THE KATES HILL PRESS, DUDLEY,
ENGLAND
SYNOPSIS of “A WITNESS FOR PEACE” by
GREG STOKES
Background to the work:
On April 15th 1986,
the day after the U.S. bombed Libya, my father Douglas Harold Stokes, was
murdered in Morocco. This was reported
widely as a case of a “crazed knifeman running amok.” In fact the murderer was quite specific about
his victims, people he perceived as Americans, quite the opposite of running
amok. While the murderer must take full
responsibility, for his act, my father’s death seems to have been a result of
the bombing raid.
Following the event we were
treated badly at the hands of the media, the politicians, and the travel
insurance company. These examples of
secondary victimisation are worthy of publication in their own right as they
highlight the real plight of families of murder victims. Secondary victimisation is, sadly,
commonplace and by no means exceptional to my family. There is a myth in our society that victims
are cared for. They are not.
I wrote about our experiences as
a family because I felt that there was a real need for victims to tell their
stories in their own words, believing that a body of such testimony was
required in order to lay a number of myths that existed about victims. Murder in our society holds a fascination for
the general public, there is almost a glamour attached to it. At the time A Witness For
Peace was written, no book about murder from the victim’s perspective existed.
PROLOGUE
In Limbo,
introduces us as a family as we first became known to the world, as victims,
surrounded by the media, hell-bent on getting information so that they could
convey ‘what it is like’. What it is
like to lose a loved one requires some understanding of who has been lost. The
first part of the book, therefore, is a chronicle of the family, my father’s
life story. All victims have a life
story and only by telling such stories can people begin to realise what has
been lost by the family concerned. The
flashes on the news reels and in the papers are just that, flashes. They may invoke pity, but they convey no
sense of loss. The family chronicle is a
history of the town’s development as well as our own as the two could not
realistically be divorced. Part II of
the book describes the murder itself and how the family learnt of it. Part III describes the aftermath, the media
invasion, the funeral, the struggle with the insurance company. Part IV looks at the issues these experiences
threw up. A moving epilogue completes
the work.
PART I CHRONICLE
Chapter One; The Beginning,
charts the origins of the family from the 1880s and ends with my father’s birth
in 1920.
Chapter Two; Early Years In
The Huts, covers the period from 1920 to 1927 when the family lived in huts
built in the war to house munitions workers.
In 1924 one of the children was killed in a road accident.
Chapter Three; Upwardly
Mobile, 1927 to 1934. The family
move to a new council house. There is a
portrayal of the depression in the Black Country and some scenes of childhood
and school. The chapter ends with the
death of a second child in a road accident.
Chapter Four; Out Of Darkness,
1935 to 1939. Doug starts work, a job he
got in effect through the death of his brother.
There is an economic recovery in the west midlands because of the motor
industry, but war is looming.
Chapter Five; “Give Me A Bren Gun”, 1939 to 1945. Doug went off to war full of bravado. “Give me a Bren gun!” He served for 3½ years in India and Burma
with the Royal Artillery. When he came
back he wouldn’t talk about it much.
This chapter is the result of extensive research at the Public Record
Office in Kew. From being a period of
which little was known of his whereabouts, the movements and actions of his
unit are charted throughout the war.
Chapter Six; “Some Never Came
Back”, 1945 to 1951. Doug comes back
to banners reading “welcome back”. He
has them taken down as some never came back.
He settles back into work and resumes his football and cricket. He eventually meets Avery Winifred
Baxter. This is the woman he will marry.
Chapter Seven; Avery,
1951 to 1957. Doug marries Avery. The chapter covers the early years of
marriage and the birth of the children.
Chapter Eight; The Family Years, 1958 to 1973. The title is self-explanatory. The style is more anecdotal now as I take up
the story myself. It covers the period
from the children starting school to the first one leaving the nest in
marriage.
Chapter Nine; The
Transition Years, 1973 to 1078. The
children have grown up and there is realignment. Eventually Doug and Avery have the house to
themselves.
