AIBU to be shocked that I had never heard about 'Bloody Friday'?

[sashh]

On the thread about public information films WeShouldOpenABar mentioned a film and I went to find it on youtube.

One of the films that popped up in the side bar is about 'Bloody Friday'. This happened when I was a small child, and I know my mum stopped us watching the TV news after my brother was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up and gave the answer, "An IRA sniper".

Anyway I have heard about Bloody Sunday, have a vague recollection of seeing the priest with a white hanky on TV and I am probably aware of it more from the campaign for justice for those shot.

I'm just wondering how much else I missed / am not aware of. I remember some bombings being reported extensively such as the one at Omahg and Enniskillen, I know these were much later so I was older or an adult.

So how many of you dear mumsnetters have heard of this? And if you have are you outside NI?

To keep the positives flowing, this is brilliant, some amazing photos - www.buzzfeed.com/rebeccageorgiamales/reasons-living-in-belfast-ruins-you-for-life-r06o

I'm 36 & consider myself reasonably well informed/ educated - I had never heard of Bloody Friday. Bloody Sunday yes & all the 1980s & 1990s events referred to on this thread.

Quite shocking when you read about the deaths/casualties from it.

I think growing up here in NI [not in Belfast], and even as an adult, I vaguely knew that there had been an atrocity called Bloody Friday, but it was only with the anniversary in 2012 that I found out lots of details about it as there was a lot on TV and in media in the run-up to/on the anniversary. I watched a documentary about it with my other half [who is English and who only came here a few years ago]: he made me turn it off as I got so distressed. I spoke to my mums best friend about it later and she said her and my mum were getting the ferry to Scotland that day and could hear the crumps as the bombs went off and could see the smoke rising over parts of the city. Said it was one of the worst days of the Troubles and she would never forget it.

I was born at end of the 1970s so Bloody Friday happened several years before me, and I think that with growing up in NI, it was sometimes hard to take in/begin to understand all the different, terrible things that happened. The Troubles were on the news every night: as I grew up there were new atrocities, and events like Enniskillen, Greysteele and Loughinisland and Omagh in particular are all printed firmly on my memory.

For me, it was the background to my childhood that occasionally came too close for comfort : the night the [police officer] father of my brothers friend was shot and killed will never leave me.

Belfast has changed enormously {in parts} in recent years. We were in the city centre on Saturday and I was saying to hubby how, looking around the city centre - all the bars, the restaurants, the tourists and yes, the continental Christmas market at the city hall - that we cant go back. We cant go back to those dark days. This place will always have its problems but I hope the worst is behind us.

I was out all morning and just wanted to come back to thank Dust for clarifying because I thought it was me she was referring to as having a selective memory, and I didn't mean to sound argumentative, but maybe I did.

and now might be a good time for me to actually say 'Sorry Dust&'.

I grew up living in the midlands in the same town as the SAS base. My dad was MoD police. It wasn't until years later why i realised why my dad insisted he kept the car in the garage at night. And why he and mum always checked under neath it. They all did from the base.

Most of the British people I've met have had a very odd biased British view of the whole NI thing, they seem to think that its the good guys (british army etc) against the bad guys (the IRA). Very little concept of the unionist side, the atrocities committed by that faction.

My point proven above by whoever listed all the IRA bombs and none of the other sides.
And uses the term Southern Ireland Accent....so like Cork? Thats the south of the country of Ireland.

My DD has been doing GCSE History coursework on NI.
Even having read the text book I'm still confused by it all.

grockle the list above was of bombs from the troubles on the UK mainland.

they seem to think that its the good guys (british army etc) against the bad guys (the IRA).

And also that the IRA was in some sense an army armed or supported by the Irish state.

NI Unionists are people whose political preference is to be part of the union with the UK. They are not a terrorist group. It is a perfectly valid and non controversial political opinion. Same as it is a perfectly reasonable political preference to wish to be governed as part of Ireland.

Loyalists would be a far better description if you are wanting to refer to terrorist groups.

It probably sounds trivial but if you group perfectly moderate, non violent people together with violent extremists, then you are demonising people for no reason. And the same thing applies in the reverse situation. There are many people in NI who would have identified themselves to be Irish nationalists, even at the height of the troubles, without ever once supporting terrorism.

