One of the (many)
disadvantages of living long enough to be my great age (even though I
accept that – at a pinch - it’s still better than the alternative), is that certain place names will always resonate with
you and not always for the best of reasons.
This means that when a chap like Andy Murray gets to go
home and be lauded and have his achievements on the field of tennis celebrated
in the town where he grew up, other darker memories are stirred, and probably
ones that the locals would rather the rest of us would all forget about.
You see, I can’t help it but whenever I hear the word
“Dunblane”, in my head it is always accompanied by the word “Massacre” because
it was the scene of such a dreadful incident so many years ago now, and yet it
screamed across the headlines for days back in 1996, and seared itself into my
memories so fiercely that it would take a lot to shift that particular couplet
of words any lower down my own “word association” responses list.
Rather sadly, there are certain place names which – it
seems - will always be associated with tragedy of some sort, no matter how much
the waters of history might try to wash them away. Places like Lockerbie,
Hatfield, Omagh, Hungerford, Flixborough, Aberfan, Hillsborough, Moorgate Tube
Station, Cockermouth, Whitehaven, or Saddleworth Moor become synonymous with
the terrible events which occurred there and will still cause a sharp intake of
breath, or the hairs to stand up on the back of the neck, or just cause you to
pause whenever you happen to drive past a road sign bearing their name or they
pop up in another news report or even on a weather map.
Is it really possible that people don’t now hear the word
“Lockerbie” and not put the words “air disaster” after it? Will the horrors of
Aberfan ever be long enough ago for the word “disaster” not to be the very
first thing to pop into the mind? And should we want that to happen anyway?
After all, it is because those incidents are remembered by enough people who care to do so, that the victims are
remembered too, and, sadly sometimes it is only because these things were so very awful, and
because they occurred that, occasionally, changes for the better can happen.
History will have to work very hard to obliterate the
resonance of other place names, too. Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenau, and all the rest and, to be
honest, those stains on society, alongside other places which were the sites of
other wartime horrors like Pearl Harbor, Dresden or Hiroshima or Nagasaki
really need to be remembered alongside the more recent atrocities in
Srebrenica, if history is going to be learnt from and we are ever going to
change, and become a more civilised world.
I don’t suppose that there are many for whom place names
like Dealey Plaza or, for those of later generations, words like “World Trade
Center” don’t send a chill down the spine because of the memories and emotions
that they can stir – good or bad - in all but the hardest of hearts.
I’m sure that for the people of Dunblane, association with
the successes of a tennis player would be far preferable to one with those
terrible dark days of so many years ago, because, whilst we always pledge to
“never forget” such awful incidents, sometimes it’s just as hard to have to
remember them.
Sadly, only this week, another town has had its name
associated with tragic events, as Hattersley has become the scene first mentioned in reference to the
terrible murder of two female police officers, although local people in the know would tell you it all happened in Mottram, because people do seem to get very “protective” of the place in which they live and are seldom comfortable with it getting a “bad” name. Mind you, even if it is innocent this time, to be honest, Hattersley never had the
“best” of reputations with my grandfather even during the years when I was growing up (I
think it ruined his view or something like that), and, not to put too fine a point on it, being the town where Ian Brady and Myra Hindley lived was always
going to be a tough legacy to live down, but these events really will - in all probability - cement that
reputation to the public at large, but I hope that some of the people who live there don’t start to
see it as some kind of “badge of honour” and start believing that they’re
somehow “hard” because they come from there, because that’s just far too scary a prospect for me to have to think about.
In the end, I imagine that most places would rather not be remembered as having been
a place where something dreadful happened, but sadly, far too many of them
always will be.
A great piece Martin.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately most places have something bad to remember, they don't though as it isn't reported and usually it's on a small scale - a young mother's cancer, child abuse, an old lady freezing to death. It's only the BIG horrors that we remember. Small ones are all around us.
Thank you, and what you say is very true... But, sadly, there are always going to be those place names which resonate with us and just leap off the page when we spot them, and, for all the wrong reasons, immediately transport us back to their darkest days...
DeleteYes, a thought provoking piece Martin. I expect some of the events you mention will fade with the generations who witnessed them. Truly huge events such as those at the WTC and of course the concentration camps will maintain international recognition. In some cases, the dates alone carry so much resonance and others are written into the educational curriculum across the world.
ReplyDeleteBy the time I had read your second paragraph, I was already thinking about Aberfan. This was the first 'disaster' that I ever became aware of. Although I was only seven at the time it is as vivid in my memory as the events of 9/11. I remember myself and many school mates being deeply upset. The disaster will be remembered by the people of S. Wales for generations to come but my grown up children know nothing of it even though we must have spoken about it.
Agree, great post, Martin. I have to confess that I'd never heard of the Flixborough disaster, but the others all have those tragic associations.
ReplyDeleteOnly because you're far, far too young...
DeleteA great piece of emotive writing, as ever. I remember, all too well, the Stockport air disaster, and still cringe when planes fly seemingly too low to stay up there! Dad was furious at the hotdog stands that appeared to feed the hundreds of onlookers, although I guess everyone has to make a living, even at the expense of the dead.
ReplyDelete