Bright Brand New Day

This city, let's be honest, it always was a nationalist city.

And the fact that my church stayed silent,

the Christian church permitted a unionist controlled council to

oversee a nationalist city.

I mean, it doesn't take the brains of an Archbishop

to work out that sooner or later the lid is going

to fly off the container.

# They say the skies of Lebanon are burning

# Those mighty cedars bleeding in the heat

# They're showing pictures on the television

# Women and children dying in the street

# And we're still at it in our own place

# Still trying to reach the future through the past

# Carve tomorrow from a tombstone

# But hey, don't listen to me! This wasn't meant to be no sad song

# We've heard too much of that before

# Right now I only want to be here with you

# Till the morning dew comes falling

# I want to take you to the island

# And trace your footprints in the sand

# And in the evening when the sun goes down

# We'll make love to the sound of the ocean. #

In about 2005, I went up to Radio 4 and said,

"Guys, I have a wee story."

So I moan, and they said to me, "David, what is happening?"

And I said "My church has been hit with paint," and...

I said, you know, "We've got the potential of a grant here,

"we are going to be refurbished and after refurbishment,

"I don't want the place coloured,

"whether it's red, white or blue or green, white and gold."

So they said, "What is your plan?"

I said, "I think there is

"only one man in this town who can resolve this for me".

"Who's that?" I said, "It's Martin McGuinness,

"a man who in a previous life wore

"a hat that gave him authority,

"and I don't think he has lost any of that."

Now, within 20 minutes, Sinn Fein's office were ringing me.

"Martin would like to meet you." That rather...

strange event led to two people from opposite ends of the religious

and political spectrum meeting

and out of that we have become very firm friends,

and I consider the way in which we have been living

such separate lives,

and the vision I have of something different may be becoming real.

That's the reason why I want to accept this invitation.

To go to people...

..who are made flesh and blood just like myself,

and as equal with them, to start to share some thoughts.

There is a woman involved with us

who has a bullet inside her, close to her heart,

for over 30 years.

The intended target was missed, and she was hit instead.

The surgeons can't remove the bullet for fear that it would take her life,

and she has lived with this.

But what she would say,

and I think she's almost emblematic of some of the other people,

she would say, "I am not a victim, I am learning to become a victor here."

I think you know more people here than I do, Martin.

This is... Are you all right? This is quite some moment.

I have come face-to-face with the horror of war,

and the pain of conflict.

In Afghanistan I had a first-hand appreciation with

the brokenness of young bodies coming in

in body bag after body bag,

and it makes me want to do only one thing and that is put in place

the building blocks for something more stable that will allow us to

grow up respecting each other

because guns only take us deeper into pain.

There was no purpose in murdering me father because that is what happened.

It wasn't a mistake. Once you place a bomb in a car, you intend to kill.

It doesn't matter who they are, whether he had a uniform,

I know he had a uniform.

My father was killed, Mrs Cecilia Byrne was killed,

and they were two innocent people.

So we were together this morning, you know.

What I want to say is going to recognise that enormous

progress has been made,

and Sinn Fein have to be giving credit for where we have got to.

Right, Martin...

'And I've been amazed at the people who are making contact with me,

'former British Army soldiers for example.

'Former republican prisoners who have come up to me

'and said, "David, keep doing what you are doing."

David is my friend, we have different allegiances, but that is all right.

We have one thing in common.

We believe in peace.

If you had met the people who put the bomb in your daddy's car,

in the 1970s and 1980s, what would you have done to them?

All I wanted to know, was why?

Thank you, thank you, my goodness.

How can I follow Martin McGuinness? Erm...

Frankly, I don't think I can because I see him...

Martin, I see you as one of the true great leaders of modern times.

APPLAUSE

And my prayer is that he will be empowered and envisioned to

take us forward in the inclusive way that he is committed to.

I am looking at the man I now see

who is very different to the man in the past who

I didn't know in the past.

Reflect for a moment on the changes made in the last five years.

Politically, in terms of the Sinn Fein project...

..and, I suppose, the same may be true of the unionist

or loyalist project,

each of us have got to say sorry for my part in this.

Well, when I said got to say, that sounds like a demand.

It has to be voluntary.

St Paul, the greatest theologian of all time,

he is on record as saying that no-one is worthy, no-one is worthy,

'and I think for as long as people consider that they have a

'divine right to pass judgment on everybody,

'the person who is passing the judgment is the big loser,

'whereas the person they are wanting to condemn, that person has moved on.'

First of all, you have called for a countrywide day

of open transformation, what do you mean by that?

