Book by Tipperary survivor of Miami Showband massacre shortlisted for Irish Book Award

Carrick-on-Suir born Stephen Travers’ new book about surviving the Miami Showband Massacre, has shortlisted for an Irish Book Award. 

The Bass Player - Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre, published last month, is shortlisted for the Dubray Biography of the Year Award and the public are invited to cast their vote for the book. 

Public voting for the Irish Book Awards opened on Wednesday, October 22 and you can cast you vote up to 6pm on Sunday, November 16. You can vote by logging onto the An Post Irish Book Awards website:https://anpostirishbookawards.ie/vote/

The Irish Book Awards will be hosted by Oliver Callan and presented on RTE 1 on December 11. 

Book Review

The Bass Player- Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre is a timely reminder of the many lives tragically lost during The Troubles, the devastating impact on the survivors and the utter futility of violence. 

It has been published 50 years after Stephen’s life was forever changed when he and his bandmates were ambushed by the notorious Loyalist Glennane Gang in a false flag operation to try and frame them as republican terrorists by planting a bomb in their minibus.

Three of his bandmates – Fran O’Toole, Tony Geraghty and Brian McCoy – were mercilessly murdered on that fateful night of July 31, 1975 by the Loyalist paramilitaries, who stopped them at a vehicle checkpoint on the A1 road at Buskhill, Co. Down.
Stephen, the band’s bass guitarist, was shot and left for dead but thankfully survived along with saxophone player Des McAlea.

It has been Stephen’s mission ever since to keep alive the memory of his murdered friends and to seek justice for them.

The book details Stephen’s work to achieve these two goals over the past two decades since the publication of his first book, Miami Showband Massacre: A Survivor's Search for the Truth, in 2007.

The Bass Player covers Stephen’s work in highlighting the band’s story through the Emmy award nominated Netflix documentary, Remastered: The Miami Showband Massacre, which was released in 2019.

The book’s foreword is written by Alexandra Orton, the documentary’s producer, who describes Stephen as a “man of deep integrity and compassion whose commitment to telling his story was fuelled by his intense desire to ensure that the violence of those years is never, ever repeated”.

The documentary and a significant section of this book, which Stephen has written with Yvonne Watterson, recounts his efforts to uncover the truth of British military and RUC collusion in the attack on the Miami Showband.

And it details his and the other Miami Showband families’ exhausting 10 year High Court legal battle against the British

Ministry of Defence and PSNI that concluded in December 2021 with the defendants settling the case.

Stephen rightly observes in the book that nobody was fooled by the refusal of the British MOD and PSNI to admit liability, “the fact they paid £1.5m (€1.75m) plus all legal costs to settle our cases was, in the court of public opinion, a clear admission of guilt”.

He writes candidly of the lasting psychological trauma the massacre on him and how he is now better prepared to manage it thanks to counselling, which he began in 2020.

The book also details Stephen’s tireless work with fellow survivors of The Troubles and their families promoting peace and reconciliation and countering radicalisation in the North through the Truth and Reconciliation Platform (TaRP).

Stephen co-founded TaRP in 2019 with Eugene Reavey, whose three brothers were murdered at their family home in Whitecross, Armagh in 1976.

The organisation gives victims of all sides of the conflict the opportunity to tell their own personal experiences and has run truth and reconciliation events and founded an online peace centre that collects the testimonies of victims of The Troubles.

Stephen publishes some of the harrowing testimonies of the people who lost loved ones during The Troubles and some of whom, like Stephen were injured and survived and they are truly heartbreaking to read. What shines through in all of the accounts is the heroism, resilience and humanity of those relatives and survivors.

As the book’s title suggests, Stephen also writes about his passion for music and particularly the bass guitar. Local readers will be interested in his account of his early years growing up in Carrick-on-Suir where he developed his love for music and reputation as a guitarist in local showbands including the Mick Delahunty Jr. Big Band.

He pays a beautiful tribute to his great friend and fellow Carrick man, the late Liam Dwyer, who passed away in December 2022. Stephen and Liam performed together in The Sinners showband in the early 1970s. Liam was the band’s charismatic lead singer and Stephen has wonderful memories of performing alongside him.

Stephen recalls when he was asked what one musical day of his life he would relive, he without hesitation replied: “The summer of 1974 with Liam Dwyer and The Sinners at the Kickham Inn in Carrick-on-Suir”.

The Bass Player is published by New Island Books and is now on sale in bookshops.

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