by Ralph Bulger
It sounds absurd, but the murder of James took away my innocence as well. I was never again able to open a newspaper, read about some terrible violent act and then just able turn the page and move on. My life had taken a new direction, and if people needed help in such terrible times, I couldn’t refuse them. I was angry and impassioned, and I had an awful lot to learn about how to channel my feelings effectively. It got to the stage where people who knew me in Kentish Town would cross the road, rather than speak to me, because I was always getting on my soap box, getting angry about something, which was totally the wrong way to deal with things. I had been campaigning for one of our petitions on the television on one occasion when a woman stopped me near my home.
‘I saw you on the telly the other day,’ she said.
Instead of speaking to her properly, I snapped, ‘Did you actually listen to what I was talking about? Do you actually know what the issues are?’
In that moment, I just stopped myself. I realized I was becoming a preacher, and an angry one at that. I had set out with a genuine desire to help, but now I was trying to force my views onto others, which was wrong. Instead of encouraging people to get on board, I was driving them away with my attitude.
I was never going to get people to back us by wagging my finger at them, telling them they were wrong and we were right. We might have been pricking the nation’s conscience, but we were wrong to do it in such an aggressive and dogmatic way. We did learn eventually, but it took a while for the penny to drop.
The whole thing was taking over and I realized I had forgotten how to laugh. If I am truthful, ironically, it was the families we were supporting who had lost a loved one to murder who taught us to start living again and to start laughing again.
The first time we visited Ralph and Jimmy, we sat around the kitchen table for hours and talked into the night. There was much sadness and anger, but there was also real laughter at the right moments. These two men taught me for the first time that life does go on, however hard it is. I learned from them that it was OK to give myself permission to laugh and smile. Until that point, special occasions, especially Christmas, had been really hard. I would feel overwhelmed that I had my family around me when so many had lost loved ones. I would feel guilty for that when I thought of all the families across the country in sadness. So I also had to learn about gratitude and be thankful for what I had been blessed with, and not feel guilty because another family had suffered such misery.
With the greatest of respect for James’s family, and in no way meaning to make comparisons with what they have been through, James really did become the nation’s child in a symbolic way. He stood for every parent’s son or daughter, who could so easily have been the victim of that terrible crime that day. I don’t think there was a parent alive who didn’t shudder at the sight of that CCTV footage. We all knew it could so easily have been our own child.
MAMAA marks its twentieth anniversary in February 2013, as it was set up at the time of James’s murder. It’s difficult to quantify my feelings about this because it is a massive milestone in my life, and I am very proud of MAMAA and what we have achieved over the years. But equally, how do you begin even to talk about celebrating when it was set up in response to something so horrific.
Twenty years after James was killed, violent crime offenders in Britain are getting younger and younger still. In juvenile offender homes, there are boys of twelve and thirteen who have stabbed and killed other youngsters. We set up MAMAA to try to stop this type of thing occurring, but we are living in a society where it happens on a weekly basis. The circumstances are different, I admit.These crimes are not the premeditated murder of a toddler, but are the result of a gang culture out of control. We also now go into young offender homes and talk to them about their crimes and try to educate them. I passionately wanted to live in a country where kids were not killing kids. I just wanted to know what I could do to make a difference.
For many years, we have been on what we call a ‘Government round table’ that was set up by David Blunkett when he was Home Secretary under Prime Minister Tony Blair. It started because kids were killing and maiming each other on the streets. What we were telling the Government then is what we are still telling them now, and yet successive Prime Ministers are not acting on it.
We have pressed the need for education about crime, about getting tougher on juvenile crime, on early intervention, and yet nothing has changed. If anything, the situation is getting worse.These are not platitudes.The politicians are not taking the lessons on board. The warning signs are always there, and if the right organizations intervened before crimes were committed, more young people would be spared death or injury, and fewer young people would be going to prison or young offender homes for violent stabbings or shootings.
These things do cost money, but they are worth it to provide a better future for all our children. Something is wrong with a society in which you have this level of cruelty being inflicted on children by children. It is unfathomable. And yet we are becoming more and more desensitized to violent crime like this as society changes for the worse. We appear to have become immune to stories of stabbings and killings among young people. Two decades on, we are supporting families of murder victims who have been killed in terrible circumstances, and yet the events barely even make the local newspapers sometimes, let alone the national news. Life appears to have become so much cheaper to us as a society.