Well, I think what I want is a one-off public event,

but it would be an event when everybody - the police,

the army, the loyalist terrorists

and republican terrorists, who have visited our community with hurt,

"We want to acknowledge that we have visited...

"..the country with hurt, we have inflicted pain,

"we have hurt each other and we have been hurt by each other,

"and we now want to forgive and we want to be forgiven."

And that, I think, would be

a very defining moment that could help a great many people who

currently are hurting within my community,

and within the nationalist Catholic and republican community.

My name is Donald Dunne, and I am the son of John Patrick Dunne who was

killed in an explosion by the IRA.

There was also a neighbour who was blown up that day.

Her name was Cecilia Byrne.

This is your dad.

His eyes, look, are dancing. The smile on his face,

your mother looking beautiful on their wedding day.

Looking at this picture here, Donald...

it's a picture of the morning of your daddy's funeral.

I see you here, a young man, you are 18 here? Yes. Yes.

If you look at my mother there, you can see the pain that she's in.

And she never ever recovered from that day. What does that mean?

Well, apart from ourselves, my mother's whole life changed also.

From that day onwards, she became a mother and a father.

In later years, she was longer widowed than she was married.

My understanding now is that Donald was saying to himself,

first of all, saying to his wife Siobhan,

saying to his family, "I am going to speak about this,"

because part of why it became unspeakable was

he was living in the Craigavon community,

a nationalist republican community, and the republicans were

positioning themselves as protectors of the community.

It was actually republicans who killed his father.

Republicans are involved with the official IRA,

who at that time were believed to have been in ceasefire

so they did not take responsibility.

They did not say we did this.

So he's living in a community where some people,

a minority of people, maybe even a small minority of people,

were saying, good enough for him

because in some ways, Donald's father was regarded as

Donald's father worked in Ebrington Barracks

and there must have been some thought, "Well,

"if he happened to be a victim of the bomb we plant

"and the target is the British soldiers, well,

"he's collateral damage, he is expendable."

So there would have been some energy in those intensely volatile

days of, you know, '70, '73, '74 for people to say, "So what?"

And what the Dunne family might have had to do is put their head down...

Literally choose a sort of negative self preservation, silence.

This peace building initiative called Bright Brand New Day is to

allow for the hurt that is in this community to be lanced,

and that's maybe going to mean quite courageous things being

said by people who have visited our communities with hurt.

They need to hear something more than just the war is over.

I was at the Ard Fheis with a message,

and my message was that I felt that at some point in the future

there was a need for a day,

and I called it a day for open transformation.

That's maybe what Sunday May 19, 2013 is turning out to be.

I wanted a group of people representative of the hurt

that had been visited on this city to come together and,

having agreed to a formula of words, to share those words

and to allow people who are hurting within our two

traditions to appreciate, you know, there is regret.

OK, so let's proceed up the stairs now.

Normally, we would take the lift.

Well, I'll be back here.

'It was a very positive, productive meeting that encourages me

'and I tell you this.

'If we can have the same kind of businesslike approach to all

'the other conversations with the groups that we need to talk to,'

we are in business to deliver something better for our country.

There is a question that intrigues me.

Would I rather be right or be happy?

And it strikes me if you keep saying it was a just war,

therefore I can't say I was sorry. You are continuing to say,

"I am right, I am right." And that feeds on unhappiness.

Now, I talk to people whose lives have been turned

upside down by Provisional IRA violence, and I am not sure that

if Martin McGuinness or Sinn Fein were to say I'm sorry, it would...

As somebody said, it won't bring back the limb I have lost.

It won't bring back my father or my brother.

But if it is said genuinely, authentically, from the heart...

..then it will make a difference.

Because in my life experience, when people speak to me genuinely,

honestly, that is when I listen.

CHILDREN SING

# Reaching out to you and I. #

CHILDREN CLAP TO SONG

Wow...

'The fact that our committee got

'an indication that this was not an easy journey for any of us.

'I respect those who saw things differently and perhaps wanted to major'

in a very comprehensive way

on the victims.

However, unexpectedly, this journey

twisted from the path it was on.

It curved rather than twisted, and in curving, it amazingly

attracted the attention of schools and schools with young people...

..starting off tiny and yet mushrooming into the 60 plus

that we have now, participating in this initiative.

As I talked increasingly to teachers,

and particularly to principals, I was getting the message from them,

"David, our young people would not fit in to an event that is going to

"concentrate on having people who have been hurt by the Troubles."

