raise money for the band,
should be cancelled. After consulting widely, he finally decided that
it should go ahead, but that all the proceeds should go instead to the
Tragedy Fund. That Sunday there was an atmosphere of mourning in the
air. On the fairground on Hungerford Common the Union Jack hung at
half-mast on a short pole hammered in earlier that morning. Band
members stood to attention dressed in black, and the proceedings began
with prayers and hymns. Ron Tarry, always on hand, spoke of how the
people of Hungerford were weeping, some of them silently perhaps, but
weeping nonetheless.
By the end of the day Jean Strong, on the cake
stall, had made £70, selling home-made scones and walnut cakes and
bunches of onions from people’s gardens. Her customers insisted on her
keeping the change. On another table, among the mugs and saucers, were
laid two toy pistols with a picture of a running commando behind them,
and priced at £1.50. By the end of the afternoon’s rather strained
proceedings, they had still to find a buyer.
In the week following the tragedy, the epicentre of
the stress it had caused was inevitably the market town itself. But
many other people, many from out of town, had been affected too.
Indeed a good number of the police officers who had had indirect
responsibility in the earlier stages of the massacre were themselves
soon reporting many of the symptoms of stress. The Thames Valley
Police acted speedily to make stress counselling available, through
the offices of the Force’s Welfare Officers, in addition to liaising
with a trained counsellor and a consultant psychiatrist.
Still riding on a tidal wave of spiritual support
and Christian love, the Reverend Salt continued to administer his own
brand of counselling. I don’t know what we really mean by bereavement,’
he would later reflect. ‘Maybe we are talking about trying to release
pain. But I think, initially, for many people, it may just come out as
physical pain. Just as, if I was to jump on someone’s foot, they might
howl. And there was indeed this immediate, physical reaction. Then
there’s also the mental pain - the kind of thing you get when a small
child hurts itself but doesn’t actually cry until it catches up with
mummy. And then, of course, there can be a kind of spiritual pain in
trying to reconcile and get meaning from all of that.’
Ron Tarry was experiencing every one of these pains.
But he could find no meaning in anything that Ryan had done. He
decided, however, unconsciously perhaps, that to a certain extent his
own grief and questioning would have to be deferred, for there was
simply too much work to be done. During the first week after the
tragedy Mayor Tarry was seldom out of camera shot. There were times,
during those first few days, when representatives of the media would
be queuing at his doorstep in Sarum Way.
‘I thought that this was a role I could usefully
carry out. In fact when I announced the creation of the Tragedy Fund,
on the balcony of the town hall, there were hundreds upon hundreds of
press there. I am amazed to this day that I wasn’t absolutely panic-stricken.
But you gain the strength from somewhere. I knew what I wanted to say.
It was a challenge. I thought I could do it. That I had to do it. And
that it had to be me. So, again, I would say to myself, "Just be
yourself. Don’t put on any airs. Just be yourself."’
When the broadcaster and journalist Sandy Gall had
read the news on ITN’s News at Ten that Wednesday evening, he had
begun thus: ‘Hungerford before today was known as a peaceful town.’ He
could hardly have put it more succinctly, for as
the modest Mayor went on to explain on that same news bulletin: ‘This
town will never be the same again.’
14 ‘Jesus Christ bless
you, Hannah’
As the Hungerford Family Help Unit began to
establish itself, and cash and cheques continued to arrive at the town
hall, so the funeral parlours of Berkshire suddenly found themselves
with business they would rather not have had. For despite the previous
week’s surge of activity, ranging from the visit of the Prime Minister
to the rather sorrowful staging of the local fete and dog show, not a
single burial or cremation had taken place. Sixteen funerals were thus
awaited.
PC Roger Brereton’s funeral was scheduled to take
place on Thursday 27 August. But Liz Brereton was to see her husband
before that: ‘I asked to be taken to see him at a chapel of rest. He
was lying there looking like he did when I first met him. He looked so
young. I could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t died in
agony. I remember making some stupid remark like: "Doesn’t he look
well!" And then I told him that I loved him very much.’
