There’s no record of all the children killed..i wanted to tell their story SIOBHAN O’CONNOR ON SUNDAY...THE BIG INTERVIEW
JOE Duffy has vowed the child victims of the Troubles will never be forgotten as their families opened up to him in a new book and documentary.
In Children Of The Troubles, the RTE star and journalist Freya Mcclements explore the lives and tragic deaths of youngsters killed during the conflict in the North.
Over several decades, the violence claimed the lives of thousands of people of all ages, including babies, young sports stars and teenagers just starting their first jobs.
Joe, 63, told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “People got used to it in the South. We ignored it and went on with our lives.
“It was as if the killing in the North, that we heard about every morning, was happening in the Maldives.
“How were children who were killed on this island, 40, 30, 20 years ago [ forgotten]? How come their names never made it into the newspapers?”
Joe told how he hopes his passionate work will stop history repeating itself, adding: “The book should be sent to every MP in the House of Commons.
“Nobody can justify any violence again, from any side.
“As one of the parents said, ‘The bullet that killed my child, James Kennedy, still hasn’t stopped travelling’.
COMPASSION
“It didn’t just travel in distance, it travelled in time because it had catastrophic effects on lots of my family.”
Joe has compassion for the forgotten children of conflicts having written a book on those who were killed in the Easter Rising in 1916.
The dad of triplets, who are now 24, said: “It suddenly struck me, we were coming up to the 50th anniversary of the first child killed in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, that’s Patrick Rooney who was killed in Belfast in his own home in 1969.
“But there was no official record of all the children killed, with my research my aim was to tell the story of their lives, to try and humanise the numbers.
“As one parent said, ‘All my child became when he died was a number’. 3,500 people were killed in the Troubles and she wanted him remembered as a human being with hopes and aspirations.
“I was a social worker in a previous life and realised when I did the Easter Rising book that children can be forgotten about pretty quickly.
“We were interviewing one family in Forkhill, Co Armagh, on a Saturday afternoon and it was the first time they’d met the family of the other child who was killed in the same bomb.
“I remember saying to them, ‘Is this upsetting bringing it all back for you?’ and they said, ‘How can you bring back something that’s never gone away?’ They added, ‘We think of our Martin every single day’.
“One of his brothers was badly injured and permanently disabled because of the same bomb so he was like, ‘You’re not bringing it back, why would we forget our son or daughter?” Joe took his experiences of speaking on the airwaves to people in their darkest hours, to interview those families bereaved by the Troubles. And the nation’s favourite Liveline presenter, forever synonymous with the catchphrase “Talk to Joe”, recalled one of his favourite memories from his longstanding show.
He said: “We got one call from a taxi in Dublin, an Indian lady, Sophie, living in England and she used to spend every Bank Holiday in Dublin looking for her long-lost sister who ran away to Ireland when she was 16.
“Sophie would walk up and down
Henry Street and Grafton Street looking at faces in the hope she might see her sister Vicky.
“On the day she called Liveline she was in the taxi going back to the airport and she was crying and told the taxi man she had been coming here for 15 years looking for her sister.
“He said to her at 2.50pm why don’t you ring Joe, we could hear the ding dong for the plane going. He put her on and she gave a description, obviously her sister was here and changed her name.
“She explained the only reason why she had run away was she got a job in London and fell in love with an Irishman.
“We found the sister that evening, her name was Vicky Jackson, she was living down in Mullingar and we reunited them the next afternoon.
I love the programme, you have a fair idea where Liveline is going to start but you never know where it’s going to end, sometimes it ends in tears and other days it ends in laughter, it has a rich tapestry.”
Born in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, and brought up in Ballyfermot, Joe said his mother Mabel is a ticket and has her full faculties. The radio favourite admitted she keeps his feet firmly on the ground, adding: “My mother still lives in Ballyfermot, she’s 90. She still goes up and down to Mass, still does the church collection, still gives out to me, she doesn’t use the wooden spoon anymore. We’re so lucky to still have her.
“She listens in to the show but Mabel’s line would always be, ‘Don’t lose the run of yourself, if people criticise you you’re not that bad but if people praise you, you’re probably not that good’.
“The only thing she’d say to me is, ‘No bad language, respect people’s religion’ which I do regardless of whether we agree or not.
“When I did the Papal Mass in 1979, the only thing she gave out to me about was the length of my hair, true as God, and the jacket I was wearing. So since then I’ve always had short hair and I always go to work in a suit with a shirt and tie.”
As for downtime, the seasoned broadcaster shuns the limelight in favour of a quiet life.
He said: “I go to the gym, I swim every day at 6am but I know there’s no evidence, says you. I paint, I walk.
“I have four adults living at home with me, including my lovely wife, it keeps you busy.
“I like cooking, I’d be a home bird, I’ve never been in Lillies Bordello for instance. I’ve been in Brendan O’carroll’s movie and his sitcom, he’s just finished doing his Christmas and New Year’s special. “I was with him last week and I was giving out to him he hadn’t put me in it this year. There’s too many stars trying to get in it at this stage, much bigger than me.”
■ Children Of The Troubles is on RTE One tomorrow at 9.35pm and the book is out now.
A parent said, ‘All my child became was a number’
JOE DUFFY ON ONE PERSON’S ORDEAL
There was no official record of all the children killed
JOE DUFFY ON WHY HE WROTE HIS NEW BOOK