As one country principal said to me,

she said, "My worry would be if they are going to listen to

"some excerpts from the stories of people who have been hurt,

"they will hear things that will become a

"millstone around their necks, and we don't want that."

In the end, those who wanted to major in the victims felt that they

could no longer continue with the journey.

I think that the notion of putting a lid on it, and don't open that

can of worms, is sometimes a fear about our emotional lives.

And we have sometimes been conditioned to think,

men in particular, don't cry.

What happens if you don't let that emotional life out?

I think your life can become toxic and if I, as a parent, am not doing

that, not taking care of myself, then I transmit to the next generation.

If I have unresolved issues about the past, I will transmit that

to my children who may, in turn, take up the cudgels, as they say.

To mark the 25th anniversary of my ministry here at First Derry

there was a special service on Sunday, 21 April.

I quite intentionally extended an invitation to Martin,

as I did to a number of my neighbours and I wanted him

to speak to the congregation, a big congregation,

on my 25th anniversary of being in this city.

And he spoke in a very intimate way to the people,

and referred to the past,

and says how we have regrets with all that took place in the past.

That was a very powerful word for him to share with people,

some of whom within my church have paid a very high price.

Our understanding from the Historical Enquiries report was that the bomb

was placed under the car seat, the driver's front car seat.

The IRA said they planted a bomb under the car.

Shortly after,

I approached him and asked him

if he was involved with the murder of my father and Mrs Byrne.

He said he wouldn't grass on anyone.

That was his words as far back as I can remember. Erm...

Also, at that time, the Journal came out on a Friday and a Tuesday,

and in the Friday's Journal, no organisation admitted it,

and the Provisional IRA put a statement up to say that they

would name and shame the people who did it

in the following edition of the journal.

That didn't appear, it didn't appear the following Friday either.

It never appeared.

The journey we've been on for quite some time underneath

the umbrella of Bright Brand New Day, maybe this was a mountain

that was maybe steeper than I had ever imagined it to be,

and that was the way I was starting to look at Bright Brand New Day,

and the citywide public event in the Guildhall.

It just looked like I had bitten more than I could chew.

The peace flame has to be given the go-ahead this morning,

but yet we are still dealing with the possible uncertainty of

whether we get the OFMDFM money.

We can go ahead with everything in the Guildhall next week,

use money which we might never receive,

tell the peace frame to go ahead, and there'll be a major shortfall.

Jim Roddy, city centre initiative manager, and I

have had a relationship for

maybe four years and he is a man I've got to know,

and he is a man I like.

So we know we have ?20,000 that I've collected. I don't know that.

David, we do not know that. I haven't seen that. OK.

OK, so I'm not trusted here.

No, no, no, David... We've said now for two weeks,

and tried to push you on...

I don't think you have said for two weeks, Ian.

If I have ?20,000 in cheques, does that mean it's being pledged?

Well, why aren't we seeing it?

To ensure that all the Is were being dotted and all Ts were being

crossed, Jim was being very direct with me this morning.

David, please let me say this.

You know, we have had very straightforward, honest conversations

where I have told you how uneasy I am around all of this, so we are

giving assurances to Derry City Council.

And on the assurances that we have to give Derry City Council,

which they needed before 10am, or around 10am, as we know,

it needs to be on the firm basis that everything else is in place.

David believes that he has been envisioned to deliver what

he is delivering now. And that's fine and well in David's world.

difficult at times. Sometimes, straight talking has to take place.

I got that message. I think, then, we have to pull the plug

this morning.

We haven't got the assurances that you need. We're close,

we have got people's word, that is not enough.

We are actually very close, and this is a technicality if you like,

but it is a very important technicality.

We are doing two things on Sunday which are very big for this city.

We are having peace pledges delivered from all of the schools to the son of

a world icon when it comes to peace - and Martin Luther King III.

We have also got the ignition of the eternal peace flame.

Again, this was only signed off on last week.

And it is being constructed as we speak.

These things are very important to our city but yet we have had

a rush in getting everything set up and the preparations complete.

be in place to deliver this.

I was not convinced that everything was in place and once

I was convinced then the preparations went ahead at full steam.

I'm walking on air at the moment.

For the first time,

all the components associated with this journey towards

a Great Brand New Day are in place, and there's enough money to cover

everything - the peace flame, the monument can now be built.

That's going to be something that will have legacy long after

Mr Martin Luther King III has finished speaking.

And we are going to have him in the city and, my goodness, that is

the top tier of the cake.

The itinerary, very necessarily, includes a visit to Stormont

I want substance to dominate this meeting.

This is the First Minister.

Welcome to Northern Ireland. It's great to have you here. Thank you.