It was their last private moment together, for
Roger Brereton’s funeral was very much a public affair. Over 400
people attended, including 250 police officers representing most of
Britain’s forty-three forces. Douglas Hurd was present for the service
at the parish church of St Mary’s in Shaw-cum-Donnington, on the
outskirts of Newbury. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mr, later
Sir, Peter Imbert, attended too. Seven uniformed police motorcyclists
led the funeral cortege, with a twenty-six-strong police guard of
honour lining the path to the tiny sandstone church. Six officers
carried the coffin, draped in the Thames Valley Police flag, whose
Latin motto translates as ‘Let There be Peace in Thames Valley’, and
upon which PC Brereton’s cap had been placed. Softly, the organist
played ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. The Chief Constable of the Thames
Valley Police, Colin Smith, paid tribute to his constable: ‘It is so
tragic, but perhaps appropriate if his life had to be so cruelly cut
short, that he should die when, aware of the risks, he went right into
the centre of a very dangerous situation with the clear intention of
trying to help save the lives of the people of Hungerford.’
As the service continued, Liz Brereton looked
around the packed church. All around her tears were being shed. Her
two teenaged sons, relatives, friends, policemen, policewomen,
officials of all kinds: they were all unable or unwilling to restrain
their grief. Not Liz Brereton, though: ‘I wanted to cry. But I just
couldn’t. All I experienced was just a few tears when they handed me
his cap after the cremation. But that was all.’
The Reverend Salt was wrestling with a dilemma of
an altogether more practical nature. It was clear that, with
Hungerford continuing to be the focus of worldwide media attention,
especially now that the funerals were taking place, his words to the
bereaved would receive widespread publicity. And it was equally clear
that many VIPs were going to attend. Nor had the vicar ever officiated
at the joint burial of a husband and wife, a fate that now awaited
Myrtle and Jack Gibbs, into whose house Ryan had stormed. He was to
succeed, however, in finding the additional strength necessary to
carry him through those early, traumatic days. While it was
unthinkable to simply repeat the same sermon for each funeral, the
Reverend Salt was nonetheless able to identify a common theme. This
was that what mattered most was the knowledge that in terms of death
people are not divided, either with God or, in Hungerford’s current
situation, as a community.
Funerals and fund-raising went on simultaneously.
Plans were soon in hand for a wide variety of events. An all-star
rugby match was arranged in support of the appeal, and a celebrity
cricket match. As a housebound pensioner was offering to make soft
toys to sell, with the proceeds going to the fund, organizers from the
Welsh male-voice choirs of Llanelli and Cwmbach gathered to see how
they too might be able to help. Amounts ranging from as little as 2p,
from children’s pocket money, to cheques for up to £10,000 continued
to find their way to the fund. A member of the Rootes family
contributed £5000, and a local garage donated a Nissan car worth the
same amount.,
Celebrities from the world of entertainment
discussed the making of a record, the royalties from which would go to
the appeal. The pop singer Sinitta, the Coronation Street star
Chris Quenten, the EastEnders actor Leonard Fenton and the
singer Marti Webb liaised via their agents to see if they might not be
able to collaborate on a project. Meanwhile, a sponsored cycle ride
was being organized, in addition to a mass display by the Kent
Parascending Team. Even a local thief appeared to have been overcome
by an outbreak of conscience. Having stolen the contents of a
collection box for the fund from the Halfway House pub in nearby
Kintbury, he telephoned the pub’s manager to inform him that not only
would he be returning the cash, albeit anonymously, he would also be
adding a contribution of his own.
That telephone call was made on Friday 28 August,
the same day as the funeral of Sue Godfrey, Ryan’s first victim. She
was buried at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin in her home
village of Burghfield Common. More than fifty wreaths were laid in the
churchyard, and over two hundred mourners were present, including the
two Wiltshire police officers who had found Sue’s body, riddled with
bullets, in the Savernake Forest eleven days earlier. Hannah and James
Godfrey heard the Reverend David Smith speak of their mother’s great
kindness. Both were clutching cuddly toys, as if, one newspaper put it
the following day, ‘teddy eases the pain’.
