Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Graeme Downie Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to take you back to a Saturday in March 1993. I was getting ready to leave the house to get on a little blue Sprinter bus that stopped outside. It would take me into town. I was meeting friends there for a couple of hours. I had probably told my Mum that I needed to buy a Mother’s Day card, or something like that. The next day, I planned to walk my Border Collie, Gem, and maybe play some games on my computer. I would normally have been playing football on the Sunday, but we were shortly moving house and city, so I had stopped playing.

Just as I was about to leave the house, my mum told me I was not going. I was 11 years old and utterly indignant; the rage was ready to go. An emergency news bulletin was on the TV—rare then, but almost unheard of now—and the newsreader said that a bomb had exploded in the town centre. I was not going anywhere. Later news bulletins said that the IRA had carried out a bombing; they had also detonated a bomb at an industrial site in the town a few weeks before. There was no social media, and not really much more information, or even rumours. The news that night indicated deaths and multiple casualties. The town centre was closed off.

The next day felt strange, but not overly so. I had grown up on an RAF base, so I was very used to the threat of IRA bombings. I was used to checking the car, and I was aware of the kind of language being used on the news. The next day, I went out, as I had planned to walk Gem in the park—a huge park with football fields. I saw someone—I think it was Gary, who I used to play football with—and asked him why the team was not playing that day. He said the game was cancelled because one of the boys in our team had been critically injured in the bomb attack and was in hospital. That unnamed boy was in fact my friend, Tim Parry, and he was in intensive care, having suffered life-threatening injuries on Saturday 20 March, the day before Mother’s Day. I grabbed Gem’s lead and ran home, flushed—not crying; not even sad. I was an 11-year-old boy who just did not know how to respond. I was totally overwhelmed and did not know what to think. I crashed through the front door. While I was out, my mum had a phone call from a friend, telling her what had happened. I did not feel anything; I was numb. I do not remember anything of my reaction or anyone else’s.

With the hindsight of 32 years, I realise that the news five days later, on 25 March, was inevitable. Tim died after his life support machine was turned off. Another young boy, three-year-old Jonathan Ball, had died at the scene of the bombing. I missed Tim’s funeral—something I regret to this day. I was back with family in Scotland.

I do not know what happened in Warrington in 1993, other than that someone I was friends with and played football with every week had been killed. Since that day in Warrington, I have tried to understand. At university, I studied the politics of violence. I completed my dissertation on the politics of paramilitaries. I worked in Northern Ireland, where I had to meet and shake the hands of some of the people from the IRA who were ultimately responsible for the deaths of both Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball.

Prior to giving this speech, I messaged Colin Parry, Tim’s dad, whom I remember as being one of many parents shouting support from the sidelines during football matches. I wanted him to know that I still think about that day, and I still want answers. I do not seek revenge, and I do not think the Parry family ever expect to get justice, but I do want answers, and so do hundreds of others who have lost family, friends and loved ones as a result of horrific violence in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Bill can deliver the information and the truth that those people deserve—those innocent victims who, like Colin and Wendy Parry, still live with the pain and injustice of what they have endured for so many decades. I believe that everything should be tried. If this legislation is an attempt to help even one person, then it should be considered more than a worthwhile effort.