➤ MCKEE, from p.14
The news aggregator Mediagazer
hired her to edit; she started The
Muckraker, a news blog; she gave
a TEDx talk on the Orlando Pulse
nightclub shooting; she signed a
two-book contract; in 2016, she
was named one of the “30 Under
30 in Media” by Forbes.
McKee also fell in love with Sara
Canning, a nurse at a Derry hospital,
and moved to Derry to live with
Sara. They were soon embraced by
an ad hoc assortment of women
in Derry’s LGBTQ community, a
“girls’ club” who laughed, talked,
hung out. McKee bought a ring
and told a friend she was planning
to pop the question. Then, on the
night of April 18, 2019, while covering
a protest, she was shot in the
head by a bullet fi red by someone
in the New IRA. She died on her
way to the hospital.
Lost, found, remembered
McKee wrote hard and long,
but she only made it to age 29. So
far, two books have been culled
from her legacy. “Angels with Blue
Faces,” only about 16,000 words,
investigates the 1981 IRA murder
of Unionist MP Robert Bradford.
Sales from the book will go, as she
intended, to Paper Trail, a Belfast
non-profi t that helps people fi nd
information about their loved ones
lost to the Troubles. “Angels with
Blue Faces” is a valuable book if
you want a sense of the toxic collusion
that complicates Northern
Ireland’s history. But the book was
released before its time and badly
needs an editor. If you want to
hear McKee’s real voice, read “Lost,
Found, Remembered: Lyra McKee
in Her Own Words.”
This collection of McKee’s essays
and articles offers published
writings on Belfast, gayness, and
journalism, as well as work not before
published. Excerpts from “The
Lost Boys,” McKee’s unfi nished
book about eight Belfast boys who
went missing during the Troubles,
reveal how game-changing her political
journalism was becoming:
She wrote, “I know very well how
the Troubles masked other crimes;
how women, children, and vulnerable
people were harmed because
child abusers and killers and men
who beat their wives don’t stop doing
what they do because there’s a
war on… Sometimes, they carry on
because the war has turned them
The service sheet pays tribute to Lyra McKee at her funeral.
into a ‘protected species’ — like an
IRA or UVF member who raped
women but were too valuable to the
organization to be punished…”
She wrote of her friends in the
Ceasefi re generation, both Protestant
and Catholic: “Peace was
an acquaintance rather than a
friend. But we were alive and more
likely to die by our own hands
than somebody else’s.” She wrote
about her grandparents’ generation,
people who had been in the
IRA, or in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
She interviewed exprisoners
from either side, people
who had spent “20 years in a 4 x
4-foot cell” for their part in killings.
She worked to comprehend
all of that now:
“I couldn’t stand in front of a woman
who’d watched her husband be
gunned down, in front of their own
children, perhaps in their own living
room, and tell her that the men
who’d done it were more complex
than evil and more human than her
grief would allow…”
Writing beyond words
It’s now time to declare my own
politics. I’m a leftist, a queer, an anti
racist. My own writing includes
articles on US political prisoners,
some white anti-imperialists; others
members of the Black Panther
Party — people who, like the IRA,
engaged in armed struggle. I would,
in theory, agree with Irish Republicans
that Britain should get the
hell out of Ireland. But I have also
been struck to the heart, humbled,
and fi red up by the beauty in just
about every piece McKee has written
on this subject.
McKee, in fact, has helped me to
become a prison abolitionist. She
wanted things to get better; prison
abolition holds that caging people
for decades only deepens divisions
— of race or religion or class or
politics — and can’t help but make
things worse.
Abolition offers the prospect that
people who have caused and incurred
great harm can meet, talk;
can seeeach other, in the hope of
working out new defi nitions of
justice. This close attention to the
truth of individual lives is the essence
of McKee’s journalism. That’s
why the worth of McKee’s writing is
beyond — even her own — words.
She didn’t have time to explore
and write about things like prison
abolition or restorative justice. But
she chose journalism because she
had to discover, not which side was
“right,” but the truth that breathes
beyond borders.
On April 22, 2019, the Monday
after McKee’s death, the Derry girls’
club — who came to be known, via
a BBC documentary, as “The Real
Derry Girls” — marched to the
building that housed Saoradh, a
militant Republican organization
linked to the New IRA. All Catholic
but one, the women soaked their
hands in bright red paint and
pressed “bloody” handprints over
the political murals on the building’s
walls. Reporters caught some
of their statements:
“People have been afraid to stand
up to people like this, we are not
afraid“; “They are not a representation
of republican people in this
town”; “They need a life, not a gun
put in their hands…”
A day later, in a statement given
to The Irish News, the New IRA offered
“our full and sincere apologies
to the partner, family and
friends of Lyra McKee.”
BRIAN LAWLESS/POOL VIA REUTERS
With McKee’s death, UK politicians
paid more notice to Northern
Ireland. Then-Prime Minster
Theresa May, along with MPs from
Westminster, Dublin, and Belfast,
attended her funeral. Addressing
the crowd, Father Martin Magill
acknowledged the UK’s presence,
asking: “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 get to this point?” He received
a standing ovation lasting
several minutes.
So far, three men have been
charged with McKee’s murder; a
fourth with rioting and possession
of gasoline bombs. The public,
McKee’s family, her friends
— certainly Sara Canning, who
spoke of McKee as “the love of my
life, the woman I was planning to
grow old with” — are demanding
justice.
The “justice” they receive will
depend on the way Northern Ireland
chooses to create it. Justice
will be either a step toward a small
but profound healing, or one more
angry division inside a country
beleaguered by its brutal past, as
well as the impending realities of
Brexit. Do things really get better?
One way or another, McKee’s theory
will be tested.
McKee’s books:
“LOST, FOUND, REMEMBERED:
LYRA MCKEE IN HER
OWN WORDS”| London, UK: Faber
& Faber, 2021 | 186 pp, 978-
0571351459 | paperback
“ANGELS WITH BLUE FACES”
|Belfast, UK: Excalibur Press,
2019 | Approx. 1600 words;
9781910728529 | Ebook only; pbk
not available in US
GayCityNews.com | JANUARY 13 - January 26, 2022 15
/GayCityNews.com