The vicar asked a question to which he was unable
to provide even the hint of an answer: ‘Why did it have to happen,
especially to someone so gentle, so loving, so caring, so much
involved in the community in which she lived a life spent caring for
others? Someone described her as a small person in a big uniform with
a big heart and an even bigger smile. She was always bubbling over,
she was always smiling, and even the most sick and pain-stricken
patients had a different glow come over them when she was in their
presence. With her sudden and tragic passing we know it can never be
the same again. An area of life, a familiar voice, a known footstep
has sadly disappeared and cannot ever be recreated.’
Unaware of why she and her brother were the centre
of attention, Hannah clung tightly to an aunt with one hand and to a
rag doll with the other. Her pink dress and yellow ribbons echoed the
flowers that were strewn beside the path to her mother’s grave. It was
not Hannah’s first visit to the church in recent days, for she had
attended the latter part of a service the previous Sunday, immediately
after religious classes that day. Then, the Reverend Jeffrey Daley,
kneeling before the altar, had laid his hands on the little girls
blonde hair and uttered the words: ‘Jesus Christ bless you, Hannah,
whereupon almost the entire congregation had broken down with the raw
agony of grief.
Five days after their mother had been laid to rest,
the children left a wreath of roses and carnations by her grave. Their
message was simple, and written in childish scrawl: ‘To Mummy - all
our love. ‘Next to it lay a wreath from their father, Brian Godfrey,
Wish you were here, Sue - all my love; it read.
Mayor Tarry, as busy as ever, was suffering too:
‘The awfulness of the tragedy was driven home to me at the funerals. I
went to seven or eight of them within two days. They are bad enough at,
the best of times. But it was the repeating and the repeating of the
funerals. Sandra Hill used to live just around the corner from me, and
I knew her father quite well. I went to her cremation at Oxford. She
had just come back to Hungerford to see some friends. She was young.
The chapel was full of young people. That was the last funeral I went
to. I couldn’t speak to the parents afterwards. I was just exhausted.
She had just chanced to be in Hungerford that day. I was very upset
indeed then. I thought, I can’t take much more of this. That really
was a low point for me. But there was so much else to do, I simply had
to get on.’
The first of the funerals had taken place two days
earlier, on Wednesday 26 August, exactly one week after the massacre.
It was the funeral of Erie Vardy. At the graveside, his widow, Marlyne,
wept uncontrollably. Clutching a spray of red roses, she heard the
Reverend Nigel Sands speak eloquently about a shocked and stunned
rural community. Addressing the mourners in the twelfth-century parish
church of St Mary’s in Great Shefford, West Berkshire, he said: ‘We
have from afar become blase about news of violence and sudden death in
Ireland and the Middle East. But when it came to our doorsteps or, for
one family, into our living-room, we learned in the most awful manner
that murder and mayhem are not confined to Beirut and Belfast.’
In fact another irony haunted the death of Erie
Vardy. For one year earlier, Marlyne and Eric Vardy had together made
arrangements for her funeral rather than his. This was because medical
experts had deemed it extremely unlikely that Marlyne, although only
in her forties, would survive major cancer surgery. But she
had defied their judgement, and thus it fell to her,
not Eric, to write the wording of a wreath. She chose a heart of red
roses on a bed of white carnations, the flowers bearing her final
message of
farewell:
Time cannot dim the
face I love,
The memory of your
smile,
The countless things
you did for me
To make my life
worthwhile.
