Cold Open

It’s July 7th, 2013, at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, England.

On Center Court, 26-year-old tennis player Andy Murray wipes his face with a towel bouncing the ball off the grass and preparing to serve. It’s something Andy has done millions of times in his career—but never with as much at stake.

Andy is in the final of the Wimbledon men’s singles competition. The player on the other side of the net is the top seed and world number one, Novak Djokovic. But Andy has beaten the odds and taken a lead. He’s two sets up and if this serve goes his way, Andy will write his name into the record books as the first British player to win the title for seventy-seven years.

Andy hits a powerful serve. Novak just manages to return the ball, but it’s a slow, uncontrolled looping shot back over the net. Responding quickly, Andy hits a powerful forehand to Novak’s weaker backhand… and Novak hits the ball into the net.

Andy drops his racket and covers his face in disbelief. He’s won. The spectators roar as Andy’s emotions get the better of him and he waves to his ecstatic family in the crowd. This is the moment Andy has been working toward all his career, all his life, ever since he first picked up a tennis racket as a child, growing up in the small Scottish town of Dunblane.

Andy Murray’s Wimbledon title sparks joy across Britain. He’ll win a host of awards, television specials will mark his victory, and he’ll even be knighted by the Queen. But the celebrations will be especially enthusiastic in Andy’s hometown.

For the people of Dunblane, Andy is more than just a local success. He’s part of a wider story of trauma and survival that has shaped the town and its inhabitants for almost two decades, ever since Dunblane became infamous as the site of Britain’s deadliest mass shooting, which Andy Murray survived as a schoolchild on March 13th, 1996.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is March 13th, 1996: The Dunblane Massacre.

Act One

It’s 9:30 AM, on March 13th, 1996, in Dunblane, Scotland; seventeen years before Andy Murray wins the Wimbledon men’s singles title.

Andy is 9 years old and jokes with his classmates as they walk down the hall at Dunblane Primary School. Andy’s in a good mood because his first lesson of the day is over, and now it’s time for his favorite: gym class. Andy spots his older brother Jamie walking the other way, and the two siblings playfully punch each other’s shoulders as they pass—but Andy stops his boisterous behavior when loud popping noises ring through the hall.

In the 1990s, there are still tens of thousands of legally owned guns in homes across Britain, but still gun crime in the country is rare. Most children have only ever heard gunshots on television or in movies. The idea that someone might carry such a weapon into a school and use it is unimaginable—so when Andy hears the loud noises, his first response is to wonder whether someone has set off firecrackers as a prank.

A few seconds later, the popping noises begin to slow—but the silences in between are punctuated by the screams and cries of young children. After a moment, a teacher runs along the hall toward Andy and ushers his class through the nearest door to the headteacher’s office.

The headteacher looks up in confusion at the sudden influx of students into his office, but his expression changes to one of horror when the teacher says there’s a man with a gun on the premises. As the headteacher bolts out the door, the other teacher tells the children to sit on the floor and keep away from the windows. But the headteacher returns seconds later, his face pale. He orders the children into another nearby classroom and, as they leave, Andy sees the headteacher pick up the telephone and dial 9-9-9 to summon emergency services.

Andy and his classmates stay in this classroom for the next two hours. Grim-faced police officers occasionally enter and assure the children that the gunman has gone and they’re all safe, but they must remain in the classroom for the time being. Teachers try to distract the children with songs and coloring, but even the adults are struggling to hold back tears.

Eventually, Andy’s class is escorted back along the hall and into the school playground, where he’s enveloped in a hug by his mother. Only when Andy gets home does his mother break the news that sixteen of his fellow students and one teacher were killed by the gunman that morning. The children who died were all four or five years old, and were shot in the gymnasium—the very place Andy was headed to when the gunfire started.

Andy feels a sudden panic that the shooter might still be on the loose, but his mother reassures him that the gunman won’t be coming back. He killed himself before police arrived at the school. Then his mother tells him that the perpetrator was 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton—a well-known figure in there small town. Andy and his brother have attended youth groups run by Hamilton, and his mother has even given the man lifts home in their car.

The Dunblane Massacre, as the school shooting is quickly named, dominates British news coverage for days. Newspapers dedicate several pages to the attack. The Queen and Prime Minister issue statements of condolence. The Secretary of State for Scotland rushes to Dunblane to coordinate support efforts as the community tries to come to terms with the tragedy. Dunblane Primary School quickly re-opens to provide a semblance of normality for survivors like Andy, but no one can miss the taped-off gymnasium or the news reporters still camped out at the school gates.

The detectives leading the investigation soon announced that the gunman had been recently questioned by the police about allegations of inappropriate behavior toward children. They suspect that Hamilton attacked Dunblane’s schoolchildren in response to what Hamilton saw as harassment by the police.

Soon, though, the grieving families will begin to demand more answers. They won’t just know why Hamilton did what he did. They’ll want to know how he was able to do it. After detectives confirm that Hamilton used four legally owned handguns in the shooting, a campaign will begin to tighten Britain’s gun laws and ensure nothing like the massacre at Dunblane Primary School can ever happen again.

Act Two

It’s April 1996, in the city of Stirling, Scotland; one month after the Dunblane Massacre.

Ann Pearston, a mother of three school-age children, sets up a table in a shopping mall. She lays out pieces of paper on the table, then begins asking passers-by whether they’re prepared to help her change the law to prevent another mass shooting.

