A new edition of Lost Lives, a tribute to the 3,720 victims of the Troubles, throws light on past atrocities, writes Susan McKay.
A Tyrone man bought five copies. Five members of his family, all in the security forces, had been killed. A Donegal man found out from the book that it was the UVF, and not the IRA, that had killed his brother as his family had supposed for 30 years. It has been read out in churches, Protestant and Catholic. A woman wept so much over the book in a shop she left mascara stains on the page at which she'd opened it.
A new edition of Lost Lives, the magnificent book which commemorates the men women and children who died in the Troubles comes out later this month. It does so 40 years after the first murder recorded in the book, that of John Scullion, a 28-year-old Catholic storeman who was shot by loyalists as he walked home from the pub in June 1966.
The book has been described by novelist Glenn Patterson as "a labour of the authors' true love" for their fellow citizens. It took seven years of arduous and complex work. The authors: David McKittrick, Ireland editor of the London Independent; BBC journalist Seamus Kelters; historian and commentator Brian Feeney and Belfast Telegraph journalist Chris Thornton, started work on the project in 1992.
They were joined in 1996 by former teacher David McVea. His wife, Irish Times columnist Fionnuala O'Connor, wrote the chronologies that introduce each year's murders. The first edition was published in 1999. To date, almost 20,000 copies of the huge tome have been sold.
"Since 2003, we've had significant developments," says Feeney. "We've had decommissioning and the IRA leaving the scene. The IRA has started to apologise for what it calls 'mistakes'. Revelations about security force collusion with loyalists have been coming thick and fast."
Last year, the IRA admitted that 35-year-old father of five, Eugene McQuaid, was blown up in 1974
after a bomb it had forced him to carry on his motorbike exploded prematurely. For 30 years his family lived with false rumours that he had been an
IRA man whose own bomb had killed him.
The IRA has also admitted it sanctioned the murder of Bernard Teggart in 1973. The 15-year-old Belfast boy, who had a mental age of eight, had witnessed an attempted hijacking. He was shot and left lying on the road with a sign round his neck saying "tout".
There is a lot of activity involving victims of the Troubles these days. Last month, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, was excoriated by a High Court judge for his conduct over the appointment of an interim victims commissioner. Last week, families of those murdered in the 1984 Loughinisland pub atrocity lobbied at the European Parliament as part of their campaign for an inquiry into the failed RUC investigation, which they believe was compromised. Last Wednesday, an Oireachtas committee announced
it had found strong evidence of security force collusion in loyalist killings in Armagh.
THERE HAVE BEEN deaths to add to Lost Lives - but, thankfully, not many. The year 1972 takes up 173 pages to cover a shocking 497 deaths in what was the worst single year in the conflict. From 2003 until September this year, there were 15 new victims. The total number of victims now included is 3,720.
One of the deaths newly included occurred in 1988.
"We just recently found out about the killing of Marie Kane," says McVea. "She was a Belfast woman, living in England. It was three days after the two British army corporals were killed on the Falls Road. She got into an argument about the corporals in a pub, was ordered out and was followed by an ex-soldier who stabbed her to death." The two corporals were beaten and shot during the funeral of IRA man Caoimhín MacBradaigh, who had been killed by UDA man Michael Stone during the funeral of the three IRA members killed by the SAS in Gibraltar. In the blizzard of news about
this spiral of deaths, the English story got lost.
Over the years, people have been deeply offended and angered by the way some deaths have had a high profile while others have scarcely been noted. Lost Lives has been praised for its integrity in treating all victims with respect.
Several of the recent victims were of loyalists killed in internal feuds, best known among them the flamboyant and extremely violent UDA leader Jim Gray. The brutal murder of Robert McCartney by IRA members in January 2005 caused outrage north and south of the Border and internationally.
Denis Donaldson's murder also made world headlines. The former Sinn Féin apparatchik, exposed as a British spy, was shot at the remote Co Donegal cottage to which he had retreated. "We had to leave everything up in the air about Donaldson, since everyone claims they know nothing about it," says Feeney.
After a debate, the team decided not to include Lisa Dorrian, the Bangor woman who disappeared in February 2004. "She was probably murdered by people who were in a loyalist paramilitary organisation but that doesn't mean it was anything to do with the Troubles," says Feeney. Schoolboy Thomas Devlin, stabbed to death in North Belfast in August 2005, is not included either, but 15-year-old Michael McIlveen, beaten to death in Ballymena in May this year is. The former is not thought to have been sectarian, whereas the latter is.
"The book has been overwhelmingly well received," says McVea. In 2001, it won the Ewart Biggs Prize for the promotion of peace and reconciliation in Ireland. The authors have been moved by letters and messages they have received from the families of victims, many of whom have seen the book as a fitting memorial to their dead loved ones.
"It has been a challenging project and at times a very emotional one for all of us," says McVea. "Sometimes there would be tears in your eyes. It hits you in waves, the terrible losses people have suffered."
Lost Lives, by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea, is published by Mainstream Publishing, £30