Dunblane Tapes review: documentary lays bare parents’ grief 30 years on
The Dunblane Tapes returns to the small Scottish town of dunblane and the classroom that changed a nation, using footage shot by a bereaved father to chart the private grief that has lasted three decades. The film matters now because it stitches intimate home recordings, witness memory and survivor testimony into a portrait of how families and a community lived with the aftermath.
What the film uses: John Crozier’s footage and family moments
The title material comes from video recordings made by John Crozier, who lost his five-year-old daughter Emma. Crozier’s tapes capture gatherings of bereaved parents and many conversations with his friend Les Morton, who had also lost his five-year-old daughter, Emily. The film shows the continuation of family life around loss: bewildered siblings being cared for, the arrival of new children and small domestic details such as Emma’s three-year-old brother Jack and the tray of fairy cakes he made with Grandma. Jack plans to grow up to be “a big baker. ”
Parents remembered: John Crozier and Les Morton face grief together
In contemporary sequences the two men sit side by side, now white-haired and remembering. Les recalls being annoyed at an interrupted meeting before being told there had been a shooting at the school: “I said – say that again?” On Crozier’s tapes John, dark-haired and radiating grief and rage, describes seeing Emma’s face first thing each morning. When John asks, “Is it like a photograph?” Les replies, “No, it’s like a live picture. ” Les adds: “Nobody would think it’s possible. I still don’t think it’s possible … I feel venomous every day. My child’s gone. Never to be seen again. ”
Eyewitness detail: police, journalists and the immediate aftermath
The film uses contemporary news footage sparingly: parents running down streets toward the school, some still in their slippers; crowds gathering to wait for news; a policeman bowing his head and covering his eyes as information arrived. Journalist Melanie Reid, who was an early reporter on the scene, remembers a woman driving behind her who suddenly covered her mouth in horror when she evidently heard the news on her car radio.
Teacher testimony: Fiona Eadington’s account and lasting guilt
Fiona Eadington, who was the deputy headteacher and responsible for the infant department at Dunblane Primary School, speaks publicly in the documentary for the first time to mark the 30th anniversary. She recounts the morning of 13 March 1996 as a frosty morning when her car would not unlock and the only bit that would unlock was the boot, so she got into the car through the boot. It was an infant assembly morning with Easter hymns and the assembly had finished just before half past 9. She says she was one of the first people on the scene in the gym in the aftermath and describes the guilt she still feels: “Those children were given to my care and I didn’t protect them. ” She also describes singing with pupils to take their minds off the horror around them.
Scale of the attack and national consequence
The gunman, identified as Thomas Hamilton, used multiple handguns and large quantities of ammunition to open fire on children skipping in the gym hall. Hamilton, whose age is given as 43, carried four handguns and 743 rounds of ammunition. He killed 16 children and the teacher Gwen Mayor; one account in the film notes that a 16th child died on the way to hospital. Hamilton killed himself following the massacre, which remains Britain’s worst mass shooting. The attack, which lasted just under four minutes, prompted a campaign led by bereaved parents that became known as the Snowdrop Petition, named after the flowers that were the only ones blooming in Dunblane in early March when the children died, and that campaign led to a complete ban on private handguns in the United Kingdom and greater restrictions on other guns.
Near misses and how children were protected on the day
The Murray family, who lived in Dunblane at the time, included Andy Murray and his brother Jamie, both in primary school; they narrowly escaped the attack. Their mother, Judy Murray, describes how Andy’s class had been on their way to the gym and how a teacher went ahead to investigate after hearing a noise. The children were then told to go to the headmaster’s study and the deputy head’s study, to sit down below the windows and sing songs. Teachers and dinner ladies contained the children, fed them and got them out without the children being aware of what had happened. Judy says she drove to the school thinking she might not see her children again, and that people were not frantic but shocked and quiet; it was before mobile phones and nobody knew anything.
Other parents and the long shadow of loss
Other parents are shown in the film, including Mick North, who lost his five-year-old daughter Sophie; Sophie’s mother had died of illness three years earlier. The sequences interweave the stories of bereaved families with the campaign that followed, and the documentary is timed to mark the 30th anniversary. The Dunblane Tapes airs tonight at 9pm.
