Living in the shadow of Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a long profile by Michael Russell of Dr Jim Swire which appeared yesterday on the website of the West Highland Free Press. It is full of fascinating information about his life and family background.  The passages that follow are those that relate to the Lockerbie affair:]

Obviously, inevitably, we talk about Lockerbie. Since losing his beloved daughter Flora in that atrocity almost 25 years ago, Dr Jim Swire has thought about little else.

“It has been difficult, but I try to keep my campaigning on Lockerbie within certain bounds,” he tells me at the family’s home-from-home in Orbost, north Skye. “I have to try to remain a human being, in spite of all this.”

That effort involves regular breaks at Leobost, the house that Jim built in the 1970s in an area where he spent a much of his childhood. (...)

After Eton, it was off on national service and his first brush with terrorism.

“I was sent out to Cyprus and the Greeks under Archbishop Makarios were killing British soldiers whenever they could. I saw what happened to morale in our regiment when someone was killed. Our sympathies were with the Turks so when I was on night patrol you went to the Turkish part — it was safe there.”

Talk of terrorism brings Lockerbie to Jim’s mind; I suspect it’s always there, waiting to erupt.  We spend the next 10 minutes discussing timers, break-ins, and geopolitics.

To summarise a horrendous quarter-century of heartbreak, struggle and dogged persistence is, on the face of it, quite simple. Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi didn’t plant the bomb onboard Pan Am Flight 103 — Iranian proxies did, in revenge for the shooting down earlier in 1988 of an Iranian airliner.

Jim’s own journey has taken him from being a “cloth cap-doffing member of the establishment” to having no faith whatsoever in politicians or the judicial system. And behind it all he still misses his daughter.

“She really was a smasher,” he says. “She loved Skye. She came up here on holiday at every opportunity and would go cycling round the island. And when I think of her joking and laughing, walking down through the departure gate, not knowing that just a few hours before there was a break-in at the airport…”

He stops himself before he gets too upset. (...)

In the early 1960s, after achieving the necessary A level grades in evening classes, Jim went to medical school in Birmingham.

“I wanted to do something that benefited humanity. I wanted to use my manual skills and people skills, which weren’t that bright because of my strange, lonely upbringing here. I led a very isolated childhood. I enjoyed it in my own way but it left me not a natural mixer.

“But medicine was perfect because in a medical situation you get people coming to see you because they want some skill that you have got so you don’t need the normal meeting skills  as the situation is already structured for you. The role is already cast for you, and I made some good friends through it.”

His first and only practice as a GP was in Bromsgrove, just a few miles south of Birmingham. This is where Jim and Jane have their permanent home. Their remaining children, William and Catherine, live near Edinburgh and Malvern, Worcestershire, respectively and have children of their own.

In 1991 Jim left the Bromsgrove practice and the medical profession when Lockerbie — first as he tried to bring the Libyans to justice, and then as a post-verdict convert — took over his life. He thinks, however, that his time in the front line of campaigning is drawing to a close.

“We’ll see what happens with e-petition 1370,” he says. “It’s in the hands of the Justice For Megrahi group now.”

Jim hinted that a major revelation would coincide with this December’s 25th anniversary of the bombing. Perhaps he’ll finally be able to lay the past to rest before too long.