You’ve left a place
no one can fill
In my heart you’ll
live forever
Love, Marlyne
Day after day, it seemed, in every corner of
Berkshire, funerals were taking place. More than 200 people attended
the funeral of Mr Abdul Rahman Khan, as Muslim mourners paid their
last respects. Chief Constable Cohn Smith led a contingent of Thames
Valley police officers at the cremation of Douglas Wainwright, shot
down in his car. His widow, Kathleen, herself injured in the shooting,
attended the service wearing a sling. And as that cremation was taking
place, more than 300 people crowded into St Lawrence’s, to hear the
Reverend Salt conduct the double funeral of Myrtle and Jack Gibbs, in
the presence of their four sons and three daughters. As he did so,
less than half a mile away a private family service was being held for
Francis Butler, the twenty-six-year-old accounts clerk gunned down
while walking his dog.
The funeral service of Dorothy Ryan, the gunman’s
mother, was one of the few to face rows of empty pews. Some forty
mourners attended the service, which was conducted by Canon John
Reynolds. He chose to avoid any mention of her son and made only the
most fleeting of references to the massacre he had perpetrated at
Hungerford. Although the Canon described Mrs Ryan as a kind, warm and
generous person, he made no mention of her role as a devoted mother to
the man who, ten days earlier, had shot her dead as she begged for her
life to be spared. The funeral was held at St Mary’s Church in Calne,
Wiltshire, Dorothy Ryan’s birthplace and the home of her sister, Mrs
Nora Fairbrass. A senior officer from the Thames Valley Police
attended the funeral, as did a representative of Hungerford Town
Council. Nobody doubted that Dorothy Ryan was herself a victim, and
indeed her grave was heaped with flowers, including an anonymous
circle of white chrysanthemums with the message: ‘With Christian Love
- From One Mother to Another.’
Another mother in some difficulty during that week
of funerals was Jenny Barnard. The cremation of her husband, Barney,
took place on the same day as Roger Brereton’s, and it was the first
of the funerals to be held in the massacre town itself. More than 300
people attended the service conducted by the Reverend Wallace Edwards
in the town’s Methodist chapel. As Jenny Barnard held their silently
sleeping five-week-old son Joe tightly to her chest, ‘Bridge over
Troubled Waters’, Barney’s favourite tune, was played as the cabby’s
coffin was carried in.
‘He was a bridge over troubled waters to many
people,’ said the Methodist minister. ‘One of the characters who made
Hungerford tick. Barney had such plans for Joe. He is the son Barney
adored. We are grateful that he had him, if only for five weeks. This
little boy represents an opportunity to us all. We cannot undo what
happened last week, but we can help Jenny, Joe’s mother, to bring him
up as Barney would have wanted her to do.’
As Wallace Edwards read from the Book of
Lamentations and the Gospel of St John, Jenny Barnard, dressed in
black, sobbed and shook uncontrollably. ‘Barney brought sunshine into
old people’s lives,’ the minister said. ‘Sometimes he didn’t even
collect his fares. He cared for people and carried them. God worked
through Barney and this was his way of answering our prayers. Of
course the effect of this tragedy will stay with us for a long time.
We are a tight-knit community. But I do see a little light at the end
of the tunnel. He is a little light shining in our darkness. And his
name is Joe.,
Not so very far away, at Newbury Baptist church,
the Reverend Granville Overton was officiating at the burial service
of Ian Playle, the Justices’ clerk. He had died in hospital some forty-eight
hours after being shot by Ryan. His widow immediately agreed that his
heart and kidneys could be used for transplantation. By doing this and
helping others, the minister said, Ian Playle’s love of life was being
perpetuated. And so, all around Hungerford, the funerals were to
continue. One after another, throughout that week, until Roland and
Sheila Mason, Ken Clements and George White - and eventually all
sixteen of Ryan’s victims - had likewise been laid to rest. ‘Social
services asked me if I was all right,’ recalls Ron Tarry. ‘They asked
how I was coping. My wife told them that this is how he spends his
life - rushing around - so let him rush around now - it’s what he
knows best. But the next week I spent just exhausted and flat. But all
the time the functions were going on. As Mayor I had to go along to
receive the money, so that sort of carried me through. Groups of
children would have large sales, often selling off their own toys. One
sale raised £12. That touched me as much as the larger donations.
