UFO Info Week-End

Disinterested where politicians are self-serving yet informed by experience in a manner no MP can be these victims rightly lay

Disinterested, where politicians are self-serving, yet informed by experience in a manner no MP can be, these victims rightly lay claim to a unique perspective. That does not necessarily make them uniquely qualified, however, to comment.An LSD user, at the height of hallucination, often believes himself to be privy to uncommon clarity; we know it is not so. She clearly feels that her moral crusade, driven on by a political stampede, is an important piece of that process That is her right. Whether it is right for the country is another question.”As the father of Emma, who was killed at Dunblane, I am well qualified to comment on the benefits of a total ban on all handguns,” one parent said in a letter to a newspaper last week. We can be fairly certain that, should Diane Blood, battling to bear her late husband’s baby, ever meet another man and want to have his child, the press will not be far behind.FRANCES Lawrence’s first concern at this time, one imagines, is to grieve for her husband. “It was a difficult decision, but to be honest, it was a relief to walk out that door.” She hopes the media will respect her decision.

Guilt over the disloyalty of letting go is hard enough, without being trapped, publicly, in that project.”Jayne Zito withdrew last summer from the Zito Trust, which she set up. In the long run, the benefits are clearly questionable.”Supposing you want to stop being defined as the parent of a murdered child, but there you are, stuck in that public role,” warns Liz Friedrich, a counsellor who has worked with bereavement “Immediately after a disaster, you are on some kind of high You can take on enormous projects But at some point, you have to fall off. “We all told him, but it was as if he thought it best to burn out.”The bereaved may draw strength, in the immediate aftermath, from public recognition. His futile meeting with the IRA was described, at best, as forlorn, at worst, foolhardy.”I drove home that evening and cried, because I truly felt I’d let so many people down,” he later said “Some called me naive, and said I was made a fool of. And maybe they were right.” Mr Wilson continued to work for peace, making the weekly journeys to Dublin He died of a heart attack last year “Without a doubt, his work killed him,” his widow said. People in Warrington have accused him of cashing in on his son’s death.The trouble is, we want heroes – but aren’t so keen on them when they get too good at it.

It is their very ordinariness that touches us, but if – as, inevitably, they will – they start to look a bit too media-savvy for our liking, sympathy soon sours.Gordon Wilson’s appeal for peace after his daughter died in the Enniskillen bombing was profoundly affecting; when he joined the Irish Senate in Dublin, fellow Protestants soon started taking pot shots at his halo. His chat show series now over, he said he “would be lying if I didn’t say I’d like them to offer me something else”. I didn’t get enough buzz out of just doing the job.” He missed, he said, the “surge of adrenalin” which media exposure brought. But after the promotional tour was over, “it was like post-holiday blues”.”After the bomb, life as a personnel manager didn’t fulfil me. Taking part in a Panorama programme, then publishing a book, he felt “shored up again”. It is, we are reassured, at least an affirmative catharsis.Other comments Mr Parry has made are more troubling When the media spotlight moved on, he says he felt “lost”. But the part the papers often play, co-opting vulnerable mourners into their sensationalist agenda, is anything but disinterested.”HAD I gone down the conventional route – if Tim had been killed in a car crash – and grieved silently, turning in on myself, I think I would have gone insane.” Thus Colin Parry confirms our belief that public grieving and campaigning “makes some sense of what happened to our lives”.

Not every campaign is media-led, and Frances Lawrence is clearly a self-possessed individual. Raw emotion is disturbingly compelling – and, once the media has given its sanction to a family’s grief, it is keen to wring it out for all it is worth.To champion a cause is to contrive a steady supply of new stories: “Tragic widow battles on”; “Grieving parents fight for justice”. We are told it is invaluable in helping police to track down the perpetrators; this may be true But it certainly makes gripping viewing. His ease in front of the camera was there for all to see.”The tearful press conference appeal is instructive. Colin Parry lost his son in the IRA Warrington bomb; Granada television subsequently gave him a chat show, commenting that the press conferences he gave “were the most horrific screen test you could have. And the press just weren’t interested.”Diana Lamplugh is another attractive middle-class woman. Her daughter Suzy disappeared 10 years ago and her agenda – women’s personal safety – is unproblematic.