The Last Disco: The Stardust was the place to be for young people. Tragedy would take their lives (2024)

It’s an austere, grim-looking building these days. That’s if you can spot it at all. There used to be a small green in front of it, leading you up to the Stardust. That’s been replaced by a Texaco garage which has been plopped in front of the building, hiding it from the main road. If you’re walking by and happen to look up above the petrol station canopy, you’ll see the top of the building peeking over.

Looking at it now, more than 43 years on, it remains strikingly similar to how it looked for the young people queuing outside to be let in to dance and have fun with their friends at the weekend.

It’s two storeys high with an entrance in the middle of the front façade. It used to be a reddish-brown colour, but now it’s painted white. It’s deceptively big — it would take a couple of minutes for you to walk all the way around it.

Back when it was a disco, there was a large hand-painted sign at the top of the building saying "STARDUST PRESENTS" above a cinema-style marquee board where the names of upcoming bands would go. Above the front door was an awning with "STARDUST" on it. These touches were functional and did the job; they didn’t need to be dramatic or beautiful.

The disco nights it had and the bands it put on meant it shone like a beacon for the young people in the area. And from further afield too. People flocked from all around to go there. The Stardust was the place to be.

"It was almost like a community there because you knew everybody," said Lorraine McDonnell, who used to go there with her sister Teresa. Part of this sense of community was because the people who went would go a lot. It was a regular part of their routine.

"All the build-up would be for the Friday night," said Linda Bishop, who was also a frequent attendee.

And then [you’d go] Saturday night and, if you still had the money, Sunday night

"It was a great bit of craic there," said Errol Buckley, a fine dancer in his day who’d go to strut his stuff. "It was a popular place, people came from everywhere. It was the new disco on the scene."

The appeal of the Stardust wasn’t confined to the local area. Maurice Frazer was from the other side of the Liffey in Sandymount, but he’d also frequent the Stardust, as would his sister Thelma and her boyfriend Michael Farrell.

"Everybody had friends in Coolock or wherever. Dublin was — still is — a small place, but even then, the Stardust was a magnet for young people, not only from Coolock but from all of Dublin. It was a great venue."

These teenagers and young adults in their early twenties were living in an Ireland of high unemployment, high emigration and poor economic prospects. Many had left school early and gone out to work.

"Loads of people there at the Stardust that night would’ve all gone there from work," said Linda. The unemployment rate was particularly high among young people and particularly in working-class areas such as those surrounding the Stardust on all sides.

Taoiseach Charles Haughey had set a grim tone for the decade ahead when he made a televised address to the nation in January 1980, warning the Irish people that "as a community, we are living away beyond our means". This would have come as news to the young people in Artane, Coolock and Bonnybrook who frequented the Stardust, many of whom were already out working and handing money back to their families every week to help make ends meet.

This came up again and again at the inquests years later, when family members remembered the responsibility that these young people shouldered

Josephine Glen left school at 14, and her sisters described how she gave most of her wages to her mother, a single parent of four children. But even the money they had left over wouldn’t be spent on themselves. When Michael Griffiths received his first pay cheque at the age of 16, he didn’t spend it on himself; instead he brought his siblings to the cinema. Marcella McDermott got a job at Dunnes Stores and never came home without a little something for her mother.

"The last thing she actually bought her was a lovely cream cake," her sister Selina told the inquests. Perhaps this accelerated growing up is why the Stardust meant so much to the people who went there. It was the place where people could have their first dance, go to their first gig, meet their first boyfriends or girlfriends, catch up with their friends, have a break from work. Coming into February 1981, it was all about the big disco-dancing competition on Valentine’s weekend.

If you picked up a newspaper on the morning of Friday, February 13, 1981, you would have found some common themes of the 1970s and 1980s in the headlines: Industrial action and political upheaval.

It was the period right before social partnership and national pay agreements were introduced, so strikes were common. The Irish Press carried details of a potential deal to get Electricity Supply Board drivers back to work after a five-week strike. Workers were being offered payments of up to £2,000 per person— almost €10,000 in today’s money — if they returned to work immediately, the paper reported.

Meanwhile, workers at CIÉ were also unhappy, seeking a meeting with the bosses at the state transport company over rumours that as many as 100 buses would be taken off the roads due to a cut in a government subsidy.

There was also talk of Fianna Fáil’s annual conference — its ard fheis — opening that night and due to get fully underway the following morning. Gene McKenna wrote in the Irish Press that a massive portrait of Taoiseach Charles Haughey — who represented the constituency of Dublin Artane, home of the Stardust — had been erected in the main hall of the RDS, alongside the slogan: "Leading the Nation Safely Through" in almost equally giant letters.

The paper highlighted that Ireland’s policy of neutrality, up for debate as much then as it is in the 2020s, was set to be on the agenda. One issue delegates would be voting on at the party conference called for no nuclear missiles to be located anywhere on the island of Ireland. These issues may not have been front and centre of the minds of many going to the Stardust that night.

The disco-dancing competition final was taking place and the hype had been building for weeks. There had been rounds taking place every second Friday for several weeks now, with the winners all going through to the grand finale. Good numbers were expected for that Friday night, with people turning out to support their friends.

Under its licence, the venue had a maximum capacity of 1,458

The cover at the door in 1981 was £3 (the equivalent of almost €15 today), so even if it was half or two-thirds full, there was still plenty of money to be made for the owners. In today’s money, the takings between the entry fee and the takings at the bar on a good night would run well into five figures.

