Families’ courage inspired my bombs drama

“I was 15 and we were going into the town,” he tells me. “It was a Saturday and mostly everyone I knew from around that way went to Warrington of a Saturday. It was just what you did. On that day, March 20, the day before Mother’s Day, I was just going to nip in, get a present for Mum and come home.

“We were about halfway there when there was something on the radio, saying there had been an incident. It was all they were talking about. They said, ‘The town centre is now closed’. I completely remember the shock of it.”

Just a few miles away, two bombs had gone off, killing one victim immediately, little Johnathan Ball, aged three, and injuring more than 50 people. There were two blasts in two minutes, 90 metres apart. It was the work of the IRA, who said two warnings had been given “in adequate time”.

Leather continues: “When you heard it was an ‘incident’ you knew completely what it was. You just knew it. Almost certainly the IRA, because they had done the gasworks bomb in Warrington just two weeks before.”

His father pulled over to the side of the road as they tried to absorb the terrible news.

“We were in such shock and then went off to a nearby pub and had our lunch. I remember we couldn’t stop talking about it but all the while we were in the pub there was this feeling that no one else in there – because of communications then – had actually heard the same news we had done.

“We kept saying to each other, ‘It can’t be’, and ‘They can’t do it again’. And we were just wondering, ‘Why would they do it to Warrington?’.”

It was too close for comfort, admits Leather. “As we heard some of the details, and heard places like Bridge Street, I thought ‘I would go there to visit JJB Sports and Andy’s Records, too. I probably would have gone to McDonald’s as well’.

“Once you heard about Tim [Parry, 12, the second fatality], he’d actually been in JJB Sports. He’d been in to buy a pair of Everton shorts. It was a pair of Neville Southall goalie shorts. It knocked me then, knocked my Dad, and knocks me now.

“That’s the sort of detail that makes you feel close to a family like — ‘Oh, God, I feel like I understand. It could be my family’.”

But it was the following day, Mother’s Day – the title of his BBC drama next week – that brought home the horrible reality of the event.

“On the Sunday morning, while we had heard about the injuries and the death of Johnathan, we didn’t know all the details. So I took the two papers, including the Sunday Express, up to my mother along with a cup of tea and some toast, breakfast in bed.

“It was on a tray, and I thought she would be chuffed to bits. She picked up the Sunday Express and it unfurled and I just remember her face dropping because this was the first time she took it in, the headline saying “Murdered for Mother’s Day” – all the detail – and I felt rotten for showing it to her.

“That whole Mother’s Day was dominated by it. And then every day after that it was watching Wendy and Colin Parry and their updates until Thursday [when Tim Parry’s life support was turned off].

“We just saw the horror of what they were going through and feeling for them so much. I just kept thinking, ‘I get this family, and I feel heartbroken for them’.”

With his memories still strong about the event, Leather pitched this emotional story to the BBC 18 months ago and they immediately gave it the green light. A superb cast was assembled, including Daniel Mays, Anna Maxwell Martin and Vicky McClure.

“I decided to set the story over 36 days and that’s basically what it is. It’s the one story that I’ve always wanted to tell, the Warrington bombing. There was a real will to do the drama and a lot of goodwill behind it, but I also felt a great sense of responsibility that you do it right, just to keep everyone happy and involved.”

The 90-minute drama goes on to tell the story of the peace movement that sprang up from the bombing. We see the Parrys and Susan McHugh, from Dublin, who set up Peace ’93, “a turning point”, says Leather, in the Troubles.

“Susan McHugh in Dublin had no reason at all to get involved in this story but she had seen the same images that my mother had seen that day. The fact that she picked up the phone and did something about it was a fascinating part of the story. We wanted to show two families on the either side of the Irish Sea and how it affected them. That was a real story.”

All involved, he says, showed great courage: “The fact that both families did this still astonishes me. Most people would just have wanted to go away and hide. We had just seen the worst that man could do to man. But they had strength and courage to do it. Colin wanted to make sure this event had not happened in vain.”

He agrees this is an “important time” to tell this story. “For me, this was a drama about people, not politics. I kept saying this to myself every day. One thing I am aware of, having done it, is just how raw the wounds are. How unhealed they are.”

What does that say about the future? “The only thing I would say is that political instability is not what’s needed [the Northern Ireland Assembly has not met for 18 months] in an area with unhealed wounds. What’s obvious to me is that you can’t take peace for granted.

“After 20 years of peace, it’s so natural to say, ‘This is the current state now’. You look back at 1993 and you think peace isn’t a natural state at all.

“Peace has to be fought for and won every single day. The moment we take it for granted you start to worry. People had that courage then to stand up and say, ‘enough is enough’; to set aside their differences and their grievances and decide that this could not go on.”

Wendy and Colin Parry have reacted positively to the drama and Leather says: “We all went to watch it at their peace centre in Warrington with over 100 of their family and friends. They had seen it once but still sobbed and got really upset in front of everyone.

“He [Colin] didn’t realise it would have that effect on them again. They said they were thrilled it had been made. Watching it with them was one of the most moving experiences of my life.”

Mother’s Day, BBC1, tomorrow 9pm. Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Peace Foundation: peace-foundation.org.uk

‘It’s the one story I’ve always wanted to tell. It dominated that whole Mother’s Day’.