Ipswich in the face of tragedy
Saturday, 23 Dec 2006 20:17
When Tania Nicol went missing, little was made of it outside the local area
Ipswich and its environs have been thrust into the media glare in recent weeks. InTheNews.co.uk's Nick Ames goes back to his hometown to see how it's handling it.
Philip Larkin once wrote that "Nothing, like something, happens anywhere". He may have been referring to the ennui of post-war Coventry, but the same used to be applicable to Ipswich as well. While not quite the sleepy backwater tiresomely hammed up for the purposes of certain among the media, there have been few extraordinary eddies in its steady stream of existence, and little that has focussed the national gaze save for once-a-decade excellence by Ipswich Town FC.
The events which came before Ipswich's world turned upside down serve well to illustrate the point. When Tania Nicol and Gemma Adams first went missing within a few days of each other, the local media – not to mention the police – were sharply on the case, with regular appeals for sightings and information launched and the situation rarely drifting from the front few pages. There was barely a ripple nationally, however – every town has to deal with missing persons and, distressingly, isolated deaths, so this was a very local affair.
Shockingly, this wasn't the case for long. A patently normal, average-sized regional town has had to lay its environs bare for millions of people to see. Hintlesham, Copdock and Levington never craved recognition for possessing hotels of wildly differing quality (in the former two cases) and a pleasant marina respectively, but now they connote something wider, linked inevitably with a grimness which can – to the wider world – do little but linger.
"It was difficult to report on such a horrendous story knowing all the places highlighted were where you grew up and know intimately," Kate Riley, a reporter for a local independent radio station, told me. I shared her sense of sudden displacement. The week of the murders had seen Ipswich given wall-to-wall coverage on the news channels and looking stark, tinged with sadness and foreboding, not the place I know.
Growing up in Ipswich was a safe, happy experience – no suburban horror and full of the usual ebbs and flows, small victories, minor defeats. It is not an overly aspirational place, but people from all walks of life look carefully after their own and thus the prevailing atmosphere is pleasant and comfortable with an underlying sense of steel.
I found a similar balance struck upon walking through the town centre during my first visit in several weeks on December 16th. In the very midst of the unfolding tragedy life went on, Christmas presents were purchased, football supporters prepared to outsing the visiting Leeds fans. But the awareness of what loomed was acute and would have been tangible even if the News of the World's huge mobile reminder that big money was available for anyone who turned the killer in had not been patrolling the Cornhill. A snake of women lined up for rape alarms at the hastily-imported mobile police centre outside the town hall, while the queues at vending points for the Evening Star, whose editor Nigel Pickover has handled the situation excellently and with sensitivity which puts some of its national peers to shame, were slightly longer than normal.
Over at Portman Road – community focal point by day, cornerstone of the red light district by night, a microcosm of the town's attitude was in evidence. 23,000 people stood for two minutes just yards from the likely abduction point of the five victims to listen to a prayer recited by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury, receiving it with dignified applause, before holding another minute of silent reflection. Faces hardened, heads bowed, hands were held tightly – this was no perfunctory commemoration of a celebrity. Moments later the same people were hoarse as they sought to cheer their team into action as they do every second Saturday. At 16:57 the roar was noticeably louder than usual as the Tractor Boys saw out a 1-0 win. Just as we've suffered together, together we will win, it said.
Ms Riley comes to the conclusion that the constant media attention, very apparent on my walk through the main shopping streets, has exacerbated the situation it describes. "The 24-hour national news coverage which descended on the town didn't help the mood and added to the panic," she says. "Local reporters acted responsibly and didn't delve into cliché, but the idea of a 'sleepy town being gripped by fear' was lapped up too readily by some of the nationals and has been self-perpetuating to an extent."
Home comforts, then, have been the greatest comforts despite the sense of tragedy. The attention will surely drift when the case, hopefully speedily, finally draws to a close once and for all – although the victims themselves and the social issues which the murders have highlighted will not be forgotten. Ipswich has enough vibrancy to avoid becoming stigmatised nationally as another Soham or Saddleworth, but it would certainly welcome some time to itself for a while.
"I have spoken to many local people and they sound more defiant than ever," says Ms Riley. "Suffolk is a close community and will become stronger after this."
It will – and the feeling among the town's people is clearly that they know best how to ease the pain.
Nick Ames
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