Moral Panic. Dunblane. The gay community was in a corner over this one. On March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton burst into the gymnasium at Dunblane Primary School and killed 16 children, their teacher and injured many others. The straight press tore at the corpse of gay 'spree killer,' Thomas Hamilton: "Pervert.., monster.., bachelor.., fat, balding loner.., rubbing his hands and walking with a stoop". Conservative Prime Minister, John Major summed up the incident: "I have my own children. I looked at it firstly as a parent, as I think most people will..."
The Daily Record went into orbit. The numbers of pages devoted to the massacre stretched across the front page for days: "Pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21 and 23". No stone was left unturned as it gasped: Hamilton took boys swimming "...wearing only swimming trunks". Its editorial squealed: "ALL schools - even in the sleepiest, safest-seeming villages - must have panic alarms and early-warning systems, including links with the police and data on local characters who may pose a threat".
Why did Hamilton murder 16 children and their teacher? The Daily Mail hauled in a GP, who observed in Hamilton a marked resemblance to "radical journalist" and broadcaster, Beatrix Campbell who was supposed to have said that the anger of "militant homosexuals was its own justification: I'm angry, therefore I'm right. Furthermore, if I'm angry, I have the right to do whatever I please". The Daily Mail even summoned a graphologist to reveal: "He was almost certainly a sexual misfit" with "homosexual leanings" because "...the lower loops of his handwriting lean heavily to the left".
An otherwise innocuous picture of Hamilton steadying a boy vaulting in a gym was printed on the front page of The Independent and described in the Daily Express as the "demon in disguise" grabbing "hold of a bare-chested child".
Hamilton loved photography, and photographing youth was his passion. Far from demonstrating shame or embarrassment, he loved to show off his pictures and even sought to have them printed in the Stirling Observer. Their reporter told the Daily Mail: "We spoke to the police and, on their advice, we never ran any pieces on the group's activities". A Stirling camera shop also alerted police after Hamilton attempted to get his pictures developed there. Newspapers reported he was subject to over 240 separate interviews by four separate police units. No prosecutions resulted. In one case, a parent told the Daily Mail: "The policeman's parting words to me were: 'One of these days he'll overstep the mark and that's when we'll catch him'." The Daily Record set up a hotline begging anyone to come forward who had been in contact with the killer. No one came forward with any substantial evidence suggesting Hamilton took sexual advantage of young boys.
Daily Mail columnist, Simon Heffer thought otherwise. "Thirty years ago a man like Hamilton would have been run out of every town in which he attempted to practice his bizarre habits. The police would have taken the closest possible interest in him, whether he was breaking the law or not. They would have felt it their public duty to do so". The Daily Mail left Heffer to expand on his principles - or lack of them - implicating all homosexuals: "Our empire was bundled away... We willingly surrendered the belief we had in ourselves as a world power... The culture of self-reliance, family values and proprieties that had prevailed in Britain until the war..., swept away... Opinion-formers worked to ensure that the social stigma - in some cases downright, illegality - attached to divorce, desertion of wives by husbands, homosexuality, abortion and illegitimacy were cast away. With them went notions of social normality and respectability... A culture has grown up in which homosexual men, however isolated and repressed, are told not just that it is acceptable for them to find gratification, but that it is their right. The rest of society, terrorised by a political correctness... has been loath to impede this bandwagon". But what evidence was there that Thomas Hamilton was gay at all?
Dismissed by the press as "hate filled letters" and the ranting of a lunatic, Hamilton wrote: "At Dunblane Primary School where teachers have contaminated all of the older boys with this poison even former cleaners and dinner ladies have been told by teachers at school that I am a pervert... There have been reports at many schools of boys being rounded up by staff and even warnings given to entire schools by headteachers during assembly... I have no criminal record nor have I ever been accused of sexual child abuse by any child and I am not a pervert".
It is the final five words that are the most telling. "I am not a pervert". Whether a statement of fact or a declaration in defence, that is what Thomas Hamilton wanted everyone to believe. Hamilton wanted the respect of his community and fought hard to shake off the notion he was some kind of 'pervert'. The modern definition, one understood by Hamilton, is entirely media constructed. Where once it was defined as diverting from a perceived truth or propriety; deviating from a right course, now, the media had redefined this to imply a homosexual. In playgrounds everywhere today in Britain, for a boy to be called a 'pervert' is the same as calling him gay. Was this what Hamilton sought to shake off? Was he indeed, in denial of his own sexuality, failing to legitimise its expression? Had the media, in effect, contributed to the psychological pandemonium that sparked one of the world's worse massacres? Thomas Hamilton was sexually naïve, born into a family that read the same tabloids and learned much of what they knew and understood about sexual issues from the media. His grandmother who led him to believe his own mother was his sister brought up Thomas Hamilton. The community in which he lived read the same tabloids that helped them define Hamilton's sexual personae. Rumour, innuendo and distortion continued even after his death. Newspaper reports that he had been caught cruising Calton Hill cemetery, a gay cruising area in Edinburgh, were fabricated, yet appeared in the press as truth. As a result, today, most people are left with the impression Thomas Hamilton was a homosexual paedophile.
Boys not only called the man who gave them money for sweets and fish suppers, a pervert; they regularly stoned him in the street. He also received vicious beatings from angry fathers. One mum, Doreen Hagger proudly told The Sun how she and her friend Janette Reilly " collected pails of eggs, shampoo, oil and flour and threw it over him..." On another occasion, Thomas Hamilton broke down in tears and hit back at the hateful campaign by distributing 7,000 leaflets to parents. Young Jamie Thomson told the Daily Express: "If we saw him he used to be a target, he was the sort of man who would have his windows broken. Often kids used to throw stones at him". Neighbours told the press how they peered through his windows and watched him sitting alone looking at an array of pictures of little boys on his wall. His neighbour, Grace told The Herald: "He was a sinister, sleazy sort of man who never talked about his personal life. I'm sure he wasn't married or had children... He was kind of effeminate..." This clearly satisfied the Daily Mail's Simon Heffer: "To their great credit as a community, the people of Dunblane read Hamilton correctly. Locally, society performed its functions properly. He was ostracised from contact with the children he so desired. Parents made judgements about him, and acted upon them".
Yes. And as a result, a classroom of small children and their teacher lost their lives. In 2000, the National Rifle Association in the USA paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for 15 and 30-minute 'info-mercials' led by veteran actor Charlton Heston attacking Britain's handgun ban. The NRA accused British gun owners of being "shamed into silence" after the Hamilton massacre. One commercial accused Britain of destroying democracy by refusing "law-abiding citizens" the freedom to carry weapons. The right-wing group's vice-president Wayne LaPierre said in one advertisement: "It is more than losing a firearm. It's losing a tradition and a cherished right - a loss that can never be reclaimed". A bit like the lives of those poor children and their teacher, Wayne! The adverts recruited members to the NRA's 'Silver Bullet Brigade' promising them a silver bullet engraved with Heston's signature to show they "won't tolerate foreign government influence to first control and finally confiscate your personal firearms".
It is interesting to note that the first primary school built after the Dunblane tragedy was built with six-foot high perimeter fences, electronic doors, surveillance cameras and video controlled entry system.
