It’s a little known fact that in 1974 I was almost a victim of the IRA. On 18th December, the IRA placed a bomb in the doorway of Dixons photographic shop on Bristol’s Park Street, which exploded a matter of minutes after I passed by on the way as an underaged reveller to a fun-packed night at Tiffany’s night club. I didn’t even hear it go off, although my mum did many miles away, at home in Brislington. In fact, I didn’t even know about it until we were prevented from heading down Park Street at the end of the evening to get a taxi home from the city centre. We were diverted down Park Row, away from the flashing lights, broken glass and rubble. I knew little about the IRA at the time, other than the fact they seemed to be setting off bombs all over England. As the years went by, I learned far more about them and I grew to hate everything they stood for.
On 20th March 1993, yet another IRA bomb went off, this time in Warrington, Cheshire. It was the second time the town had been attacked that year. Two bombs were planted in the main shopping area, killing two people, maiming another and injuring many more. One of the victims was a 12 year old boy called Tim Parry.
I follow his heroic father on twitter. Colin Parry has spent the intervening years campaigning for peace and this morning posted that had the IRA not murdered him, his son would be 40 today. Mr Parry speculated briefly on how things might have been had his life not been taken by evil murderers. How would his life panned out? Would he be married with children? He would never know but I suspect many of us would spend the rest of our lives saying ‘what if’. Instead, Mr Parry did his bit to bring about peace in Ireland, even meeting Sinn Fein deputy first minister and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness. He is a greater man than me.
I don’t understand, nor will I ever understand, how terrorists can live with themselves after committing such heinous crimes. They will have known, when planning and planting the bombs, that innocent people would be killed and injured. In Warrington, the ages of the dead were three and twelve. Hardly agents of the British government. The terrorists ended lives and wrecked lives in pursuit of political aims. Unforgivable.
As the years went by, governments sought to bring about peace in Ireland and both formal and informal meetings took place between British politicians and terrorists. In fact, informal contacts were made even when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and continued through all subsequent governments, until Tony Blair’s Labour government of 1997 brought about the Good Friday agreement. And it was always the right thing to do. Yes, it was a very tough call to speak to the representatives of murderers and, in all likelihood, the murderers themselves but the peace we enjoy now vindicates what must have been very difficult decisions. But none of it will bring back Tim Parry.
It’s why I still look at the likes of Gerry Adams with contempt. I understand what had to be done to achieve peace, yet I find it hard to forgive and forget the actions of those men during the troubles. And I can’t get the image of Tim Parry out of my head. I never could. I doubt that I ever will.
It’s too easy to draw a veil over past conflicts and ‘move on’. We do need to move on because times and, we are told, people change. But I know where my sympathies lie and that’s always with the victims and their families.
I so wish Tim Parry was celebrating his 40th birthday today. He was stolen from his family by murderous maniacs who, to my mind, should never be forgiven. The only life sentences were handed down to his family.
