Massacre at Dunblane
On Wednesday 13th March, 1996, in the Scottish town of Dublane, Thomas Hamilton - a lonely man with a grudge - walked into a primary school and shot down a class of children before turning the gun on himself. It was deeply shocking for all of those in the media who had to cover the tragedy. In the library of the Times Educational Supplement, cuttings about Dunblane Primary School are kept on file. I was working as a librarian there at the time.
This poem was first published in the TES on Friday, 7th March 1997. The fee due was put into the TES charity box. I have deliberately not listed the names of the children. It doesn't seem quite right to do so on the internet.
Since then, tragedy has called at the door of a school
in the United States. Children died and parents grieve there too.
Massacre at Dunblane
Deep in a filing drawer, and always dark,
Between Dumbarton and Duncombie Schools,
Its story folded in a paper shroud
Whose trees once drank the air
And roots once clasped the earth,
Forever printed on the mind
Now lies Dunblane.
Between the classroom tales
Of nineteen sixty-eight and eighty-two.
Those files of text now silently recount
That brief memory of sixteen lives,
Their laughter and their games.
They were Dunblane's children.
Let us not forget their names.
The cuttings tell of horror and of pain,
The violent deaths by gunfire
Of these infants and their teacher
In black and white recorded here;
The blood, the screams, the sudden hush...
Oh they were Dunblane's children.
Let us not forget their names.
Wrapped in reporters' words
The unbelief, the parents' woe.
Oh why such hate?
The questions without answer come
From burning need to know.
For they were all our children.
Let us not forget their names.
We will remember Mrs Mayor,
So wickedly to silence sent,
Who died so bravely there.
And twelve who lived and suffer still
The nightmare horror and the pain.
They, too, are Dunblane's children.
Let us not forget their names.
An archive of a nation's grief,
These fragile papers handle now with care.
Though we forget the front page lines
We will remember sixteen faces
So bright in life so white with death
Forever in their classroom places.
We will remember you Dunblane.
Though they were Dunblane's children,
They were all our children.
So let us not forget their names.
A book: Dublane: our year of tears, by Peter Samson and Alan Crow, published by Mainstream Publishing at £12.99 tells the story. All royalties and profits go to Save the Children Fund.
Copyright © Virginia Purchon 1999
Page created on 3rd November 1999
This page was last updated on 13 November 2006.
