“‘Five Stones Underneath’: Literary Representations of the Lockerbie Air Disaster”

ABSTRACT

December 21, 2018, marked the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie Air Disaster. Despite this lengthy passage of time, the case remains highly contentious and active. A quick search on the topic reveals a host of possible conspiracy theories and cover-ups, many conflicting narratives and possibilities, and, for many, a strong feeling that the sentencing of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi represented a miscarriage of justice. While there have been many political books and articles on Lockerbie, surprisingly to date there have been no scholarly papers on its literary representations. This article, therefore, considers the ways in which the Lockerbie Air Disaster has been considered in fiction, drama, and poetry since 1988, surveying what has been published, as well as examining some of the motivations behind these. As will be demonstrated, some common threads run through these literary texts: namely, a frustration with the slowness of the ongoing criminal case and the perception that justice has still to be served. As will be demonstrated, many of the Lockerbie texts therefore contain inherent, politically charged provocations, sending out reminders that many aspects of the case have still to be accounted for in the public domain.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Des Dillon for sending me a copy of his play, and for corresponding with me regarding Lockerbie 103.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Brevoort’s The Women of Lockerbie “won the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Award and the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition. It was produced in London at the Orange Tree, off-Broadway at the New Group and Women’s Project and in Los Angeles at the Actor’s Gang. It is produced all over the US and internationally. Published by DPS and No Passport Press, the play has had over 600 productions to date and is translated into nine languages.” (Brevoort).

2. “I found that the trick to keeping the play heightened was to stick closely to the conventions used by the Greeks. The episode/dialogue/ode structure, as well as the use of theatrical conventions such as stichomythia, poetic speech, recited language and heightened gestures showed me how to calibrate emotion, thought, engagement and distancing effects within the performance so that the audience can not only endure the spectacle on stage, but enjoy it and experience catharsis … ” (8).

3. See also Sassi. In her “Glocalising Democracy: The Quest for Truth and Justice in Lockerbie 103 by Des Dillon,” Sassi reads the play in terms of its cosmopolitanism, the tension between local and global concerns in the play.

4. Dr Jim Swire lost his daughter, Flora, in the Lockerbie Air Disaster. He subsequently became a spokesperson for UK Families Flight 103 and has been one of the most vocal advocates for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

5. ‘The American title of Green’s novel was Flight into Danger (2008)’.

6. Several sources question this. See, for example, Andrew Billen’s article in The Times: “This is an interview with an assassin. At least I think it is. Though it’s just possible that Juval Aviv is a brilliant conman who has persuaded some of the world’s most powerful corporations, media organisations and governments to trust him.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-trained-mossad-killer-or-a-cab-driver-8k09tgb08rz.

7. In his Guardian article on Lockerbie, “What if they are innocent?”, Russell Warren Howe writes that “Aviv proved fairly convincingly that the bomb was placed in Frankfurt and he implicated a Palestinian resistance movement. His Interfor report concludes that the bombing was directed not at the US airliner per se, but at a small unit of US military intelligence – members of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) – that had uncovered a drugs-smuggling ring in Lebanon.” Petit’s novel also goes down a similar path: “Was it all to do with drugs or arms smuggling? Could it have been an act of revenge against individual spies? Was it Islamic terrorism? Or could it have been a bungled Machiavellian plot by the Israelis to cast suspicion on Palestinians working in Germany? What is certain is that there are no easy answers – even to the big question: is Nick really alive? (As for Libyans, they hardly feature in the book at all)” (Lewin).

8. Double Shot is the fourth novel in Blundy’s Faith Zanetti thriller series. Its US title was Breaking Faith.

9. Colin MacIntyre is perhaps better known as a singer and songwriter, releasing several albums under the name Mull Historical Society. The Letters of Ivor Punch was his first novel, winning the 2015 Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award.

10. In summary, these refer to the lack of evidence surrounding the unaccompanied suitcase allegedly put on the Air Malta flight, the confusion as to whether the suitcase actually came from Malta or London, evidence which suggests that Megrahi was not in Malta on the day that the clothing was purchased, the controversies surrounding which kind of timer was used in the detonator, the security breach at Heathrow airport about 16 h before Pan Am Flight 103 took off and, finally, the evidence pointing the fact Gauci was paid off by the CIA for his evidence. The full text of Robertson’s talk “The Lockerbie Affair and Scottish Society” is available online: http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2011/08/lockerbie-affair-and-scottish-society.html.

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Eleanor Bell

Eleanor Bell is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde. She is the author of Questioning Scotland: Literature, Nationalism, Postmodernism (2004) and co-editor of Scotland in Theory: Reflections on Culture and Literature (2004). Her current research focusses on the literary culture of the Scottish sixties, on which she has published two co-edited volumes (The International Writers’ Conference Revisited: Edinburgh, 1962 (2012) and The Scottish Sixties: Reading, Rebellion, Revolution? (2013)). She was founding co-editor (with Scott Hames) of the International Journal of Scottish Literature from 2006–2010.