Others had had a sponsored silence. And I remember thinking at the
time how delighted the parents must have been to see their children
raise money in that way.’
David Lee, the headmaster of the John O’Gaunt
School, was in something of a quandary. Ryan had taken refuge in the
school after the shootings. There, he had made his way into Room 6,
used mainly for English lessons, where he had himself been taught.
Having barricaded the door with a filing cabinet, table and chairs, he
had conducted a tense conversation with Sergeant Brightwell from that
room. And it was there, too, that he had taken his own life. Days
later Ryan’s blood was still on the walls; the windows remained
smashed. But exercizing the mind of the headmaster was the fact that
exactly twenty days after the massacre, some 700 children were due to
begin the new school year.
David Lee wondered what his approach should be. ‘I
dread to think what would have happened if all of this had taken place
when the school had been occupied; he admitted. ‘The town has had a
traumatic experience, and so have the children. But it’s not for me to
protect them from reality. I think to pretend that nothing had
happened would be ridiculous.’
By the time the pupils returned on Tuesday 8
September they found the room in which Ryan had taken refuge looking
spick and span. It had been completely redecorated and refurbished,
and all traces of the recent events eliminated. Nonetheless, a team of
counsellors and psychiatrists stood by, ready to help any child who
might be having difficulty coping with the chilling thought of being
taught in a room where a former pupil had taken his own life
immediately after slaughtering sixteen people. But the team of experts
found themselves without work that day. David Lee had every reason to
feel proud of his pupils, and he did.
Two weeks and two days after the start of the
school term, the spotlight was once again on Hungerford, for the
inquest was about to begin. The coroner for West Berkshire, Charles
Hoile, instructed the jury that it was up to them to examine the fury
and ferocity of Ryan’s attack. Jurors were handed booklets containing
photographs of the bodies and the area where the victims had met their
deaths. Piled under a pink blanket were Ryan’s two semi-automatic
rifles and the Beretta pistol with which he had taken his own life.
His bloodstained body armour and battledress jacket were also waiting
to be displayed. Evidence was taken from Thomas Warlow, a firearms
expert. Then Dr Richard Shepherd, a forensic pathologist, gave graphic
and detailed accounts of the wounds and probable causes of death of
each of the victims.
Altogether, seventy-three statements were selected
for use in court. Some were to be delivered in person by the witness,
in which case further questioning could take place, while others, like
Hannah Godfrey’s, were simply read. Throughout the four-day hearing,
nuns from a Franciscan community in the area took responsibility for
welcoming and caring for people who came or who were brought to them
in the hall. The Hungerford Family Help Unit was again in action,
working closely with the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths in
the task of collecting death certificates after the hearing. Unit
staff were also involved throughout the hearings providing support for
witnesses and relatives alike. The inquest was undoubtedly another
milestone in the events set in train by that fateful Wednesday
afternoon. So much had happened in Hungerford, and yet the massacre
had taken place just one month earlier.
Liz Brereton was continuing to receive a great deal
of support from both family and friends. But she kept insisting that
she simply did not need any of the professional help which was
constantly being offered to her. ‘That’s the trouble with me,’ she
would later admit, ‘I’m terribly stubborn. I did have some support,
but not fullscale counselling. It was only when my dog had to be put
down, a little later on, that it all came out. Ben was my husband
Roger’s dog, a border collie, but he was my shadow. When I heard the
news, I just dropped the phone, and that was it, it all came out that
day. Then I just couldn’t stop. This trigger of the dog was like
coming out of a cage for me, because it was only then that I really
began to realize precisely what I had lost. Notjust my partner and
friend, but a future too. Then, the tears really did come in earnest,
and they still do. And I suppose that has to be a good thing.’
Because the shooting of Sue Godfrey had taken place
in Wiltshire rather than Berkshire, a separate inquest had to be held.
