Coleraine bomb 50 years on: 'Mum had Alzheimer's and was losing grip on reality - but still could not forget IRA atrocity'

Lesley Magee – Kathleen's daughter – has offered up her recollections of that fateful day in 1973 when six pensioners were fatally blown up, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the atrocity this Monday.

A remembrance gathering was held on the precise anniversary – Monday, June 12 – when a long-awaited memorial marking the bombing was finally unveiled.

Lesley was aged 10 when the Coleraine bomb of 1973 detonated, and was living in Belfast where her parents worked.

She recalls a scene of "hysterics" at home as news of the bombing filtered out, and of a police car pulling up that evening give her parents a lift to Coleraine, where Kathleen's mother Nan Davis (a 60-year-old widow) was unaccounted for amid the carnage.

Her body was ultimately found in a shop doorway; someone identified Nan by a brooch she was wearing.

"It's a horrible memory," said Lesley.

"My mum Kathleen died a few years ago. It's very, very strange. She had dementia, and it's the one thing that never left her.

"Literally days before she died, she still cried about her mother being killed.

"It's very strange – all those years later with dementia and in-and-out of reality, but she still cried about that. It still was in her mind: her mummy, her mummy."

It had been believed that Nan died instatly in the blast, probably from shrapnel.

But Lesley said the family learned two years ago from someone at the scene that Nan had been conscious for a time, and was asking if a "wee boy was ok", before life left her.

Bad as it that day was, it could have been worse.

"Had that bomb gone off 15 minutes later there would've been utter carnage," said Lesley.

"The school only two minutes around the corner would've been out: Coleraine High School.

"All the girls from 12, 13 onwards would've been walking through the town. That's the only positive."

The device which killed the six victims had exploded outside an off-licence, hidden in a stolen Ford Cortina at 3pm, after a useless, garbled warning had been given.

But it was just one of two: a second device detonated five minutes later at a garage in Hanover Place without killing anyone.

At least three people lost limbs due to the explosions.

As it turned out, the IRA had not finished with Coleraine.

A van bomb in November 1992 near the town’s cenotaph demolished many buildings, but did not kill anybody.

One of the 1973 bomb team, Sean McGlinchey, was 18 at the time of the blasts, and was given six life sentences.

He ended up serving 18 years, and went on to become a Sinn Fein councillor, and later the mayor of Limavady.

He remains a councillor for the Benbradagh area to this day.

While he has voiced regret about the bombing, he has also described himself as a “very proud ex-IRA man”.

His brother was a killer, too – Dominic McGlinchey, an IRA man who later led the INLA during the 1980s at the time of the Ballykelly massacre, when 17 people were blown up in a village pub.

"I’m appalled that somebody who plants a bomb and kills people is then elected into power,” said Lesley, who today lives in Greenisland, near Carrickfergus.

"What does that say about our country? I’ll tell you what it says: people haven’t moved on. People are quite happy to put a murderer into office.

"And I don’t really care what side of the fence you sit on: I’d be equally appalled if that was a UVF guy. I’ve no time for it at all, none whatsoever.”

Lesley said her relatives could have “quite easily” run off to join the UVF in revenge for the Coleraine blast, but didn’t.

"We weren’t brought up like that. My mother said this has got nothing to do with Catholic and Protestant.

"We could’ve very easily been bitter or twister or whatever. But my mum was like: ‘No – the people who did this are just bad people, and they aren’t doing it in the name of the ordinary, decent Catholic person’.”

When it comes to Sean McGlinchey’s stated claim that “I didn’t intend the bombs to injure anyone”, Lesley is incredulous.

"What did he think? A no warning bomb? What did he think was going to happen in a busy street?”

And as for the Sinn Fein commemoration for the “south Armagh volunteers” on Sunday (complete with "music, refreshments, and kids entertainment”) she said: “It’s a disgrace. I don’t think it should be allowed. It’ll be a ‘fun day out for everyone’.

"You’ll have children in buggies, little children going along thinking ‘ooh ahh, this is great’ – what it’s teaching them?”

The other dead in the 1973 bombing were: Elizabeth Craigmile (76), Robert Scott (72), Dinah Campbell (72), Francis Campbell (70), and Elizabeth Palmer (60).

The Campbells and Elizabeth Craigmile were all related; Francis was Dinah’s husband, and Elizabeth was his sister.

In May 2022, a granite plaque was gifted by Murdock Memorials, Coleraine, and sited at Railway Road, the location of the fatal bomb.

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