#stardust
What do stars do? They shine.
STARDUST(2007) dir. Matthew Vaughn
Just chillin #girlfriends
lover, will you look at me now?
I’m already dead,
but I’ve come to explain why I left such a mess on the floor
The Stardust Tragedy, 41 Years and Still No Justice
This Valentine’s Day, let us not forget the Stardust nightclub fire of 1981 which claimed the lives of 48 young people and injured 214 others in Artane, Co. Dublin, many of whom were underage. The fire is thought to have been started in the roof space by an electrical fault which quickly tore through the nightclub, exacerbated by the highly flammable contents of a non planning permission compliant store room on the first floor. The owners of the club had greedily chained the emergency exits shut and barred the bathroom windows shut to stop people from sneaking into the Valentine’s disco without paying instead of hiring extra staff to keep an eye on areas where people might sneak in.
Following the fire many of the survivors and their families have experienced severe PTSD from the event and a number have committed suicide or suffer from addiction issues. To make matters worse, the families of the survivors are still fighting for legal justice all these years later after multiple long drawn out court battles with the owners of the venue and local authorities. Just this year, Eamonn Butterly, the former owner of the club had the absolute audacity to seek that ‘unlawful killing’ be excluded as a possible verdict from the new inquests due to take place this year.
Christy Moore composed the song ‘They Never Came Home’ about the Stardust in 1985 and it was for a time banned from airwaves for contempt of court for stating that people had lost their lives because the doors were chained shut. He often performs it at memorial events for the victims and his celebrity has brought lots of attention to the families fight for justice over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcizhnIU2lI
In 2006 a docudrama was made by RTE to mark the 25th anniversary of the incident, detailing the events that look place that night and some of the aftermath of the fire. It is available on Youtube broken into 15 minute sections here (I warn that it contains extremely upsetting content as you might expect, but isn’t particularly graphic):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdCXxyNzqE8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75lPdyMV_8M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp-Q5fJqkYk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUXSCEEmVjc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmxTW5_SYPc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb9Y1hZH-QI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM0qrz-GtOM
There was also a podcast produced by thejournal.ie in 2019 which is available on spotify here:
https://open.spotify.com/show/51L6ghlCvHMt025EgpkiP8
This is the central sculpture in Stardust Memorial Park by sculptor Robin Buick. It commemorates the lives of those who dies that night and gives the community a calming contemplative space to remember them.
While this is an Irish case, I do feel that it should be better known internationally. This story is a painful reminder of what happens what greed is allowed to take precedence over public safety.
These are the faces of those that died that night, remember them.