Ken Bloomfield was back at his desk within two hours of IRA bomb attack at his home, mourners told
Ken Bloomfield was a courageous man of integrity, apparent after the Provisional IRA tried to murder him, his funeral was told.
The service at St Anne’s Cathedral on Thursday heard about the life of the former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, including the 1988 republican bomb blast at his Crawfordsburn home, in which he could have been killed with his family.
The preacher, Dr Harold Good, described Sir Kenneth, who died two weeks ago aged 94, as a man who had “the courage of his convictions and the courage to implement them, reflected in his unapologetic and uncompromising style of leadership”.
Dr Good told mourners, who included the current head of the civil service Jayne Brady and other successors of Sir Ken: “When the IRA issued a chilling threat – telling senior civil servants – resign or face the consequences, his response was – ‘neither they nor I will be deterred from the duty we owe to our fellow citizens and democratic government’.”
Rev Good, a former president of the Methodist church in Ireland, continued: “But at no time was this to be more tested than that terrifying night when his family home was bombed by the IRA – at 6am while family still asleep. Had it not been for a last minute decision to return to university a day earlier [his daughter] Caroline would undoubtedly have perished.
"Their lovely home was totally destroyed. Yet – within two hours Ken back at his desk.”
The initial bomb blast that morning was followed by a second blast. A third bomb placed in the porch – timed go off when the security and rescue forces arrived – did not detonate. The IRA had in those latter years of the Troubles begun to target government officials and businesses which supplied the security forces.
Dr Good said that he observed Sir Ken years later talking to a former IRA leader at an event. He said that while the ex civil servant was very conscious of the attempted murder in the attack upon his home and family, the pair “related and seemed to enjoy each other’s company”.
Rev Good continued: “When I commented on this afterwards, Sir Ken said – ‘I try to understand, even when I cannot condone. We need to appreciate what it must have been like for a gifted person to be excluded from opportunities open to others’.
“This is why in seeking to shape public policy he was insistent to promote policies of inclusion rather than exclusion.”
Dr Good said that: “It was following a very public plea he made from this cathedral, Ken himself was appointed to the role of Commissioner for Victims and Survivors. In presenting his strategic report ‘We will remember them’ he spoke of this responsibility as ‘a painful privilege’.
“And later when presenting his report as co-commissioner for the Independent Commission for the location of Victims’ Remains he unapologetically broke down in tears. It was Ken Bloomfield more than most who was able to have an empathetic understanding of the fears and opposition of others. On both sides of our divided community – including those who resorted to violence to express their opposition.”
Among other facts relayed by Dr Good, he explained how Sir Ken had, when a student at Oxford University in the 1950s, been a preacher.
“In one of his four books he records the text of a sermon he was asked to preach at a service in the historic Oxford church of St Mary the Virgin. It is a powerful sermon. Truly biblically based – with a hugely relevant application to the life we are all called to live, particularly those of us who make a personal profession of faith.”
He concluded that sermon with paraphrase from that powerful passage from First Corinthians: “The antidote to all we fear – is not laws or constitutions or armies or doctrines – but love’.”
Sir Ken Bloomfield’s widow Lady (Elizabeth Bloomfield) was at the service as well as daughters Caroline McDowell (and her husband Boyd) and daughter Tanya.