Across Dublin, people were getting ready to go out. Errol Buckley was practising in his house for the disco-dancing competition. The youngest in a family of 10, Errol shared his siblings’ love of performing in front of a crowd. The 18-year-old had initially entered the competition for fun, but his moves were enough to land him a place in the final. He came from a family of performers; his sister was a go-go dancer, and his brothers were all singers, including his older brother Jimmy, who was something of a father figure to him.

In their house that evening, Errol, Jimmy and the other Buckley brothers were hyping each other up ahead of the big night. They had some friends over to have a couple of beers and practise their moves, egging each other on to get up for a demonstration.

Dotted all over the city were these small moments of life, centred around the Stardust.

In Raheny, Marcella McDermott let her younger sister Selina in on her plan for the night: Her parents thought she would be babysitting with a friend, but she was actually going to go to the Stardust. Selina was tasked with hiding Marcella’s going-out clothes in a little bag in the alley beside the house. Her brothers George and William were going as well — George meeting a girl and wearing clothes bought specially for the night, Willie heading out with his mates — but they didn’t know that Marcella would be there too.

Eugene ‘Hughie’ Hogan and his wife Marie were with Eugene’s brother and sister-in-law. The couples had gathered to toast Hughie and Marie’s future. Hughie, a carpenter who found himself out of work the previous year, had landed a new job in Kerry. The couple were due to move on Monday. After a couple of drinks, they planned to join Hughie’s younger brother Bernard at the Stardust to finish off the evening.

Others who wanted to go had to navigate getting their parents’ permission. "I had to beg my parents to let me go, especially on the late nights," Linda Bishop said.

My dad was very strict. I had to plead with him. There were some people there and they were 15, 16 and I’d say, 'why can’t I go?'

"And he’d say, 'that’s only because I’m not their dad'."

Antoinette Keegan, who was planning to go with her sisters Mary and Martina, was hearing from friends who were having the same battle. "I was ringing from my job to my sister Mary in her job," she said. "We were also ringing her friend Mary Kenny and other friends saying 'what are you wearing?' It was the big build-up as usual. And other friends were telling us: 'I’m not allowed go, I’m told I’m grounded from the last time I got in late.'"

People at the Stardust didn’t know anything about the multiple Dublin Corporation inspections or the rebukes made to [manager Eamon] Butterly over locking the doors at the venue. Or about the obstructions observed at exits during these inspections. Or the letter from Butterly saying he always took great care to make sure exits were clear.

But at the Valentine’s disco, in the non-descript building with its locked and chained emergency exits, the steel plates welded over the toilet windows and with walls covered in carpet tiles, it was a busy night.

Danny Hughes arrived at around 8.30pm to get ready for his DJ set. He had five assistants who also got up on the decks at various points in the evening. By 11pm, a queue of people stretched along the front of the building, waiting in the freezing cold to be allowed in.

Susan Darling was wearing a red dress with short sleeves and a long, heavy grey coat. She had also convinced her mother to lend her one of her prized Aran cardigans to keep her warm. "Now don’t let anything happen to that," she warned.

Inside, the atmosphere was electric. Hundreds of people had packed out the venue, dressed in their finery, out on the dance floor or sitting at tables and chairs, huddled together with friends, dishing out the latest gossip. Maybe some were seeing if they could find romance in time for Valentine’s Day.

Catherine Darling remembers the question on everyone’s lips: Who are you rooting for in the disco-dancing competition?

She and her sister Susan knew a good few of the people taking part, but they had their favourites. One was Errol, another was Robbie Mulligan.

Staff were hard at work behind the scenes. It was no small operation. There was a cashier working at the entrance and a cloakroom attendant to take coats, jackets and bags from patrons.

Twenty-three barmen were ready to pull pints, assisted by five washers who would make sure there was no shortage of glasses. Nine staff were working in the kitchen, with six waitresses and a catering manager. Fourteen lounge girls were on hand to dole out drinks, pick up plates and empty glasses, and keep ashtrays from overflowing. A supervisor kept the operation moving.

Phelim Kinahan, the floor manager, was working that night, as was Thomas Kennan, who was in charge of the nine bouncers on duty. These doormen were responsible for unlocking all the exits — and making sure they were locked in the first place. None of them were given specific responsibility for it, nor was there a specific time when it was usually done.

While the front door had a simple lock and key and could be covered by metal shutters, each of the remaining five emergency exits was secured with a padlock and chain

Each of these was strung through the panic bar, the horizontal mechanism seen on many emergency exits, which would open the door when force was applied. These bars allow people to get out quickly, and also means the doors will still open if the crowd pushes against them in a crush.

One attendee that night, Ann Horner, noticed the chains on the doors and joked with a boy she was chatting with that they’d been locked in. "They haven’t locked us in, they’ve locked them out," the boy said, saying that people had been getting in for free.

On the night of Friday, February 13, Exit 3, which was very close to the stage, was unlocked at around 8.30pm to allow the DJs to unload gear from a van, which was backed up to the doorway to allow for easy movement of the heavy equipment. The DJs weren’t able to use their usual set-up, as they discovered on a few occasions that the electrics in the Stardust couldn’t handle the power it drew.

Staff at a bar close to Exit 4 also had a key for it, as they needed to go to and from a shed outside to manage kegs. This usually happened within an hour of opening, and the door was kept unlocked.

But doors in the Stardust had a habit of becoming locked again.

• The Last Disco is written by Sean Murray, Christine Bohan, and Nicky Ryan. It is published by Eriu Books and is available to purchase in bookshops nationwide and online.