And Martin McGuinness. Good to see you again.

Thank you for the opportunity. I've heard a lot about you.

So, we are delighted. It is wonderful. Shall we walk along here?

Would you gentlemen like to get down into the castle? Oh, yes, yes.

You couldn't work up on the Stormont, there's so much going on.

You get a bit of space to do something.

'It's up to me in conversations with a range of people to accumulate

'the material that I think is necessary for Mr King to be

'aware of so that he can come fully informed to do the maximum

'amount of good that is possible during his time with the First

'and Deputy First Minister.'

It's taken me a very length of time to realise...

..that as many as 16,000 people left the Cityside and went to live

in Eglington, Waterside, Limavady, New Buildings,

they've gone from here.

They felt, for whatever reason, they had to go,

whether there was direct intimidation, or indirect

intimidation, my point is that this happened and I hardly noticed.

So maybe...

Maybe some Protestant people are saying to themselves,

"These people hardly noticed what happened to us."

Because one of the tragic, tragic,

tragic facts in our existence here is we live in ghettos.

This is the only Protestant estate on the Catholic West Bank.

Here we have this little Protestant community who have, you know,

in the past, been under siege, and therefore,

you see the security fencing around here.

That's, I suppose, to give them a little bit of internal

security lest something should be lobbed over.

It is an area that is proud of its British identity.

We would have flags frequently on display here,

the Ulster flag with the Red Hand Of Ulster,

and very importantly, the flag, the Union Jack, as we call it, which is

our symbol of Protestants wanting to be part of the United Kingdom.

They have their own school.

We don't have enough children here, sadly, to keep that school viable.

We get a phone call, and once we got the phone call...

I got a sense that my mother had died.

Because she hadn't been keeping well. When was this?

Two years ago. August, two years. 10th of August.

It was actually her wedding anniversary.

My mother was buried two days later.

I took something, I don't know, in the church, and I collapsed.

And...I didn't see my mother getting buried.

I found Pandora's Box just opened up.

I'd seen Jim Wray getting shot on Bloody Sunday.

I'd seen...

I had two apprentices who had worked with me at one time.

One was blown up on the back road, murdered by the IRA.

The other fella was shot in the back, down in Granshaw, shot by the SAS.

So I had had enough of death.

I remember being in the church that morning.

Siobhan, your wife, and others came to comfort you,

and you were brought into the pew. Is that right?

Am I remembering this right?

I remember sitting down the pew, I remember crying because to me,

it was a case of going through the whole death process again

with my father, and then my mother. I was releasing.

I was letting everything go at that stage because I wasn't just

thinking about my mother, I was thinking about my father.

And since my father dying, I never had the opportunity to...

..let my feelings known.

If we are going to bring into focus the shared future,

the past maybe just has to be separated from it.

That is not to say that I am wanting to jettison the past or cover

it up or overlook it because I don't.

We are divided because of the past.

I think Protestants

and Catholics have to really tune into what the Queen said

when she was with President McAleese down in Dublin.

When she said, with the benefit of historical hindsight, you know,

would we do things the same way again?

And the chances are, we would never do things the same way again.

Do you remember seeing your dad that day? I do, yes.

A man that morning said that he would have been in his office,

the workshop there. And I would have come from this direction here.

And I would have walked across the square.

He was walking from here towards me.

We acknowledged a few words and just waved.

That was the last time I saw him.

Cecilia Byrne, also "Sissy" Byrne, she would say to your daddy,

something like, "Are we OK for that driving lesson?"

Or they had an arrangement.

And they are both going to get into that car at 1pm,

and they are going to drive out of here. Yes.

Nobody knowing that the bomb is in the car.

Welcome to Bright Brand New Day.

Thank you all for taking the time for joining us.

Martin Luther King III coming to Derry, Londonderry.

A generation ago his father inspired multitudes around the world to lift

and see something better.

We have a conflict of a different kind,

a low intensity kind of conflict.

The hatred is there, that's not what we need,

that's not what our young people want.

So we have to bring somebody in

that's going to draw attention to that.

And I think he's going to be the key that's going to open the lock

to push the door.

Both my father and grandmother were victims of gun violence.

And I know how deep and lasting this hurt can be.

But we must remember that those who we have lost to tragedy

would not want us to marinate in bitterness and revenge.

I find that strange.

It's strange maybe in a sense because it was easier not to talk

because if we talked you hurt people and you hurt each other

and people had deep feelings then.

Like, I loved my father, the rest of my family, my father as well

and to talk about them, you're only creating hurt.

