​50 years on and the memories of one evil day in Coleraine linger

In fact I did some pretty hard thinking on whether or not I should be working in the city at all given the evil activities of the IRA.

At that time I was four months pregnant with my first child and basically no-where in the entire province was safe with Belfast up to that time bearing the brunt of what came to be known as The Troubles.

The decision to continue in the Belfast Telegraph was mine alone as I loved my work and I had an excellent Editor who made it his duty to ensure the safety of all his staff as our magnificent City took a regular battering.

We all knew that the reading public needed to know what was going on. It was our duty to record it for them. My work in feature writing meant that unlike the brave news reporters whose duty it was to go out to every bomb-blasting and shooting event, I could take more time to ensure I could avoid a difficult place.

I wasn’t always accurate. On one day I had just left the building and walked a few yards up the street to the car park when I was conscious of a commotion behind me. That was the day the terrorists attacked our building. I realised life was not going to be easy working in the city.

Then came the June 12, a Tuesday, always a particularly busy day for me. The news started coming in – a double bombing in Coleraine. Six people were dead. According to the News Letter

earlier this week: `after a garbled warning from the IRA on June 12 1973, the first bomb – hidden in a stolen car – exploded outside a wine shop around 3pm on Coleraine’s Railway Road. A second device detonated five minutes later at a garage in Hanover Place. The six who died were Protestant pensioners and three people lost limbs.’

The bomb was planted by Sean McGlinchey – now a Sinn Fein counsellor - who got six life sentences but was freed in 1992. He was named Mayor of Limavady in 2011.

We will never know why Coleraine got hit. It was a busy town – I often shopped there, but one can only suppose it was regarded by the bombers as a Prod town and they were fair game. Oddly Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing has decided to have a `funfair’ celebration this weekend in south Armagh which will have music and entertainment for children. How short are their memories?

Those elderly people who were killed in Coleraine in 1973 probably had very few years to spend with their grandchildren.

Despite the awfulness of those wicked years one of the IRA men who played a part in bombing Coleraine that day and who spent 18 years in prison for his crime, described himself in 2015 as a

`proud ex-IRA man ‘.

When my son was safely born in November of that evil year of atrocity I prayed his generation would eventually be allowed to live in peace. And they do, but, they have had to wait a long time for it.

I returned to full-time work only to lose my boys eventually to European countries where the languages are different and their memories of `the troubles’ faint. They’re happy and successful and my beloved city is recovering nicely. I hope it stays that way.