obituary


Lyra McKee


“Make this stop. Please, you have to make it stop now.” As Theresa May and Leo Varadkar stood together in front of St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, waiting for the hearse to carry Lyra McKee to her resting place in Carnmoney, a distraught man walked over to them, made this quiet plea and moved on. The premiers glanced at one another and turned to face the grieving family. The prime minister and taoiseach had earlier joined a lengthy standing ovation when Catholic priest Martin Magill, speaking in the city’s Protestant cathedral, asked “why, in God’s name, does it take the death of a 29-year-old woman, with her whole life in front of her”, to bring the region’s politicians together? A few days earlier, party leaders


had attended a vigil in the Creggan, in Derry city, where Lyra had been shot on April 18 while observing a riot. That gathering and the interdenominational nature of the packed funeral service were


testimony to Lyra’s gift for reaching out, bridging gaps, and challenging stale dogmas. Lyra McKee, born in north Belfast in 1990, was only eight years old when the Good Friday Agreement laid down a pathway out of the morass of the Troubles. The promised land of equality, tolerance and parity of esteem was, as she documented in a journalistic career that began in her mid-teens, never fully realised. Though she planned to propose this month to the love of her life, Sara Canning from Derry, she knew that they were denied the right to marry in Northern Ireland. Lyra never gave up hope on that; Lyra was hope. “It’s LEER-ah, actually”: a gentle correction that she must have issued thousands of times, because she seemed to know everyone. She had an astonishing knack for establishing friendships that should each have lasted a proper lifetime. Instead, we were robbed of this five-foot-nothing bundle of curiosity and optimism aged just 29. She then looked little older than the “14-year-old self” whom she addressed from a decade’s hindsight, in a moving blog post,


later turned into a film, about growing up gay in an intolerant society. Her older self reassured the ‘odd’ kid: “It’s going to be OK … In a year’s time, you’re going to join a scheme that trains people your age to be journalists. You’ll have found your calling … Keep hanging on, kid. It’s worth it. I love you.” Lyra stayed in touch and in love with those who could not see that far ahead, and wrote about the epidemic of suicide among the ‘Good Friday generation’: 4,500 deaths since 1998, many more lost lives than in the Troubles. Her Belfast Telegraph piece on April 14 directly addressed troubled youngsters: “It gets better … please, I beg you, live.” After the springboard provided in her teens by the Headliners charity, of which she recently became a trustee, Lyra’s journalism focused on human stories about intolerance, injustice and loss; notably, the IRA killing of a Belfast MP, and the disappearance and probable murder of children from her own neighbourhood. She used her vast reservoirs of


charm on anyone who would talk to her; those on the receiving end of her phone calls might have to trade nuggets of information for the delight of hearing the latest gossip about mutual acquaintances. It remains to be seen whether the


killing of Lyra, a member of Belfast and District Branch, can restore momentum to the stagnant politics of Northern Ireland. There is, at least, a thundering popular reproach to the leaders of the ‘republican’ group that showed its contempt for the res publica when it sent a youth out on a dark night to fire a handgun up a street full of people – an action that was likely to, was intended to, and did result in death.


The turnout of members of Irish


NUJ branches, national officials and lay officers was sufficient to provide a 100-strong guard of honour as Lyra left on that final journey. Grizzled hacks shared the space with Lyra’s generation, many wearing items recalling the Harry Potter stories that Lyra so loved. The GoFundMe appeal, initially


intended to cover the family’s immediate expenses, has soared past £65,000 at the time of going to press. Please support it and ask your chapel or branch to contribute, so that we who cannot think of Lyra without a smile on her face, and in our hearts, can help Sara and Lyra’s family – her mother Joan, sisters Nichola, Mary and Joan, and brothers Gary and David – to mark the legacy of this beautiful young woman. We stand with Lyra.


Ciarán Ó Maoláin theJournalist | 23


NUJ


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