Once again the experts were out, relaying the minutiae of her death as
part of the official procedures which had to be followed. During the
first few weeks after the murder of their mother both Hannah and James
repeatedly wet their beds. Neither of them could sleep and kept making
their way to their father’s bedroom. F7rom the outset, though, Brian
Godfrey’s courage had shone through. ‘No matter how bleak things look
now,’ he insisted at the time, ‘I am determined to hold things
together for the sake of the children. But God knows what they must be
going through.’
With all the innocence of their age, Hannah and
James would speak of the nasty man who took mummy away and shot her.
With the blunt honesty of small children, they would talk openly about
the killing. It was only when they would fall or hurt themselves that
they would cry out for the mother they had lost. Brian Godfrey reveals:
‘They talk about it quite frequently. They are very frank about it. In
fact it’s sometimes difficult to cope with the way they are talking
about it. It takes people by surprise. Shortly before the inquest
James fell over and hurt himself. He was crying out, asking for mummy.
We had a big crying session and I told them that mummy would not be
coming back. Hannah has been particularly protective towards her
brother. As for me, I seemed to have a constant headache for weeks on
end, though. I just felt sick. In those early days I would go into
each of the children’s rooms, before they went to sleep each night and
say: "Right, any worries, questions, problems". I remember that James
was very sweet one night. I walked in and before I could speak he said:
I not got no problems daddy." I thought, well, at least one of us is
doing all right.’
On Thursday 8 October 1987 a memorial and
rededication service was held for the town of Hungerford. It was,
according to Mayor Tarry, the day on which life in the town could
begin again. Three thousand grieving townsfolk, some sixty per cent of
the population of Hungerford, huddled against the cold by the steps of
the town hall in a moving open-air service, shared with millions of
television viewers. Once again, the flag on the town hall fluttered at
half-mast. The Reverend Salt, who was responsible for much of the
organization, bid everyone welcome that evening, and said: ‘Together
we now place ourselves before Almighty God, our Heavenly Father. May
we, who have been preserved, dedicate ourselves anew to His service.
May we offer ourselves to each other in the life of our community,
with respect for every human soul, and with thankfulness for all God’s
gifts to us. To Almighty God, our Creator, and the defender of every
soul, living and departed, be all praise and glory, now and for ever.
Amen.’
It was the closest anybody was to get, that evening,
to mentioning the name of Michael Ryan. As the list of the deceased
was read out by Mayor Tarry, the gunman’s name, a hard one to utter in
that grieving town, was deliberately omitted.
The VIPs were out in force. The Queen and Prince
Philip, were represented by the Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, Colonel
the Hon. Gordon Palmer. The junior Home Office minister, Douglas Hogg,
stood in for the Prime Minister. The Prince and Princess of Wales were
represented by Prince Harry’s godfather, the Hon. Gerald Ward, a
wealthy West Berkshire landowner and one of the three trustees of the
Tragedy Fund.
The principal sermon was preached by the Archbishop
of Canterbury, the most Reverend and Right Honourable Robert Runcie.
He was convinced that Hungerford was already on the road to recovery,
as he said:’The sharing of hurt is often the beginning of its healing.
And all that I have heard about the people of this town and your
reaction to this tragedy convinces me that the healing process has
already begun. Those of you here, that day shared in common fear and
bewilderment. It was then that you became companions in adversity. And
such companionship in adversity has its own good and healing power. It
breeds not bitterness but warmth. You have already begun to build your
life on the stories you have to tell. I think of Susan Godfrey, the
first victim, whose calm and measured response saved the lives of her
children. They will grow knowing her story and so learning how closely
love and sacrifice are linked. I think too of Police Constable Roger
Brereton, whose courage cost him his life, who knew that the community
looked to him for its own safety.’
