30 years ago today

[x2boys]

30 years ago today
The IRA bombed manchester city centre
It was a miracle there were no fatalities the much of the city cente was destroyed though

Vile disgusting terrorists.
remembering all the people who lost their lives or limbs in bombs planted in England by the IRA and ofcourse the trauma to all the people in Northern Ireland who took the heaviest toll on numbers of deaths.

My mum was working in London during IRA bombings and I was terrified. As a child I didn’t understand why ‘he’ was allowed to just keep blowing things up and of course if was an era where adults explained nothing to kids.

I remember it so well. One close by I hadn't heard of until last year was the IRA bombing of a coach on the M62 in 1972 near Manchester. I stopped at a service station on my way to see DD at university and came upon a memorial stone.
There were twelve deaths on the bus, several of whom were teenagers and I know from further reading there were children badly injured on the coach.
We forget in a post 9/11 how the IRA threat felt. They didn't just target London and major targets. I live in a Northern town that sometimes held the Tory party conference and one year a stash of explosives were found in woodland.

The IRA used to drive round the rural roads in Armagh, in paramilitary vehicles, with the guns poking out of the windows. They shot people and threw bombs into local businesses with impunity. They kidnapped, tortured and murdered people suspected of being informants (aka reporting crime to the police).
What people lived through was literally a war zone and much of it was never reported.
The UDA was just as bad with the bombing, kidnapping, kneecapping, extortion, protection rackets.
It is still all simmering under the surface.
I have family members still traumatised by things that happened to them and their loved ones.

These sorts of shootings were very common from both the paramilitaries.

It was literally a war zone by all standards, many people do refer to it as the war. ‘The troubles’ I think was definitely a term designed to downplay what plaid out on UK soil under the UK government.

I should have typed UDR, not UDA.

I was at university in Scotland working my summer job in a call centre. We were called in for a meeting and they discussed being a potential target/security procedures when the Manchester bombing happened. I remember the whole room basically laughing saying they were safe because we were Scottish and it was English everyone hated. I was probably quite feisty as a twenty year old but I told them all I was English and thought their comments were out of order.

I remember their embarrassment when they realised...they mistakenly thought I was Irish with my accent I think!

I also remember being evacuated on Christmas Eve from a shopping mall where I worked in one of the big shops because there was a bomb next door in the toy dept in the dept store in Newcastle Never made the news but there were other bombs that did I think. Possibly Gateshead but I can't quite remember.

Exactly, anyone who thinks the state’s hands are clean when it comes to NI and only the IRA where the problem is naive.

That must hsve been absolutely terrifying for people living in the area
I was obviously aware of the IRA but only the larger bombings .

I just looked it up, horrific.
I didn’t know about it.
I also didn’t know that an innocent person was arrested, convicted (evidence that proved her innocence was suppressed) and spent 17 years in prison before her conviction was eventually found unsafe.
That was terrible too.

When I worked in London in the 1980’s my office was opposite the food department of an M&S in Soho. Every few days there would be a bomb scare and we would be told to keep away from the windows.

The M62 bombing was awful.

It is crazy how little people in England know about such recent history in the UK!

I can remember hearing that bomb from the leicester Royal infirmary where i was working as a student Nurse at the time.

I heard the Baltic Exchange, Bishopsgate and London Bridge bombs go off as a student nurse at the Royal London Hospital.

I still feel a sense of surprise when I go into London and there are bins everywhere, and we always have an evacuation plan with a location to meet up at if it all goes to shit and we become separated.

I didn't know about the M62 coach bombing either. 1974, i was just a baby. A whole family died. Both parents who were only 23 and their 2 young sons aged 2 and 5. Awful.
I hated seeing Gerry Adams on the news when his voice wasn't broadcast. I was so frightened of him.

Mentioning 9/11 reminds me that were it not for sympathetic fellow travellers in the US shovelling money into Noraid, the IRA would have had far fewer funds with which to operate. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Are people aware the UDA and UVF were responsible for the same level of civilian deaths?

They didn’t attack GB so probably not I would think.

They were responsible for bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in ROI, but were mostly active in NI.

Terrorists of whatever brand or ‘side’ are all utter scum though.
The results of their actions are truly heartbreaking.

There was very much a policy of not reporting what was going on in Ireland. It was only when the IRA started bombing in England that people started to notice.
A lot of the same behaviour is still going on there. Not the bombing and shooting, but the intimidation and protectionism is still embedded. The "peace" is very fragile.
People are very wary of strangers, especially in the rural areas.
Look how quickly unofficial checkpoints were set up recently to stop and question NHS staff going to work. Checkpoints manned by armed paramilitaries in balaclavas were set up on a daily basis for years in the 70s (and in previous decades) The fact that the recent ones were set up so efficiently would have been utterly terrifying for every single person in that community.

I was in my last term at university and we were all caught up in football fever. It's astonishing to think that this happened on the same day as the England vs Scotland game at Wembley, and that another group match was played in Manchester only the very next day. Somehow my brain had erased that fact.

@Avacadotoast Terrorists of whatever brand or ‘side’ are all utter scum though.
The results of their actions are truly heartbreaking.

Oh I agree wholeheartedly, it’s just a very one sided memory or view of history on this page!
So many people don’t know or don’t care about the destruction all around.

Yes Euro 96 o
I was a few months off qualifying as a nurse
Living with other student nurses .

The UDR and UVF ran extortion and protection rackets all over NI. They specialised in kidnap, torture and murder, but much of it was not reported, and certainly not in England. There were "no go" areas, especially in Belfast. Heaven help you if you accidently drove into the wrong area and your car had an Irish number plate. Different bus companies for different routes depending on protection payments. Looking back it seems surreal.

Friend went to visit someone in "the other community". Came out to bullet holes though his car door.

Wrong sort of car or wrong sort of number plate (within NI) or just new car on the street.

The random harassment and beatings by soldiers at checkpoints.

British army used to say the IRA's best recruiting sergeant was a bored British squaddie on checkpoint duty.