‘I was beside Edgar when he was shot... I was covered in his blood'

Interview by Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, 07/12/2023

DERMOT NESBITT WAS CHATTING TO EDGAR GRAHAM WHEN HE WAS KILLED BY IRA IN 1983. HE RECALLED THE HORROR AS HE RETURNED TO THE MURDER SCENE

The man who was beside Edgar Graham when he was murdered 40 years ago today — standing so close to him that he was covered in his blood — has told how he carried a gun into lectures at Queen's University, fearful he could be the IRA's next target.

Dermot Nesbitt returned to the scene of the murder for the first time to explain what happened that day for the Belfast Telegraph podcast Killing Edgar, and recounted the impact the atrocity had on his life.

Dermot and Edgar were close friends.

As the only two elected unionist politicians on campus, they had a great deal in common — even though Dermot was an integrationist and Edgar was a devolutionist.

That reflected the split in the UUP at the time between those who favoured Northern Ireland being integrated further within the UK and governed like Birmingham or Manchester, and those who believed in the need for a distinctly Northern Irish form of devolved government at Stormont.

However, Dermot said they never had heated arguments about the issue, respecting the thinking behind each other's decision.

“We were friendly even though we had different views…we were buddies together,” he said, recalling how they would have political “banter”.

The pair jointly drafted a letter to the university to seek permission to stand for election to the Assembly in 1982 and both got permission. Reflecting, Dermot recalled: “I didn't run; he did run. He won, he died, I didn't; I lived.”

Becoming emotional, he said: “It's those sort of things that come to me as I stand here.”

Ironically, Dermot would go on to become a minister in the first devolved government since 1974 — and be a key supporter of David Trimble in backing the Good Friday Agreement which restored devolved government to Belfast.

Yet the police told him the gunmen probably didn't recognise him due to his lower profile as a councillor, unlike the high profile South Belfast Assemblyman.

If they'd realised he was also a unionist politician, they might have killed him too, he was told.

“Edgar was coming down there and we waved at each other,” Dermot recalled at the scene on University Square, the street running along the left-hand side of the main Lanyon Building.

“He crossed to me and he set his bag there and stood alongside me like that because people were walking up and down. That set the scene for the next few minutes.

“I do reflect as I think, if I'd been a minute later would he have gone in, and it mightn't have happened here? Would it have happened some time? I don't know. But what I know is that… I just happened to be coming up as he was coming up.

“I remember the first chat was I said 'you've crossed over to my side today' — a jokey reference to not just crossing the road, but their different political philosophies. Then we'd a few tittle-tattles, it was very brief. He said he was going over to see the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

“I remember the vividly the words when he said that. I said 'John Biggs-Davison is chairman of that committee, and he is an integrationalist', to which he said, and these were his very last words which he said standing there: 'Michael Mates is the vice-chairman of the committee, and he is a devolutionist'. Those were his last words; they are seared in my mind as I stand here.”

He said that cars were going up and down and people were passing by as normal. He knew nothing of the attack until he heard the shot.

He added: “I got covered in his blood and this person stood up with one foot on that wall, pumping the gunfire into him… I can remember it like yesterday.

“I moved out to the road and as I did that this fellow put the gun into his lever-arch file with another colleague and ran off…and probably when they got round the corner they would have started to walk like students because they looked like students, they were dressed like students.

“They fitted in with the environment. It just happened so quick, so quick. He said 'Michael Mates'. Bang. Down. Up. Firing more ammunition into him.”

He looked up at the windows on the other side of University Square, where the Queen's Film Theatre now is, and recalls seeing people. Having heard six shots, they'd come to see what was happening, but to Dermot they were silhouetted against the lights on a dark winter's day, resembling the matchstick men figures in LS Lowry's paintings.

“I ran over there to the Law Faculty and David Trimble was coming out as I was going in. I said: 'It's Edgar'. His very words were: 'But he wasn't meant to be here today'. Those words you remember; you remember them vividly.

“And then I just... I just got offside. I turned around and looked and saw him lying here and I just couldn't take it any more, because there I'm talking to him, he's my vintage, we were close, we were friends — and you knew he was dead, you knew he was dead.”

His first reaction was to ring his wife to reassure her he was safe because he feared her hearing on the news a unionist politician had been killed at Queen's and worrying that it was him.

He then “lay low”, staying away from journalists and not even attending the funeral.

He stressed it wasn't out of disrespect for his friend, “but because I had to go back to Queen's and I was a unionist representative and I was extremely nervous”.

“Your work wasn't behind a desk in a room where you could lock the door. Your work was standing in front of maybe 150 people who knew where you were standing and knew when you were standing.

“I was fighting it mentally, but I had to move on; I had to do my work at Queen's. I couldn't bypass that.”

He recalls a photo of him which had appeared in his local newspaper, the Down Recorder, identifying him as a unionist councillor.

He came into a lecture one day to find that photo cut out and pinned to the notice board to the left of the blackboard with the pin placed between his eyes.

“Someone was saying 'we know who you are'. I just ignored it but took it down when the students left. That was scary.”

In the wake of the murder, Dermot received a personal protection weapon and had a plain clothes police bodyguard sitting in his lectures. While lecturing students on accountancy, he said he had at the back of his mind how he could get his gun out in time if he was attacked. “I had it in my briefcase sitting flat so that it was pointing out… because I had to go back to lecturing in January and it was known where I was and what time I would be there. People could come in and you wouldn't know who they were. I was able, hopefully, to deliver a lecture in those circumstances.”

With real conviction, he added: “It wasn't easy, but it had to be done because you couldn't not do it, you couldn't let them win.”

Dermot said he can “fully understand” young people today being unaware of who Edgar was, likening it to how as a teenager in the Sixties the Second World War seemed like ancient history to him. Observing the teenagers walking up and down past him on University Square, he added: “No, they don't remember at all, any of it. And I would not expect them to, and that's not being disrespectful of Edgar Graham; quite the reverse.

“There are so many people who have devoted so much in warfare and what have you and in assistance to bring a stable community that they are not recalled at all, and Edgar's one of them.”

But for the 76-year-old former Stormont minister, what happened that day is unforgettable.

“I think of Edgar. I think of what I've done, not what I've achieved, but I've been in the council, I've been on the education and library board, I've been on various commissions, I was in the [Good Friday] talks, I've been a minister, I was on the Equality Commission. I participated a lot in politics… and Edgar had that snuffed out of him just like that.

“It is unbelievable as I stand here. A 29-year-old snuffed out…what he was not able to achieve, and he was higher than me, I was a mere local councillor at the time.”

When asked about the impact in the Good Friday talks of having been so close to a horrific Troubles murder, he said: “It was always in my mind. A photograph of Edgar Graham hung in our meeting room in the old [Ulster Unionist] headquarters and I was always conscious of Edgar and I was conscious of what a young person said to me: 'We have to do the best we can do'. But my biggest regret is that we could have done it much sooner.”

Most of those who knew Edgar in politics agree that he was likely to have been — and some say they are certain he would have been — a future leader of unionism. If that had happened, where would he have led Northern Ireland?

“Well, he was a pragmatic politician, he was a progressive politician, and he wished to see devolution restored. I believe he and I — if we took the devolution-integration argument out — we had similar perspectives as to how we should move forward in a progressive way.

“I believe he would have done that, and I would have supported him in doing it.”