Radio 2 cleric who spent time in Belfast has ‘weeks to live’
AN Anglican minister who has had a profound influence on peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland says she’s not frightened of dying after revealing she only has a couple of weeks to live.
Rev Ruth Scott (60) worked alongside former paramilitary Alistair Little on his 2009 book Give a Boy a Gun: from Killing to Peacemaking.
It tells the powerful story of his time as a member of the UVF and how, aged 17, he killed a Catholic man.
The Lurgan man’s story — exploring why ordinary people turn to violence to deal with the issues that confront them — was developed into the 2009 film Five Minutes of Heaven, which featured two of Northern Ireland’s most famous acting sons. Liam Neeson took on the role of Mr Little while James Nesbitt played Joe Griffin, the brother of 19-year-old Jim Griffin, the man killed by the loyalist.
Too young to receive a life sentence, Mr Little served 12 years of an indeterminate sentence in the Maze prison. Always looking out for stories of hope, understanding and humanity, Rev Scott became involved in a co-writing a book alongside Little.
The book and film, produced by the BBC, tells of a fictional meeting between the two men years later and fitted in perfectly with Rev Scott’s explorations of relationships across divides.
She is also well known as a radio broadcaster and had been presenting Pause for Thought with DJ Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2.
However, the 60-year-old’s lat- est — and likely final — broadcast alongside the radio star left Virgin Radio listeners in floods of tears on Wednesday morning after she revealed from her hospital bed that she has just weeks to live after battling cancer for two years. Rev Scott, a former midwife and counsellor and among the first women ordained as priests in the Church of England in 1994, was interviewed at Southampton General Hospital by her close friend, who she has worked with for almost a decade. The mother of two was diagnosed with a lymphoma in 2017 and had hoped to have a donor stem cell transplant but revealed she is in the final stages of her life.
“I’ve had a fantastic life. I just wish it had been longer,” she said. “I’ve got two or three weeks to live at most so we’re in the middle of saying goodbyes with the family and thinking about how it is to be separating from one another. Death feels very weird at one level, but it feels very natural at another level. I’ve got to accept the fact that I’m dying. I’m not frightened.”
Rev Scott has always maintained her most important teacher in the field of conflict transformation has been Alistair Little, and she spent much time in Belfast learning from people caught up in the conflict.
Mr Little is now working internationally with men, women and children caught up in, and harmed by conflict.