Actually, maybe I need to the back what I said above? I'm not well informed enough to know whether that is what the list was. I presume that there were no attackattacks from the unionist side on UK mainland, but I don't actually know hat to be true.

My perspective on the troubles is perhaps different to that of the standard brit as I was bought up in a really Catholic part of the country - and went to school in another, the latter where everyone was of irish extraction. So I can't really identify with the perception of 'the good guys (british army etc) against the bad guys (the IRA)'.

What I can attest to is how normalised the bomb scares became. How it was normal to never have rubbish bins in town, at stations. How working part time at M&S meant that we'd have to check through all the pockets of the coats, and turn down the bedding, to ensure that there were no suspect packages left. Obviously I know that this does not come close to the circumstances of people who suffered real fear, or losses.

Horribly I can also attest to how each atrocity blurred into most of the others, as they were just so commonplace. I'd never heard of Bloody Friday either.

Gosh,treaclesoda we crossed posts there as I am so slow at typing.
And I perfectly illustrated your point of using the term 'unionists ' to apply to the very broadest group.

Am very sorry, and that you for explaining that point so clearly.

Not 'that you', Thank you

I knew what you meant.

As I said, I realise it may seem trivial but I do think it's quite important for people to be aware of it.

I was born in Ireland that year, and can't remember not always knowing about it. Have lived in England since the days where we would regularly get pulled aside and searched at the ferry terminals, and am often still shocked at how little many English people know about the troubles. And I don't mean understanding the arcana of specific loyalist/nationalist splinter groups, I mean basics like the fact that NI is a separate country to the R of I, and the basic political desires of the various factions.

Except I didn't group them together. I said there were factions on the unionist side that did bad things same as the there are factions on the other side that did bad things (the IRA).

The fact that you think even mentioning that they exist is grouping them with everyday moderates is bizarre, and only proves my point.

Tbh it really upsets me that this seems to have been wiped out from the collective conscious in many ways.

I was born in '83, and I've only heard of Bloody Friday (and indeed Bloody Sunday) through recent television programmes and subsequent googling.

It upsets me to think that these events, which still have a massive impact on our current way of life, aren't discussed more. The Troubles were never, ever talked about in school (London). I can't understand how something so enormous can be glossed over.

I'm glad that a previous poster ^ has said that their dd is studying the subject now. But I feel like part of a generation that is very very under informed about it all.

It's not bizarre Grockle. You said 'the unionist faction' which implied that they were some sort of extremist group within a bigger group.

But tbh even separate from your post, there does often seem to persist a misunderstanding outside of NI that unionists are synonymous with eg the Orange Order, or synonymous with Paisley. Just as there is sometimes a perception that a desire to be part of Ireland makes you an IRA sympathiser.

I don't think it's bizarre to want to clarify that historically there were far more moderate people than extremist. Although tbh ironically the voting pattern in recent years has moved to the more extreme parties.

Another born early eighties England who knows embarrassingly little about the Troubles.

I'm 42 and I've not heard of Bloody Friday. But there are place names in Northern Ireland that will be forever associated with terrorism - not just big ones like Omagh and Enniskillen, but every night there was a new item on the TV news about someone being shot somewhere in NI - either the IRA shooting someone or the UDF shooting someone in retaliation, or vice versa. And so it went on for years. No, we can never go back to that.

I grew up in Devon, but you became conditioned to not leaving bags lying around in railway stations, not having bins etc. I remember someone leaving a case on a train in Vienna while he went to do something else and the Brits on the train were having kittens about it. He thought we were mad.

I visited Northern Ireland 10 years ago - it was great- really interesting and lovely people.

Both sides did some terrible things - both in NI and in England (I think I am right in thinking that nothing ever happened in Wales or Scotland?) but they had an Achilles heel - they didn't want to be blown up themselves. The willingness to die makes the current crop of suicide bombers much more terrifying.

I was born in Glasgow in the early 70s and know about it.

Ah when I first moved to London a bomb went off next to my flat, my work was on the top 10 London targets (so lots of lock ins/outs), being in the city there were many evacuations/tube problems, we moved near to Lloyd's when the st Mary axe bombing happened, worked at canary wharf when that happened.

Anyone else would start to get paranoid.