David McKittrick
Veteran Belfast-born journalist and author David McKittrick has been Ireland Correspondent of the Independent since the mid-1980s. Four collections of his journalism have been published. His awards include the Orwell Prize for Journalism, the Correspondent of the Year award, and Northern Ireland Journalist of the Year on several occasions.
How did you get started in journalism?
Twice in my life things have clicked into place naturally and perfectly for me: one was marrying my wife Pat. The other happened in the early 1970s when my main interests in life – politics, history and writing – came together.
While the Pat chronicles are too intricate to relate here, the other themes have entwined in a career which has taken in almost the whole troubles. It was an era simultaneously terrible and fascinating.
After just a year at QUB I quit and went off to see the world, well London, drifting around in a variety of jobs which such as a spell labouring in Holloway women’s prison.
Then my folks rang to say they had spotted an ad for trainee journalists with the Belfast Telegraph. I got one of the jobs, the Telegraph sending me first on a journalism course and then to the East Antrim Times.
This co-incided with the appearance of loyalist paramilitary groups, which had already interested me, probably because until I was ten our family lived on the Shankill Road before moving to an uninteresting suburb.
When the Irish Times expanded its Belfast office I was recruited, along with Fionnuala O’Connor and Walter Ellis, to a team led by Conor O’Clery. Having such fine reporters as colleagues and friends was an amazing piece of luck since their values and standard of journalism were so high.
I was also lucky to work under the editorship of the legendary Douglas Gageby, a Belfast Protestant who moved to Dublin and became a strong Irish nationalist. He taught a most profound thing about journalism: we can’t hope to be objective, he said, but we must try to be fair. That guidance has (I hope) stood me in good stead.
I went on to become northern editor of the Irish Times, reporting the awful days of the 1970s and some of the 1980s. The hunger strike of 1981 stands out as one of the most traumatic moments but there were many other instances of death and destruction.
Next came a spell as the paper’s London editor, reporting the Margaret Thatcher era. Due to a historical curiosity, the Irish Times was a full member of the Westminster lobby so I had a close-up view of the workings of British politics. The IRA was highly active in Britain at that time: I was in the Grand Hotel in Brighton a few hours before the bomb exploded there.
My next move was to the BBC in Belfast, but after a couple of years came an offer I couldn’t refuse: a new London newspaper was starting up, called the Independent. Would I be interested in becoming its Ireland correspondent?
That was in 1986, and I’m still in that post today. The intervening years saw much violence and many deaths, yet they also saw the beginnings of the political shifts which have delivered today’s imperfect peace. I like to think the paper was among the first to see the potential of the peace process.
But the terrible violence, for example the Enniskillen and Omagh bombings, continued. In Britain, readers who had initially recoiled from the violence came to take an interest in the peace process.
What stories stand out as the most memorable ones in your career?
Everyone was amazed, but generally delighted, when Ian Paisley did the deal with republicans and opened a new era. As the world celebrated the historic breakthroughs, we all wondered how it had come about. I co-wrote, with friends Eamonn Mallie and David McVea, a number of books charting the twists and turns of the process.
It was impossible to ignore the fact that so many families had been bereaved or otherwise deeply affected by the Troubles. With this in mind, and with the aim of setting out what happened during the lethal days, five of us combined with the aim of chronicling every death of the conflict.
Seamus Kelters, David McVea, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and I pooled our journalistic and academic experience to produce Lost Lives, the million-word book published by Mainstream Publishing. We came together in 1992, and are still involved in updating. Over the years we have had a great many discussions and debates, but never once a cross word. This enterprise, in existence now for twenty years, has been one of the most rewarding in my life.
None of us was objective – who is? – but collectively we have tried our level best to be fair. While we wrote as dispassionately and as unemotionally as possible, readers have said they found the book a moving experience. We were so gratified when the work was awarded the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize for the promotion of peace and understanding in Ireland. Lost Lives is an example of how journalistic technique can be applied for a greater purpose.
How is Northern Ireland currently perceived by the Independent’s readers?
Today most British readers have switched off: in fact some of the major London papers no longer have a presence in Belfast as the violence has subsided and the fierce heat has gone out of political conflict.
How do you spend your free time?
Belfast journalism today is dull – blessedly dull – compared to the dark days of the Troubles and all those crises and emergencies. It gives us all more time for hobbies – mine are reading and walking – to think of all the progress that has been made, and to regret that reaching this point involved so many lost lives.
