LOST LIVES is a book like no other. It took four co-authors eight years to write, and weighs in at 1,472 pages and close on a million words. The subtitle says it all: The Stories Of the Men, Women and Children Who Died As A Result Of The Northern Ireland Troubles. In no other conflict has there been such an attempt to document every single fatality. It is an awesome and sombre achievement, charting the turbulent history which links victim No 1, John Patrick Scullion, murdered by loyalists on 11th June 1966 to victim No 3,637, Charles Bennett, shot by the IRA on July 29th of this year. In between is a thirty-three year litany of heartbreak.
The book has two chief strengths: its inclusiveness, and the depth of background information uncovered. There is no ideological agenda here. The most apolitical of civilians are included, alongside, for example, those who died in the 1981 H-Block Hunger Strike, RUC members, loyalists, British soldiers, dissident republicans and so on.
One of the authors is David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent of the London Independent, and one of the best journalists to have covered the conflict. He states in his introduction: "We have differentiated between the various categories of the dead, but we have not judged them. All died in the troubles so all are listed: readers will bring their own attitudes to bear, ranking different categories as deserving different degrees of sympathy. It is human nature that this should be so: we have seen our task as simply providing the facts which will allow readers to make up their own minds."
Lost Lives also counts more than those who have died by bomb or bullet among the victims of violence. Any death which the authors regard as being directly related to the extraordinary political circumstances is included.
Some of these tales are among the most heart-rending imaginable. Take one instance: Patrick Shields and his 20 year old son Diarmuid were shot dead by UVF gunmen in their family-run grocery store in Dungannon early in 1993. The killing appears to have been motivated only by sectarianism.
Diarmuid was engaged to Julie Statham, a student at Queens' University Belfast. Within a month of her fiancé's murder, she committed suicide."When they killed my darling, they killed me too," she wrote in a final note to her parents before taking an overdose. "When two shots were fired my life ended. I may, at one stage, have had lots to live for, but 27 days ago everything that mattered was snatched from my grasp - never to be replaced. You all mean the world to me, but I couldn't let you watch me being miserable. So this seemed a sensible solution - well, it did to me. Let me also tell you Mum and Dad - how very much I love you and how very sorry I am for the pain I've caused."
Twenty-one years earlier, Minnie Malcolmson was the 606th person to die. She had rushed to the hospital where her son, an RUC officer who had been seriously wounded in an IRA ambush, was being treated. She suffered a fatal heart attack at his bedside.
McKittrick writes: "So many people have been treated unkindly by fate. A man burst into a house in Belfast, shot dead the occupant and then exclaimed, 'Christ, I'm in the wrong house' . . . A bullet fired by a soldier during a fight in a pub passed through the arm of a loyalist activist and killed a man having a quiet drink in a corner. A bullet fired by a Republican passed through the arm of a policeman on traffic duty and killed a woman motorist."
McKittrick's co-authors are Seamus Kelters, Chris Thornton and Brian Feeney. Feeney is a history lecturer who writes a weekly column for The Irish News. He is best known in the north for his 12 years as an SDLP councillor representing North Belfast. In 1993, he left both the council and the party because, he says, "I just felt I wasn't going anywhere and it was time to do something else."
While loathe to sound melodramatic, Feeney acknowledges that his political involvement put his life in danger:
"As politicians, all of us knew what we were getting ourselves into," he says. "I was bombed three times in 1993. Loyalists actually phoned me up and told me they were going to do it. But, then again, I knew how to look out for certain things, and so I could do things for my own protection. How many people who were shot, and whose deaths are in the book, had no protection?"
Feeney has seen first-hand the grief which the Troubles have inflicted. North Belfast suffered more killings than any area of similar size. As the local SDLP man, Feeney would often call to the home of recently bereaved families. He recalls one occasion, when, by the time he left, he was unable to see through his tears.
Lost Lives grew out of a pilot project which traced the details of Troubles-related deaths in North Belfast. The massive public response led Feeney and others to believe there was a need for a full-scale work like the one they have now produced. McKittrick writes, "Had we known how long this task would take, and how much work was involved, we probably would not have embarked on it."
Feeney takes up on the theme: "It came in bursts. All of us had other jobs, and we didn't know if we could cope with it. And, of course, the violence was at a much higher level than it is now. At that time we were running fast just to stand still, but about 1994 it became easier to gather the information together."
Have there been many voices raised in protest at the book's non-judgemental approach, giving equal weight to all those who have died?
"Well, there hasn't been anything really major in that way. You got people who complained - perhaps relatives of RUC officers who have been killed have objected to that person being placed alongside a member of the IRA. But that will always be the case if you write something like this. It's unavoidable."
Does Brian Feeney ever feel that the grandiose justifications for the 'armed struggle' are made a mockery of by the reality reflected in Lost Lives ? A reality, after all, often comprised of sordid backstreet murders apparently motivated by atavistic hatred, not political 'principle'.
"Well, there are these grandiose phrases - 'For God And Ulster'; 'For A Free Ireland'. . Then you look at events, for example things in the mid-'70s like Kingsmills, which were quite blatant attempts simply to intimidate the other community. And that was the case on both sides.
"Also, if you take the Good Friday Agreement, there is nothing in it that wasn't there 25 years ago [in the Sunningdale Agreement -NS]. And yet there have been more than 2,000 deaths since then . . ."
Which brings us to a simple question - how significant is it that the book has been published now? Do the authors think that the death toll will stop at 3,637?
"Obviously we all hope it's coming to an end," Feeney replies. "But I wouldn't go much further than saying this is probably as near as can be to the right time to publish it. It was originally supposed to come out earlier, and if it had done, we would have missed Omagh."
Feeney also makes the point that without the financial assistance of the Rowntree Organisation, the book would have cost in the region of #80. Now selling for a more accessible #25, Feeney has nonetheless heard reports from bookshops, that "they are finding quite a few of their copies are becoming marked. So many people in the north know someone who has died. So there are copies where there are marks of a single fingerprint running down the index."
Lost Lives is one of the essential books about the northern conflict. It presents clearly, relentlessly what at one time Brian Feeney felt was "a seemingly endless chronicle of deaths". Lost Lives ensures that the remembrance of those deaths will not be confined to the loved ones left behind.
The final words go to David McKittrick:
"There are hundreds of stories in these pages of terrible deaths and the terrible injuries, of shattered lives and shattered families, of widows and orphans, whose suffering continues though the guns have fallen silent. The hope must be that, whatever lies ahead, their experience should serve as a lasting reminder of why Northern Ireland should never again return to full scale conflict, a lasting reminder of the sadness and the pity of it all, a lasting reminder that war is hell."
* Lost Lives by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton. Mainstream #25