IT was a Wednesday four days before Christmas and it had started much the same as every other day in the months since I had moved to Aberdeen on a BBC Radio Scotland secondment to its north-east outpost, BBC Radio Aberdeen.
I’d been in the office from 5am, compiling and presenting the local radio opt-out programmes and bulletins throughout the day, as well as producing and generally overseeing the turnaround of north-east stories to the national network.
Shortly after 6pm, a group of us drifted over to the BBC club at Beechgrove and settled down with a refreshment to review the day’s work.
Less than two hours later our banter turned to horror as the first newsflash of many that night popped up on the club television concerning a “major air crash near the Scottish border” at the town of Lockerbie.
BBC reporters from Scotland – amongst them Kirsty Wark – and the north of England were among the first to get close to the scene before police blockades were put in place, their film footage showing the blazing apocalypse that had been a jumbo jet and a petrol station in the town.
Minutes later a small group of us were back in the office trying to find out what had happened and offering what assistance we could to the Glasgow newsdesk to help cover what was emerging as a cataclysmic incident.
There was little point in trying to get down to Lockerbie from Aberdeen, so I volunteered to exploit the relationship I had with the rescue services – notably the RAF – and co-ordinate the information flow to the then-BBC HQ in Queen Margaret Drive.
Over the next 48 hours, a number of us barely left the studios as the nightmare unfolded – including one person who is now a LibDem MP, another who is an award-winning presenter and the inimitable and sadly departed Jim Ferguson, an aviation writer (“don’t call me an expert”), whose encyclopaedic knowledge made him an international media favourite.
READ MORE: Lockerbie community bravery praised 30 years after disaster
As for the coverage of the tragedy, it is important to bear in mind that 30 years ago communications were nothing like they are now.
Mobile phones then could best be described as “stone age” and their battery packs – not far off the size and weight of a breezeblock – only slightly smaller than the clunky Uher reel-to-reel tape recorders we reporters had to lug around.
The mobiles’ battery lives were better measured in minutes rather than hours and they rarely worked outside the major conurbations, which meant that the Scottish Borders and south-west areas were almost entirely signal-free.
Reporters on the ground used whatever means they could to communicate with their newsdesks, usually by badgering hotel or pub owners, finding a phone box that worked, or frequently enlisting aid from random, helpful households.
Back at Beechgrove, fuelled by intravenous coffee, we plodded away making calls, recording phone interviews with the likes of Pat Coffey, from the Rescue Co-ordinating Centre Edinburgh and coastguard officers then under the charge of Derek Ancona, who went on to become the UK’s chief coastguard – both groups which had dealt with the Piper Alpha disaster earlier that year.
As Scotland’s oil capital, Aberdeen had a substantial American population, many of whom had called us to try to find out what had happened at Lockerbie.
A number of them also became subjects for the many interviews we conducted about it.
It was only in the cold light of the next day’s dawn that the full extent of the tragedy became apparent, leaving names such as Lockerbie’s Sherwood Crescent, where a 30ft crater marked where the fuselage had crashed, etched on many people’s minds.
In the years since that night I have covered most angles of the Lockerbie investigation in one medium or another, most recently in The National, and many involving the campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM), who believe the only person to be convicted of the atrocity – the Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – was innocent.
I have been involved in covering most of the alternative theories about the bombing. These range from the so-called Iranian connection (Iran had the most obvious motive after US warship USS Vincennes shot down one of its civilian aircraft in July 1988 killing 290 people and it was alleged to have paid the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command to carry out the attack) to a more outlandish claim from an Argentine national who tried to convince me that a mafia cell in Mendoza was to blame.
I have also come to know many of those involved with JfM, including Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the Camp Zeist trial of Megrahi and his co-accused Khalifah Fhimah, Iain McKie, Len Murray and Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the tragedy.
One thing that has always struck me is the quiet dignity and determination of the doctor in his quest to find the truth about Lockerbie and his pursuit of justice for Megrahi, who died in 2012 three years after being released from prison on compassionate grounds by then-justice secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Swire became a friend of Megrahi and, over the past 18 years, has campaigned to clear his name.
He visited Megrahi in prison and again when he was in hospital in Tripoli. After speaking to his doctors, he said: “I knew he was facing a slow, painful and inevitable death.”
In a 45-minute meeting, Swire then pleaded with MacAskill to release the only man ever convicted of the atrocity. He told The Times a few days ago: “I think Flora would have appreciated my trying to get to the truth.”
A decision has still to be made on whether or not the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission will allow a fresh appeal against Megrahi’s conviction following a four-year inquiry called Operation Sandwood into allegations made by JfM.
This found no criminality in relation to the police handling of the investigation.
JfM said the investigation had resulted in a “seminal report,” and added: “As the 30th anniversary of this tragedy approaches we feel there is a very real possibility that the truth behind the UK’s worst ever terrorist outrage will finally be revealed.”
The Lockerbie story has all the twists and turns of a first-rate thriller, but sadly its consequences for the deceased and their families are all too true and I, along with a host of others, would never want to witness its like again.
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