Chapter Ten; “Forty Years Man
And Boy”, 1979 to 1982. Recession. The nation, the town,
Dudley Co-op are in decline. The
chapter ends with Doug and Avery facing redundancy.
Chapter Eleven; The Ragmon’s
Trumpet, 1983 to 1985. Avery’s uncle
used to say that if ever he west midlands went down the pan he wouldn’t give
this country the blow off a ragmon’s trumpet for its
chances. The west midlands
was going down the pan but there is hope. Greg is working in the middle-east and Doug
and Avery are philosophical about redundancy.
Chapter Twelve; The Marrakesh Express, January to April
1986. Things hadn’t been good in the
family but they start to get better, we all start looking to the future. Doug and Avery go on their adventure to
Morocco.
PART II MURDER
Chapter Thirteen; “Some
Corner of a Foreign Field”, 15th April 1986. The Americans have bombed Libya as a move to
counter terrorism. In the souk in
Marrakesh Doug and Avery and another couple are oblivious. Doug is killed going to the aid of a man he
barely knew who was attacked on the grounds of his nationality.
Chapter Fourteen; Bad Night
in the Black Country, 15th and 16th April 1986. The news breaks in the family. The world turns upside down.
PART III AFTERMATH
Chapter Fifteen; The Gentlefolk of Journalism, 16th
April 1986. The family were besieged by
journalists. How they practised is
described.
Chapter
Sixteen; “Alright Ave?” 16th
April 1986. Mom is brought back –
alone. We are reunited as a family. This is the scene the media wanted to muscle
in on. They were not allowed. It is shared here out of choice, our choice,
not through coercion.
Chapter Seventeen; A Moroccan Coffin, 17th to 30th
April 1986. The body is brought back and
the legal wheels set in motion amid bewilderment. There has to be a formal identification for
the inquest, the most awful task of a lifetime.
Chapter Eighteen; “A Witness For Peace”, 1st May 1986. The funeral conducted by Inderjit
Bhogal who entreated that we should bear witness to
peace and life rather than be used as a cause for hatred. (Inderjit
Bhogal latter went on to become the head of the
Methodist Church in the UK.)
Chapter Nineteen; Fountain
Pen Thieves, May to October 1986.
The travel insurance ‘people’ agree that Doug is dead but not that he
has been murdered. Moroccan death
certificates do not provide for cause of death.
Should omissions of documentation be visited upon the families of murder
victims? Sorting out this problem was a
protracted matter involving politicians, some of whom have little to be proud
about. They didn’t help us as a matter
of course, they had to be coerced.
Chapter
Twenty; Moving On, October 1986 to 1988. The family learns
to live without Doug.
PART IV ISSUES
Chapter Twenty
One; Media Intrusion. In this chapter the copy the media produced
is analysed in detail. Media intrusion
is often criticised. This is the only book in which there is full analysis of
their actions and product. As their copy
was produced mostly from other sources, in no way could their intrusion be
justified.
Chapter Twenty Two; Bereavement
And The Pathology Of The Professional.
There had been little research into the effects of homicide on surviving
family members. This chapter suggests
that the response of certain professionals might be wholly inappropriate. Because there is greater professional
involvement subsequent to a homicide as a matter of course now, the warnings
sounded here are even more pertinent ten years on.
Chapter Twenty Three; Insurance
And Corporate Criminality. Looks at
the morality of selling travel insurance for venues where the medico legal
documents render payment impossible.
Chapter Twenty Four; Death;
Prevention, Politics, Penalty. Looks
at whether some deaths in times of political unrest are preventable, how
murders are used, or not, for political ends, and how murder victims families
are all assumed, wrongly,
to be pro death penalty.
Chapter Twenty
Five; Justice or Convenience. The man who murdered my father was absolved
on the grounds of mental illness. From
the transcript of his trial it is clear that lies were told. Even if he had a history of mental illness, was
he florid at the time he committed his act?
If so, why were no Moroccans killed?
Was his trial a matter of justice, or convenience?
EPILOGUE