Four days after the Dunblane Massacre, Ann took a phone call from a friend. Like many people in the days that followed the tragedy, their only topic of conversation was the killings in nearby Dunblane. The massacre has extra poignancy for Ann because she previously lived in Dunblane. She knows that if she had still been there, her children could also have been among the victims. And as the two friends talked current events on the phone, they decided that they had to do something to prevent another school shooting. Within days, they prepared a petition to the UK government demanding that handguns be banned. Today, Ann is standing by her table at one of Stirling’s busiest shopping locations to collect more signatures for her campaign.

Ann isn’t the only person to have been moved to action by the tragedy. Many of the shoppers she talks to know the town of Dunblane well. So, they sign the petition without hesitation and several offer to help collect more signatures. Thanks to the people of Stirling, Ann’s petition soon gathers momentum.

As the number of signatures grows, the petition gains attention from the media, which only further increases the number of people who want to sign. Ann and her fellow petitioners then form an organization that they name the Snowdrop Campaign after the only flower that was in bloom when the massacre took place. They receive another boost when several parents of children killed at Dunblane reach out to commend them for their efforts. The support is especially vocal from Mick North, a widower whose only child, five-year-old Sophie, was among those killed.

Ann arranges for the Snowdrop Campaign petition to be handed over to the British government at the end of May 1996, two months after the shooting—a date chosen because it coincides with the beginning of an official inquiry into the tragedy. By then, the petition has garnered more than 700,000 signatures. But the inquiry soon reveals the first rumblings of opposition to the Snowdrop Campaign—because not everyone in Britain agrees that gun laws should be tightened. The official inquiry hears evidence from shooting club members who don’t want to lose access to their firearms, from gun retailers who don’t want to lose their livelihoods, and from sports professionals who worry about the impact gun controls will have on Britain's ability to host international events.

As a result of these submissions, the official inquiry into the massacre does not recommend a total ban on handguns. But the government is aware that the majority of British people are on the side of the Snowdrop Campaign and that handgun control has become a major issue for voters. So, Prime Minister John Major offers a compromise solution. As the first anniversary of the massacre nears in 1997, the government bans the private ownership of most handguns apart from long-barreled pistols used by shooting clubs.

But the new law doesn’t go far enough for Ann and the Snowdrop Campaign, and they soon launch a second effort to convince the government to tighten the laws further. This time, rather than collecting signatures on a petition, the Snowdrop Campaign aims to win over all doubters. It launches a billboard campaign with the simple slogan “Ban all handguns” written on a chalkboard in a child’s handwriting. It also films a commercial that’s screened in cinemas showing a human-shaped target being blasted apart by bullets, with voiceover by actor Sean Connery. Scottish musician Ted Christopher then adapts the words of Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” into an anti-gun anthem. He records the song with Dunblane Primary School children as backing singers, and the track reaches number one in the UK pop charts.

Thanks to all these efforts, within a year of the compromise ban coming into effect, the British government will extend the legislation to cover all models of handgun. The new regulations will have an immediate impact. More than 150,000 handguns will be taken out of circulation, gun homicides will become even rarer, and there won’t be another comparable mass shooting in Britain for over fourteen years.

But the new gun controls will come too late for Dunblane. Still this grieving Scottish community will come together to survive it's trauma and find its own way to heal the scars of the past.

Act Three

It’s September 24th, 2004, in Dunblane, Scotland, eight and a half years after the school shooting.

Dozens of local children watch on as Mick North holds up a wicker basket and releases four white doves into the air. They fly away with a flap of their wings and Mick smiles at the rapt faces of the youngsters all around him wishing, as he had done every day for the past eight years, that his daughter Sophie was among them.

In the months after the Dunblane Massacre, donations flooded into the community from across the world. The townspeople had to decide the best way to spend the money and some wanted to donate it to local good causes. Some wanted to fund more anti-gun campaigns. Others thought it should go to facilities to help the scarred town recover. Eventually, civic leaders decided to spend £1.6 million to build a new community space for hosting youth groups and sports clubs. Now, almost a decade after the tragedy, the Dunblane Center is finally ready to open—and as the father of one of the school shooting victims, Mick North is a guest of honor for its unveiling.

After several speeches from visiting dignitaries, a ribbon is cut to ceremonially open the center. Mick joins the throng as they wander through the door. He chooses not to follow the crowd to the refreshments in the main hall, though. Instead, he turns and heads down a ramp, passing a mirror onto which the words “Forever remembered” are carved. Beyond it, decorating the glass walls of the new center, are seventeen etchings, each a picture chosen by the families of the victims to remember their loved one. Mick finds his way to the image he’s chosen for his daughter - a cat sitting on a book. Sophie loved stories and she loved animals. And Mick stands silently before this image as the sun gleams through the glass, casting shadows of the etching warmly over his face.

The Dunblane Center will quickly become a focal point for the small Scottish town. And it’s there that many of its residents will gather in the summer of 2013 to cheer on local boy Andy Murray in the men’s final of Wimbledon. As a survivor of the Dunblane Massacre, Andy’s sporting triumph will help put to rest some of the painful memories of Britain’s deadliest mass shooting which took place almost two decades earlier, on March 13th, 1996.

Outro

Next on History Daily. March 14th, 1756. British Admiral John Byng is executed on board the HMS Monarch for “failing to do his utmost” in battle.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves.

Edited by Dorian Merina.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.