At that point, two men ran up behind Graham and fired a number of times, at point-blank range, into his head. He fell immediately to the ground. The other plotters, who did not pull the trigger, began running in all directions to distract witnesses so as to prevent the identification of the killers. Stunned, Nesbitt looked up at the row of buildings opposite. ‘Everyone was staring out of the windows,’ remembers Nesbitt. ‘With all the lights on during this dark December day, the hundreds of matchstalk heads looked like something out of an L.S. Lowry picture.’ He ran into the faculty, where he immediately met David Trimble. ‘It’s Edgar,’ exclaimed Nesbitt.39 Sandra Maxwell, administrative assistant in the Law Faculty since the days of Professor Montrose, remembers that Trimble was very quick to react, thundering up the stairs to call the ambulances and the RUC.40 But it was to no avail. Edgar Graham was dead, aged 29. Sylvia Hermon was present in the students’ union when his death was announced over the tannoy: it elicited a vast roar of approval from some of the republican students. She has never been able to set foot in the place since.41 Whilst regretting all deaths, Gerry Adams nonetheless declined to condemn the killing because Sinn Fein was not prepared to join the ‘hypocritical chorus of establishment figures who were vocal only in their condemnation of IRA actions and silent on British actions’.42
Hitherto, Queen’s had prided itself on being ‘above the conflict’ – a kind of safe haven where such unpleasantnesses did not intrude. Now, however, they found that the RUC investigation centred on republican students. According to Lost Lives, two former students were given suspended sentences for withholding information about the shooting – tariffs which the Unionists denounced as ‘shameful’.43 But Queen’s was terrified at the prospect of the University being torn apart by the murder. The handling of the aftermath of the killing was therefore a matter of great sensitivity – and, to this day, Sir Colin Campbell, the Pro-Vice Chancellor, declines to say what measures he took in dealing with any member of the University.44
Some colleagues suspected that Queen’s did not want Trimble making things worse because of what it might have considered as any injudicious pronouncements which he might have made in the heat of the moment. Trimble recalls Campbell coming up to him in University Square, with the body of Graham still on the ground, instructing him not to do any interviews on television. ‘This is the University speaking,’ Campbell told him.45 Campbell says this was definitely not the case: he had no instructions at this point from the Vice-Chancellor, Peter Froggatt, and that there was no such conversation with the body still on the ground. What Campbell does say is that he was subsequently advised by Froggatt not to say anything: he says that Queen’s policy in those days was not to get involved in anything which could be construed as hyping up political conflict.46 Trimble says that, in fact, he had no intention of saying anything. But when he discovered that Queen’s had no plans to make any collective institutional pronouncement, he told Campbell ‘you’ve got to say something or I will’. He recalls that Campbell did talk to the press on the next day and that he did it ‘very well’.47 Again, Campbell’s recollection is different. He says that upon seeing the massive media coverage of the event, Queen’s changed its mind and gave him authority to speak on its behalf on The World at One. His concerns, he recalls, were twofold: first, he urged Trimble and everyone else to keep quiet to ensure that the University did not speak with a multiplicity of voices. Second, Campbell says, with one colleague already dead, he did not wish to see Trimble pushed further into the limelight.48 But in the eyes of many of Graham’s friends, Queen’s had stuck its institutional head into the sand. The statement issued by the Vice-Chancellor’s office, reported in the Belfast Telegraph on 8 December 1983, read: ‘[No]…evidence been offered to suggest that these attacks originated from within the University and this University has no knowledge of any direct involvement by any member of staff or student.’ Piously, it concluded: ‘The University does not impose – nor could it impose – any political test for entry as a student or appointment to the teaching staff, taking academic achievement as its only criterion’.49 To this day, Colin Campbell describes it as ‘not a political event, but primarily a human tragedy’.50 Some of Graham’s friends felt this was besides the point. It was not people’s views which were at stake, but their actions.51
Whatever controversies attended the conduct of Queen’s, one thing is certain: anyone who attended Graham’s funeral still describes it as one of the saddest days they can ever recall. Rev. Dr Alan McAloney, who had baptised Graham, conducted a packed service at Randalstown Old Congregation Presbyterian Church, which included the teacher who taught him his first lessons and the seven members of the Graham family who sang in the church choir.52 The cortège then moved to Duneane Presbyterian Church, one mile from the shores of Lough Neagh, where this only son was laid to rest close to his mother’s forebears. Expressions of shock and sympathy came from all over the world: Margaret Thatcher, who had met Graham earlier in the year when he spoke at the Conservative party conference, wrote to the parents to express her condolences.53 But whatever the condemnation, the killing had a profound and beneficial effect from the IRA’s viewpoint. As one close colleague has noted, Graham could have been assassinated anywhere, but the choice of Queen’s was quite deliberate.54 Trimble observes that ‘the murder reinforced the “chill factor” on campus. It reinforced the tendency of Protestant children to go elsewhere for their education.’55 Indeed, when Nesbitt returned to teach the following term, he found on one occasion a mugshot of himself on the blackboard with a drawing pin through his head.56
The gunmen are still at large today, and their identity is widely known. Even in the wildly unlikely event that they admitted their involvement, the semi-amnesty provisions of the Belfast Agreement would ensure that any sentence served would be minimal. It contributed to the University authorities’ reappraisal of political activity by members of staff. Until then, they had viewed such forms of public service indulgently. But thereafter many contend they became more concerned lest it enmire them in further controversy. Trimble and others increasingly felt that excursions into the public arena would not help their careers.57 Trimble has been unable to forget his fallen colleague and extolled his memory when he won the UUP leadership at the Ulster Hall in September 1995 and in a key vote of the Ulster Unionist Council of November 1999. So, too, did opponents of the Belfast Agreement: ‘What would Edgar have done?’ became a topic of intense debate between the two sides of the UUP. Every day, he passes