Now my father had a dream for making the entire world a better place.

He talked about creating the beloved community

in which people of every race and religion and nation

could live together in peace and harmony.

Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,

Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands

and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last!

"Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last."

APPLAUSE

You can win a victory in your neighbourhood.

You can win a victory in your places of worship.

You can win a victory in your city.

Some of us may win victories in our nation,

some others, some few,

may win victories in our world

but what those words basically mean are, "Be ashamed to die

"until you've done a little something to make the world in which

"we all must live a little better than it was when you arrived."

Thank you and may God bless each and every one of you, always.

'Events that have transpired within my own community

to do with the flags dispute have generated a nervousness

within the Protestant unionist loyalist community.

I would have loved to have had the British Government,

the Irish Government, representatives of PSNI or RUC

as well as loyalists and republican paramilitaries.

It would have been lovely to have heard them agree

to certain words that could have...

that could have connected with those who are hurting.

My friends,

gathered in this Guildhall Square in such large numbers,

let me invite those of you who are on the platform to stand.

APPLAUSE

'What we have got is a formula'

of words very carefully chosen,

pastoral words,

words that you wouldn't just normally associate with a politician.

It's with a sense of sadness.

Those words will convey to the people who are carrying a cross,

a heavy cross,

those words will help to

convey a message that the people that we tend to think

who did all the wrong, as if the rest of us

'all did what was right, it will assist them to see that the people

'they think who did all the wrong, that you know there is a sense

'there's some compassion starting to percolate down

'through their hearts and minds.

'They're beginning to feel for the people who have lost.'

Let us hold up our hands and say together these words.

Mindful of our brief time on Earth,

it is with a sense of sadness

we recall the grief stricken experiences of thousands of people

from our community, occasioned by violent conflict.

While bowing to the past

yet refusing to be bound BY the past,

it is the prospect of the future which is ours to shape

that beckons us now.

We therefore pledge ourselves to ensure this will never happen again

as we turn our eyes towards the dawn of a new day.

God is going to give us a new day.

I believe it!

APPLAUSE

Here we are at the junction of the Limavady Road and May Street.

I understand it was my daddy drove up Bonds Street,

came down to this junction,

went to take a right and a bomb went off.

I was working in here

and we were told by the foreman to come up with ladders

and start removing the broken glass.

Um, I was removing the glass from the second window there

and when I was there, looking out, and I seen a blue Escort.

I seen the ambulance men to the left,

the police.

There were other people there as well, some people were picking up

body parts.

I just carried on with my work.

For a second I looked out,

I seen the wing of the car being a different colour

from the rest of the car and I thought for a moment,

"Could have been our car," but it was just a notion.

Just for a moment. Just a flash, that's all it was. Yes.

Our thoughts to be kind, our talents to bring joy,

our compassion to bring peace, to make the world a better place.

APPLAUSE

I didn't want to hear my father's name mentioned.

Um...I didn't want to talk about him blowing up.

I didn't want to talk about seeing his body.

I didn't want to talk about seeing what happened here,

regards picking up body parts

and identifying the body, it was just a mess.

So the simplest way for me to do that was just not to,

How was your health?

Health was very poor and I suffered big-time.

I've now been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress,

probably been suffering for this past 30 years or more.

And very shortly, ladies and gentlemen,

we're going to have our peace flame...

..lit.

DRUMS PLAY

APPLAUSE Our peace flame has been ignited!

Where are you at now with the people who killed -

we're on the very spot - that killed your daddy and killed Mrs Byrne/

Where are you at with them now in your heart?

I find forgiveness for them.

You find forgiveness for them? Yes.

Where have you found that forgiveness?

How did that come about?

Through hard work and one of the things was

I have never given an interview, I have never talked about my father,

I have never discussed it, I have never...

The only thing I have ever done was gone to the papers 25 years later

so it was a whole clearing process,

but I needed this, you know?

My family needs it.

You needed a clearing process? Yes, yes. You know?

And I think it's fair to give my father a fair hearing

and Mrs Byrne, they deserve at least that

and I have moved on and I've moved forward,

it's just time for moving on anyway.

'As we turn our eyes towards the dawn of a new day,

'God is going to give us a new day. I believe it!'

APPLAUSE

The future's fine and it's lovely for the children,

especially schoolchildren, to understand what peace is

and to show a beacon of light.

But for 38 years, not alone have I suffered

and my family suffered, but there's other people out there -

you can call them victims or survivors -

who suffered a lot but they almost seem to be getting left behind.

Do you feel a victim?

No.

I know I seem quick to answer that question.

I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd