“We walked in the cold air
Freezing breath on a window pane, lying and waiting
A man in the dark in a picture frame so mystic and soulful
A voice reaching out in a piercing cry,
it stays with you until
The feeling has gone, only you and I,
it means nothing to me
This means nothing to me
Oh, Vienna”
Looking back now, it was probably one of my first discos. In the Town Hall in Ballinrobe, on a Friday night. Back then to get the stonewashed effect on your jeans without having the money to buy actually stonewashed jeans, you left them in the half-filled bath with a few drops of Parazone added. The first attempt at this saw too much bleach added, and all that remained of the jeans were the zip, button and studs. For this night though, the jeans had stayed intact...but midway through the disco, the fluorescent lights made the jeans look like they’d had a can of paint liberally splattered on them. It was not a good look.
I’d been at many discos in the years after, but that night stays in the mind. Not just because I probably had my heart broken at some stage that night too. In that sense, it was your normal teenage event. A rite of passage. The cavernous hall transformed into a kaleidoscope of light and darkness that made it far more alluring than it should have been. Midge Ure and Ultravox’s new single Vienna which I quote above, was played a few times that night. Its pulsating beat ideal for the slow sets. In those moments, the town hall became a place of possibilities that would be shattered once the lights went on to the strains of Amhrann na bhFiann. I remember afterwards making it home with my mates, arranging to meet in the morning for a game of football. Life seemed interesting and lay ahead for decades.
It was St Valentine’s Night, 1981.
When the news broke in the morning of an horrific event on the far side of the country, we were too young to have made the connection between what we had attended and come home safely from.... and that event in a city few of us knew well. In homes across North Dublin, bedrooms from where the revellers had left the night before remained untouched and unvisited that day. Unlike ourselves, 48 people had not come home in the early hours, reminiscing about what had happened and what was possible. Whatever plans they had for that weekend were not fulfilled...on that day, they stayed forever young.
I was a 15 year old then. Those who died were a mixture of the years just above that. Young people like myself, starting out on the discovery of life. When I think of the Stardust, my mind goes to the lives that those who perished missed out on. My mind goes to their families who also missed out on their company. The familial joy of the flotsam and jetsam of life and love.
In the 43 years since, I went on to do things and see things and say things that my existence allowed me to. They were denied all of that. As a country, we should also be ashamed of how they were treated. Sometimes, we tend to assume that just because the State is saying something, that it is automatically the correct logistical and moral action. Sometimes, we feel that if we can make life harder for people, then we should. Sometimes, there is a great need for a bit of decency that does not need to have traumatised people jumping through hoops to get what is rightfully theirs.
We have seen on many times in the past few decades that this has not always been the case. The nod and wink mentality of the old boy’s club might be laughed off as the way that business was done, but when you see the toll it takes on ordinary human beings, you quickly realise that it was very wrong. And it is those wrongs that the Government of today apologised for this week.
The request of the families that this tragedy be placed into the school history books is a noble one, if only to tell future generations that how we have treated the most vulnerable in this country is not always something that we should be proud of.
May the families whose lives were shattered 43 years ago, find some solace in the events of this week. May it never ever happen again.
