Manchester Bombing - 10 years on

[dcv]

Today - June 15th, 2006 - marks the 10th anniversary of the Manchester city centre bombing.

Were you there? Do you remember it?

I'd just finished my finals at Manchester University and was living just a couple of miles south of the city centre. We heard and felt the blast from our house. Had we not been so drunk the night before, we would have been shopping in the city centre that morning.


I'll never forget this picture of the blast scene

I'll also never forget the fact that just the day before, we'd noticed a brand new advertising campaign for the Arndale shopping centre. It featured Ryan Giggs, dressed for cricket... with the strapline "Expect the Unexpected".


I've only been back to Manchester once since then and that was several years ago... it's undergone HUGE redevelopment and is barely recognisable to me now.

Can't believe it's been 10 years already.


Links to various news items here:
15 June 1996: Huge explosion rocks central Manchester
15 June 1996: The whole city shook
Bomb 10 years on: where were you?
From bomb site to style capital
Memorial service marks 1996 bomb

 

[FleurDuMal]

Today - June 15th, 2006 - marks the 10th anniversary of the Manchester city centre bombing.

Were you there? Do you remember it?

I'd just finished my finals at Manchester University and was living just a couple of miles south of the city centre. We heard and felt the blast from our house. Had we not been so drunk the night before, we would have been shopping in the city centre that morning.


I'll never forget this picture of the blast scene

I'll also never forget the fact that just the day before, we'd noticed a brand new advertising campaign for the Arndale shopping centre. It featured Ryan Giggs, dressed for cricket... with the strapline "Expect the Unexpected".


I've only been back to Manchester once since then and that was several years ago... it's undergone HUGE redevelopment and is barely recognisable to me now.

Can't believe it's been 10 years already.


Links to various news items here:
15 June 1996: Huge explosion rocks central Manchester
15 June 1996: The whole city shook
Bomb 10 years on: where were you?
From bomb site to style capital
Memorial service marks 1996 bomb

Growing up most of my life in Stockport (a couple miles south of Manchester), but now living in London for the last two years, I witnessed Manchester before and after the explosion, and all I can say is that the (P)IRA bomb was the best thing that has ever happened to Manchester. Like you say, the centre of Manchester is unrecognisable from the pre-1996 days. For want of a better description, I think Manchester has carved itself out an identity as a thoroughly trendy city. The winning of the Commonwealth Games, the decision by the BBC to relocate much of its work from London to Manchester, and the development of a huge creative industry in the city has helped Manchester redefine itself for the 21st century. No longer is it just the rough, grim and dirty Northern city, instead it has a renewed vibrancy. All this, I believe, can be traced to the increased media and political attention focussed on the city after the bomb ten years ago.

However, on the other hand, some of this regeneration has been misdirected. As more and more money has been focussed on the city centre, other areas which perhaps needed that money more desperately have been left in the shadows. For example, I was in an area the other day that is just a 10 minute walk from Piccadilly Gardens (the central point of Manchester) - around where the new Manchester City stadium is - and it is a shocking example of post-industrial decay. Boarded up houses, gangs of kids and adults roaming the streets with nothing to do, decaying community buildings such as churches, scout huts, shops, etc. The same can be said for places like Moston, where some of my family also live. Whilst the economy of the city centre has been invigorated by regeneration, making it a great living area for those rich enough to live in the centre, the ghettos that encircle it have been left for dead. It was those areas that did, and still do, need the investment. Yet what does Manchester City Council do to rectify this? Build a huge bloody out of town shopping centre in the Trafford Centre!! Thats exactly what the poorer areas of the city did NOT need. They needed schemes to breathe life back into these areas, not take it away!!

All in all the bomb and subsequent regeneration has been a mixed blessing. I would never say I wished the regeneration never had happened. But it was certainly misguided in some respects.

However, I'd love to live in one of those converted warehouses in the centre when I get a job that pays enough (HA! fat chance that'll ever happen...).

 

[UKnjb]

Hi.
No, I wasn't there (living London way), but remember it well. As the news broke through the day there was the initial feeling of "Oh my God, poor people, here we go again". And I also so remember feeling that it was all getting routine; that mainland UK was getting so used to being bombed and terrorised by the IRA that I was becoming desensitised to it all.

And the sad thing is that I think I am still relatively desensitised; to me, the London bombings last July were just more of the same, but done by a different bunch of to$$ers.

 

[garybUK]

I live in East Greater Manchester and on the day I was in the front garden with my father and we heard and felt the bomb, my mother was working in the city centre but fortunately as it's a Gas building, it's bomb proof. My uncle was in the city centre shopping and told us of how he saw the glass ripple like water before he heard / felt the explosion.

Bomb's are never a good thing but It really helped Kick start the revolution that has gone on in the City Centre. It's such a wonderful place to be now, it's fantastic. I love manchester its a great city and shows how you can turn a negative (the largest bomb to me triggered on mainland uk) into regeneration. Of course the commonwealth games helped also.

It's amazing how there were no fatalities but you have to remember those people with businesses that can no longer trade here because it's too expensive and insurances didn't pay out. A Very sad day. Anyhow I'm off into the city centre for my lunch!

 

[iGary]

Has the IRA stopped blowing stuff up?

 

[UKnjb]

Has the IRA stopped blowing stuff up?

Pretty much - official 'kiss and make up' and dis-arming has proceeded. There are still some sectarian murders going on, but not on the same scale.

 

[iGav]

I'll never forget this picture of the blast scene

Sure that wasn't taken yesterday??? heheh.

It's a shame that no one will be arrested for this... don't want to rock the boat of peace now do we.