MPs share `grief and desolation'

STEPHEN GOODWIN

The Commons yesterday refrained from rushing to pass judgement on the Dunblane shootings and united in genuine and moving expressions of sympathy with the grieving families.

George Robertson, Labour's Scottish affairs spokesman, whose children went to the school, was close to tears as he described the killing of the 16 children and their teacher as the "worst possible nightmare that any parent could think of".

"You don't need to have lived in the town of Dunblane or see three children go through Dunblane Primary School to share the grief and the horror and the sheer desolation that our town feels today. You just have to be a fellow human being," he said.

In a statement to MPs, Michael Forsyth, Secretary of State for Scotland, announced that the senior Scottish judge, Lord Cullen, would undertake an inquiry into the shootings.

"The cold-blooded slaughter of tiny children is beyond atrocity," Mr Forsyth said. "I know I speak for the whole House when I say to the stricken families of Dunblane: our deepest sympathy and our prayers are with you and for you."

Both Mr Forsyth and Mr Robertson, who visited Dunblane on Wednesday, paid tribute to Gwenne Mayor, the teacher gunned down with her class. Also praised were headmaster Ron Taylor, for his "heroic" efforts to save the lives of his dying pupils, and emergency services, church leaders, care experts and volunteers.

The frontbenchers also spoke of their contact with the gunman. Mr Robertson said even those who had met and distrusted Thomas Hamilton - "I myself argued with him in my own home" - could have had "no inkling to guide us to his final act of wantonness". Mr Forsyth, also the constituency MP, agreed there could have been no suggestion Hamilton was capable of such an act.

The shootings dominated Prime Minister's Question Time. With the customary hostilities swept aside, John Major told the House: "Sometimes political disputes, whether on great matters or small matters, can seem very petty beside human matters. And this is one such occasion."

Mr Major said ministers would want to consider the implications of the shooting for any future changes in firearms control. The issue, along with school security, would form a part of Lord Cullen's inquiry.

"It was an act of wickedness beyond imagination," the Prime Minister said.

Tony Blair, the Labour leader, said Britain was a nation in mourning. "How many parents last night will have clutched their own children to them, looking at them differently, and imagining the pain which for others is all too real? Politics is silent today."

Sir David Steel, the former Liberal leader, married in Dunblane Cathedral and regarded it "as a place of particular happiness and serenity, cruelly shattered". Though Sir David called for tighter gun control and other MPs questioned school security, there was general agreement with Mr Robertson's view that even a fortress could not have kept at bay "an armed, crazed, suicidal killer".

Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionists, said when he heard of the tragedy he thought of the story of Rachel, weeping for her children. "We think of those today who weep for their children and cannot be comforted because they are not."

But the Old Testament prophecy held out a great hope, he said. "I trust that faith and that hope will shed a beautiful rainbow over this terrible valley of tears."