It doesn't make it any easier to take or bear, but there has yet to be a decade in since people writing here have been around when London has not been bombed. It was only a couple of years ago that the last Real IRA bomb went off, before that just six years ago that 29 people were killed at Omagh.
I still remember when the Provisional IRA blew up Canary Wharf in 1996 and the bomb on the Number 30 bus at Russell Square yesterday?
"One person was killed and eight others were injured when a bomb ripped through the top portion of a London double-decker bus on…"
That's from 1996, not I think a suicide bomber, but another deadly amateur killed most likely while transporting the device from one place to another.
Tragic, but familiar. No big thoughts really, but the coveage today in the national press, full words of defiance and echoes of the 'blitz spirit', as it is seems to hit the mark quite fairly. To quote Tony Parsons in the Daily Mirror today "The British can take it. London can take it". Although hopefully it doens't have to take this again.
3 comments:
An American friend very kindly called to see how I was after the bombing and asked if I was shaken up. I replied no, not really, as Goirdon writes: I had grown up with this kind of thing. Below is a list of major terrorist attacks on London over the past three decades. What they exclude of course is the hundreds of smaller attacks that took place - the "one-pounders" in litter bins and incendiary devices - that became so much a part of our lives. I remember in particular the time a one pounder went off in Oxford Street, near where I was working. The Irish girl I was sitting next to asked me what it was and when I explained she didn't believe me until, moments later, another exploded (remember that old trick?). She burst into tears.
And who we north Londoners can forget their jolly jinks of the 90s in which, along with blowing off a Camden shopper's leg, they also destroyed the facade of Crouch End YMCA? Anyway, below are their greatest hits, though I have to say it's very limited: even I can remember two incidents in the 90s - one at London bridge and another in Soho - that killed a person a piece, but I guess they don't count as "Spectaculars"...
March 8, 1973: Two IRA car bombs explode outside London's Old Bailey courthouse and government's agriculture department headquarters, killing one and wounding more than 150.
• Oct. 5, 1974: Two IRA bombs explode in pubs in London suburb of Guildford; five dead, more than 50 injured.
• Nov. 21, 1974: Two IRA bombs in Birmingham kill 19 and wound more than 180.
• July 20, 1982: Two IRA bombs in Hyde Park and Regent's Park in London kill 11 and wound more than 40.
• Dec. 17, 1983: IRA car bomb explodes outside Harrod's department store, killing six and wounding about 100.
• Oct. 12, 1984: IRA targets conference of ruling Conservative Party, killing five and wounding 24, but narrowly missing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
• Sept. 22, 1989: The IRA bombs the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal, killing 10 soldiers and wounding more than 30.
• Feb. 7, 1991: IRA fires three homemade mortar shells at No. 10 Downing Street, British prime minister's official residence in London. No injuries.
• April 10, 1992: Massive IRA truck bomb in London's financial district kills three and causes hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.
• March, 20, 1993: IRA bomb hidden in garbage can in shopping district of Warrington, northwest England, kills two boys aged 3 and 12.
• Feb. 9, 1996: IRA ends a 17-month cease-fire with a massive truck bomb in London's financial district, killing two.
• Feb. 18, 1996: An IRA bomber accidentally kills himself aboard a London double-decker bus, five injured.
• June 15, 1996: For first time, IRA targets a different English city - Manchester in the northwest - with a massive truck bomb, wrecking the central shopping area and wounding about 200.
• Sept. 20, 2000: IRA dissidents fire rocket-propelled grenaded at headquarters of MI5 security agency. No injuries.
One of those (I think it was the Feb. 9, 1996 one) killed my friend's brother. But, yeah, shit happens. We carry on. Adapt to it. This sums up what I, and I think many Londoners, feel aboout the whole matter.
Kind of sums it up.
Post a Comment