Member's statement: Jim Dixon: Enniskillen Bomb Survivor

Member's statement by Mr Jon Burrows on 6 October 2025.

MLA: Mr Jon Burrows
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 6 October 2025
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: Jim Dixon: Enniskillen Bomb Survivor
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5156526

Text

I acknowledge the passing last Thursday of Jim Dixon, who was the most seriously injured survivor of the Enniskillen bomb. Jim Dixon died aged 88. That bomb, which was detonated on 8 November 1987, murdered 11 people and injured over 60. I will read into the record what Jim Dixon said to the 'Belfast Telegraph' in 2009 when he described his injuries that day:
"I suffer horrendously every day, life is a living hell for me. My skull was fractured in a number of areas. My eyes were sitting down on my cheeks when the doctors found me. They had to put my eyes back into place. My mouth was blown out. My jaw was missing on the right hand said. I was split open nine inches from my chin to my ear. My face and tongue were paralysed. I had nine broken ribs. My pelvis, two hips and one leg were smashed. Three surgeons told me I wouldn’t live. It’s a miracle I survived. The time I spent in hospital was horrendous. I was in intensive care for a very long time."
Mr Dixon was an innocent victim, and the people who committed that terrible atrocity were victim makers and can never be described as victims. I do not want to politic about the pain and misery that people have lived in and the death and destruction that was inflicted on the people of Northern Ireland, but I take incredibly seriously my responsibility never to let history be rewritten, including by some people in the Chamber. Those who went out to murder and maim, whether they were loyalists or republicans, were victim makers. The people who were blown up, bereaved, widowed and orphaned were the victims. We will never remove the word "innocent" from the front of the title "innocent victim", and we will never play into a narrative, no matter how persistently it is propagated. The people who committed those terrible atrocities were wrong. I was glad to condemn the terrible attack on Liz Kimmins's office. I find it difficult that, in a democracy today, having heard the words of Jim Dixon, there are people who sit in the Chamber, whose words matter to young people, who cannot simply say, "That was wrong. There was an alternative, and we are deeply shamed about what we did to the people of Northern Ireland".

394 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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