After the death of his daughter, Flora, on the ill-fated Pan-Am Flight 103, Jim Swire became a leading figure in the devastated family’s desire to find justice.
In the 36 years that have passed, they may finally be getting a conclusion to this tragedy, and in Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, viewers will see just how far he was prepared to go to expose glaring holes in the official story.
Swire would go to extreme lengths to display the importance of airport security, and would later advocate for justice and “common humanity” as the central spokesperson for the victims’ families.
The real Jim Swire – who is portrayed by Colin Firth in the series – is now 88 years old, and had an active role in bringing his tale to life.
Speaking ahead of the series launch, Jim Swire talks about his decades-long quest to find answers, why he ended up defending those arrested, and how he feels about Colin Firth portraying him.
Can you talk us through your involvement in the series and bringing it to screen?
My involvement, I feel, really started when I marched into one of the caravans in Edinburgh somewhere and met the team. I realised then, partly because of my personal knowledge of working at the BBC before, that this was a major undertaking and that we were very lucky indeed to have the powers of companies like Carnival, Universal International Studios, Sky and Peacock on.
It is an extraordinary development in a campaign which, up until now, had been seeming that it would die away except for the work of future Historians who I thought would eventually uncover the real truth and promote it.
You can see the juxtaposition there between, what for us, is still a very simple family affair, we want to know who murdered our eldest daughter, as simple as that. Really what this process is doing seems to be joining up what we need with the questions that need to be answered on an international basis.
What about when you found out that Colin Firth would be playing you?
Both my wife and I have seen Colin in various things he has done in the past, but it was a real pleasure to meet him face to face.
He came over to lunch before filming had started - he’s a real nice, genuine guy that you can relate to immediately.
What kind of things were you talking about when you first met Colin Firth?
I was trying to find out what I thought of him as a person, and that was a very positive interaction indeed.
It’s very strange for me in that I’m a very reserved individual, and it’s strange to me being involved in a production of this scale but for me, my motivations for doing so are communicating what I believe to be a crucial message and getting that across to those who need to do something about it.
My belief is that UK and US governments lied about the way this was carried out. Over the years as the UK families group, all that we have done is try to go behind the scenes to make up our own minds.
Did you have a chance to go down to the set? What was that like?
A strange situation is that I used to work at the BBC, and I used to be in the studios a lot then so being on a set wasn’t as strange as it was for my wife and for all the other people who had never been on one before.
The first thing that strikes people who don’t know anything at all about the industry is how massive the resources are that have to go into making even a few minutes of television. It was very gratifying to see such a large and competent team.
There was another thing about it that really struck me, during the time that I was with them, which was that I could see the story they were making a programme about was beginning to impact them. You could see it in their eyes, that there really is a story here that ought to be known. That was in itself an extremely rewarding thing to see.
Having been on the set, what was it like to see this brought to screen?
Going into the mock-up of the Camp Zeist set, the thing I best remember is that it brought back intense memories of the actual trial.
The recreation of Camp Zeist was amazing, primarily because of its scale, it was such a huge thing. There was a big section of the studio which was given over to being a carpentry shop where they were manufacturing part of the build - it was very interesting to see all of that.
What was your personal opinion when you saw the series?
The thing that mattered was that it seemed to me that it was an honest representation of what the UK family group had tried to do, and the small amount that we’ve managed to achieve as private individuals, which has been enough to show us just how vulnerable the official version is to proper probing of what really lies behind this terrible atrocity.
After watching the series through, were there any moments that stood out to you in particular?
It may seem something very simple when taking into account all the glorious huge life scale sets and so on, but the thing that really struck me was a close up at one point of Colin’s face, and the little muscles in his face were doing exactly what I knew my little muscles would have been doing if I had been asked that question.
That really brought home to me how involved Colin had become in what he was being asked to portray. That was an extremely telling moment, just for me.