With everything I have seen over the years, I often wonder if I can be shocked any more, and then I get a phone call with details of yet another family needing help and it is overwhelming. We receive referrals from all directions and will always help where we can. We were put in touch with one woman by a local gravedigger. He kept seeing this lady arriving at the cemetery in a dreadful state. Her mother had been murdered, so he gave her MAMAA’s number and she called us. We started out as tea and sympathy, but it is so much more now. We are a professional and structured organization that can give essential help to those who need it. We provide confidential, practical advice as well as emotional support. I could retire now and be very proud of what we have achieved.
We won funding for two wages a few years back, but that has since stopped. The organization relies on donations and sponsorship, without which we would be in trouble. I don’t believe in the church, but someone up there must have been looking out for us whenever we hit a financial crisis, because something always turned up when we needed it most. Roger even cashed in his pension at one point to keep us going. We have worked tirelessly to make things easier on those who lose a relative to violent crime. We have run gun amnesties and been involved in the Victims’ Code and Charter. We have helped change stalking laws. And all of this came from James’s murder.
Ralph and Jimmy are very proud of MAMAA and also see it as part of James’s legacy. That means so very much to us all. Gone is the preaching attitude I used to have. In its place, I try to use everything I have learned from bereaved families to help others in the same boat. I’m still an interfering old cow, but hopefully that will never change. I am proud to do our work in James’s name.
MAMAA is a national registered charity that provides an all-inclusive practical and emotional support and advocacy service to those affected by serious violence or bereaved by homicide.
MAMAA is committed to ensuring that our beneficiaries receive a useful and effective service, delivered in a professional and ethical manner.
Our vision is that every individual affected by serious violence and/or homicide receives a nationally agreed, standard level of support and advocacy across the UK.
To contact us for help,
advice or information call:
020 8207 0702
For information on how you can
donate please go to
www.mamaa.org
Charity Reg Number: 1074817
Pictures
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Robin Makin of Rex Makin & Co in Liverpool for al
l his fabulous and tireless work in seeking justice for James. Thanks also go to all our friends and family, including our close friends at MAMAA, Les and Kathy Walker and family, and Yanna and Mary O’Brian and family.
We would like to acknowledge all those people who have offered us their love and best wishes over the last twenty years, including the many kind strangers who have helped to restore our faith in human nature. Thanks especially to the people of Kirkby, our home town, and in the wider Merseyside area, who never deserted us. Their loyalty and respect to the memory of James and support for his family has been outstanding and it has been a very humbling experience over the years.
We would like to also thank author Mark Thomas for his help in researching this book and for allowing us to use his archive material, without which we would never have been able to accurately portray the events of the past. We would also like to thank anyone else who has kindly contributed to this project, enabling us to give it credibility and honesty.
Thanks go to our agent Robert Smith who has been behind us all the way doing a sterling job and to all at Pan Macmillan for choosing to publish such an important book for us, in particular Editorial Director Ingrid Connell whose patience and commitment to this book in some difficult times will never be forgotten. We couldn’t have been in better hands.
Picture Acknowledgements
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the photographs in this book, but where omissions have been made the publishers will be glad to rectify them in future editions.
Page 1 © Ralph Bulger
Page 2 © Ralph Bulger
Page 3 top: © Malcolm Croft/PA Archives/Press Association Images;
middle: © Mercury Press/Sygma/Corbis;
bottom: Matthew Polak/Sygma/Corbis
Page 4 top: © Associated Newspapers/Rex Features;
bottom two photos: © Getty Images
Page 5 top: © Nick Skinner/Associated Newspapers/Rex Features;
bottom: © Billy Griffiths
Page 6 top: © Malcolm Croft/PA Archive/Press Association Images;
bottom: © Stefan Rousseau/PA Archives/Press Association Images
Page 7 top: Ralph Bulger;
middle and bottom: © Billy Griffiths
Page 8 top: © Billy Griffiths;
bottom: © Ralph Bulger