Just before the Archbishop’s address, there was a
commemoration of the departed. It came in the form of a poem written
by the Reverend Geoffrey Carr, formerly Rural Dean of Bradfield:
Deep Sympathy to
Hungerford, August 1987
History has been kind
the centuries down
To our beloved, ancient,
quiet town;
Many have lived and
died in peace while bearing
Our mede of human ills
and pain and sharing,
Until the holocaust of
a bright summer’s day
Swept, in the crash of
shots, our peace away.
Before, no thought
could ever have conceived
Such bloody ending to
the way we lived;
Before we took for
granted we lived far
From crimes of madness,
so much worse than war.
We still cannot believe
a God-hating devil
Could turn a
neighbour’s mind to speechless evil.
But 2, 000 years ago, to kill a child
A king by fear and jealousy made wild,
Deliberately, knocking door to door
Sent soldiers; no regard for rich or poor,
To snatch each baby boy, two years and under,
From family and life to rend asunder.
No words can fully tell our grief - or theirs,
But weeping we can turn to One Who cares.
Mary was saved from Bethlehem mother’s loss
Only to watch her Son upon the Cross ...
He broke the awful power of crime and death;
Tortured, yet praying with each pain-filled
breath
‘Father, forgive, they know not what they do’
He lives to heal and love and comfort you.
He promises the world
the Day will come
When tears, pain, death
will no more rend a home.
Men will learn war no
more, a child shall lead
The lion; savage beasts
together feed.
So hope, bearing this
bitter cross, be blest,
By Jesus;. . . ‘Come,
and I will give you rest.’
The people of Hungerford had assembled in the open
air because an abbey or cathedral would have been too small a venue
for such a multitude, and too remote from the town. Nonetheless, to
assemble on the steps of the town hall was an odd, risky choice. In
fact it was a triumph, a moving, restrained and dignified occasion; so
successful indeed that many people in the town wondered if it ought
not to represent the end of Hungerford’s formal mourning period. Was
it perhaps not the appropriate time, they asked, for the work of the
Family Help Unit to cease, and thus for many of the experts from
outside to now be given their marching orders?
‘Of course that didn’t mean that the mourning was
over,’ the Reverend Salt explains. ‘But it was something of the
turning over of a new leaf. The service gave us a definite focus, We
are really called parsons - which Comes from the word "persona" - the
face of the community. And that was my job really, to make the
community accept the situation. Because if you don’t it just won’t
ever be possible to grow or move forwards.’
As theTragedy Fund edged towards the £1 million
mark, the composer Andrew Lloyd. Webber organized a gala evening at St
Nicholas’s church, Newbury, not far from his home. Sarah Brightman
took the leading role in her husband’s Requiem Mass. Julian
Lloyd Webber also took part, playing his cello. It was the biggest
single money-raising event, providing over £50,000 for the fund. At
the beginning of December, however, Ron Tarry announced that the fund
was to close shortly after Christmas. In the end, over £1 million was
raised.
As the months passed by, the Hungerford massacre
began to fade from the public’s mind. This was precisely what many of
the town’s residents had been hoping for for some time, as the
prevalent feeling now was that of wanting to be left alone. Even so,
services and ceremonies continued to take place. In February 1988 the
Reverend Salt participated, together with his Bishop, in a ceremony
for the dedication of a memorial plaque at Hungerford. The memorial
itself formed part of a screen surrounding the church’s new vestry.
And then, four months later, Downing Street issued an operational note
announcing the Queen’s civil gallantry awards. The time had come to
honour some of the many heroes of Hungerford.
A letter from the Central Chancery of The Orders of
Knighthood, St James’s Palace, London, dated 8 June 1988, announced:
The Queen has been graciously pleased to approve
the award of the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct to the
undermentioned:
Roger Brereton (deceased), Lately Constable, Thames
Valley Police Linda Constance, Mrs Bright, Ambulancewoman, Berkshire
Ambulance Service
Miss Carol Irene Hall, Air Stewardess, British
Airways plc
Carl Peter Lawrence Harries, Lance Corporal, The
Royal Engineers Hazel Jacqueline, Mrs Haslett, Ambulancewoman,
Berkshire Arnbulance Service
Michael Thomas Palmer, Supervisor, Newbury District
Council
David John Sparrow, Lifeguard and Attendant,
Newbury District Council
Jeremy John Wood, Constable, Thames Valley Police
In recognition of bravery following the shooting
incident at Hungerford, Berkshire, on 19th August 1987.
