#295: The (Brian) Jonestown Massacre
I expect that if you mention the name Jonestown to a lot of people today they’d attach no importance or significance to it. There is a generation of people who still shudder at what happened at Jonestown though, and relive with a certain terror the events on the final day, in particular the final evening within the complex. For those who don’t remember, or don’t know, The Reverend Jim Jones, a madman in anyone’s terms, led his congregation into a mass suicide, after the slaughter of five people at a nearby airport in Guyana. At the airport lay a US congressman, Leo Ryan, by all accounts a decent man, three reporters and one of Jim Jones own people who were trying to escape. This act of murder fuelled the paranoia that Jones had been feeding his people for years, and the result was 908 people dead – elderly, children, babies – everyone, including Jones himself. Jones had every right to kill himself, but by taking those who could make that choice w...