The gallantry awards were presented by Prince
Charles a few weeks later at a ceremony at County Hall in Oxford, at
which the Prince spoke to the recipients and their families. Liz
Brereton attended, together with her two sons, Shaun and Paul. Holding
the award certificate and two silver laurel leaves, she made the
briefest of statements to the assembled press corps: ‘All I want to
say is that I am very, very proud.’ Did this indicate, perhaps, that
eleven months after the massacre, Liz Brereton was beginning to emerge
from her period of mourning? It did not.
‘Actually I used to spend quite a lot of time
thinking about suicide,’ Liz recalls. ‘Because I was so desperate to
be with Roger again. I was thinking of any possible way ofjoining him.
But I knew that deep down I wouldn’t really have done it. What would
have happened to my sons - and what about the grief I would then have
inflicted upon my own parents and in-laws? Still, the first Christmas
without Roger was pretty terrible. I came into the kitchen and the
boys came in after me and we had a good cry together.’
On 28 July 1988 a Garden Party took place at
Buckingham Palace. Both Ron Tarry and the Reverend David Salt received
an invitation to attend. ‘Maybe that was a reward, I don’t know,’ Ron
Tarry would later reflect. ‘My wife and I, and our younger daughter,
Claire, were presented to the Queen on that occasion. We went along
with the Salts. A few days before it was due to take place the Lord
Chamberlain’s office rang to say that Her Majesty would like to meet
me. I obviously couldn’t go in my old Escort, so the local garage lent
me a Granada, because we had been given VIP parking in the grounds of
the Palace. I found the Queen to be very informed. It was
comparatively relaxed. As I was talking, I was trying to concentrate,
of course, but also to savour the moment. That here I am on the Palace
lawn, me,. Ron Tarry from nowhere, talking to the Queen.’
If the people of Hungerford thought that now that
almost one year had passed since the tragedy, they would be left alone,
they were mistaken. On the contrary, as the first anniversary of the
massacre approached, it was for the media yet another opportunity to
revisit the town. On Sunday 14 August 1988, just five days before the
first anniversary, the BBC screened a documentary in the Everyman
series, charting the plight of the grieving town. Fortunately it
was a sensitive, reflective piece of television journalism. In her
contribution to the programme Jenny Barnard developed the theme of the
changing nature of grief. ‘Well, I’ve now come to realize that there
is a meaning to my life. And the meaning of my life is Joe. He makes
life worth living. I have now started to feel that life is worth
living. I used to feel guilty about actually going out and laughing.
But I’ve got over that stage now. I know that Barney would have
wanted me to have gone out and laughed and joked. But as for that
awful cliché "light at the end of the tunnel", well, I can see that
there is probably light at the end of the tunnel. But how far along
the tunnel I am I really couldn’t say. Because some days you seem as
though you’re way up. And on another day you’re back down again.’
Writing in the Newbury Weekly News, Ron
Tarry issued a plea for self-restraint by the press: ‘As we approach
the anniversary of that dreadful day last year, I am sure that I am
echoing the feelings of many people in Hungerford who feel that, if
television, radio and the national press must mention the date they do
so reverently and without sensationalizing the event.’
It was a plea which fell on deaf ears in some
quarters of the press. In fact many of the townspeople went away for
the day when 19 August finally arrived. All of the town’s shops closed.
But wreaths placed at the Hungerford war memorial amply demonstrated
that the guilt peculiar to survivors had still to be eradicated in the
town.Sorry I could not save you,’one card read, ‘but I tried to do so.
I will never forget.’
