Call for 1973 bomb memorial
A call has been made to honour the "forgotten" victims of the 1973 IRA bombing in Coleraine.
Former councillor, David Gilmour, has appealed to Coleraine Borough Council to erect a permanent memorial to the six pensioners who died in the atrocity, which also saw 33 others injured.
In a letter to Council chief executive, Roger Wilson, Mr Gilmour suggested a suitable memorial was needed to remember the "six innocent people callously murdered in Railway Road, Coleraine, as a result of a no warning IRA car bomb."
Mr Gilmour, who now works for the DUP, was moved to write to Council after reading an article on the terrorist attack by The Coleraine Times editor, David Rankin, last year.
Mr Gilmour said in his letter: "As a former councillor, who was prevented from raising the issue during my short stay as a councillor and as a survivor of the bomb, I find it deeply saddening that my local council has in no way acknowledged that this murder of innocents occurred and it therefore has become, to quote the (Gordon Gillespie, in Years of Darkness: The Troubles Remembered] book, a "forgotten massacre".
"I do not seek a large memorial or what could be described as an elaborate memorial, I ask only that Coleraine Borough Council places a plaque on the building adjacent to where the bomb exploded giving the date, the fact a bomb exploded and the names of the victims.
"This would be in keeping with the modest nature of the Coleraine people and take account of the financial restrictions that council is currently operating under.
"If I may suggest something similar to this would be acceptable:
"'On June 12th 1973 an IRA car bomb exploded at this spot claiming the lives of six innocent people, Francis Campbell, Dinah Campbell, Elizabeth Craigmile, Nan Davis, Robert Scott, Elizabeth Palmer'.
"These innocents will always be a part of a sad chapter in Coleraine's history and we must remember that they were innocent pensioners and civilians. Most importantly however, the horrific events of that day will have a permanent acknowledgement.
"I hope that you will bring this matter to the attention of the full council in order to see if such a permanent memorial can be facilitated."
In his book about the Troubles published last year, Gordon Gillespie described the 1973 bombings as "a forgotten massacre".
Two cars stolen in the south Londonderry area were used to carry bombs into Coleraine. At 3pm a 100-150lb bomb, hidden in a Ford Cortina car, exploded outside a wine shop in Railway Road, killing six pensioners and injuring 33 others, including a number of children returning home from school.
A second car bomb exploded in a garage at Hanover Place, five minutes after the Railway Road bomb and although no one was injured in the explosion, writes, Gillespie, it "added to the overall confusion and panic."
A warning that another bomb had been left in Society Street, proved to be a hoax. Although a warning had been given for the Hanover Place bomb there was no warning given for the Railway Road bomb.
"This led many to speculate that the bombers intention was to draw people towards the bomb in Railway Road and inflict as many casualties as possible," says the author.
Later that month a coroner at a Coleraine inquest described the tragedy as the worst day in the town's history and added: "Six more innocent people could not have been selected from the whole of Northern Ireland to die in the blast that day."
The Coleraine bombing ranked with the worst of the atrocities seen in the Troubles but Gillespie claimed that it is "now largely been forgotten within the broader narrative of the Troubles."
"That is possibly because the Coleraine bombing came at the height of the Troubles, when such incidents were becoming all too familiar and the public was somewhat numbed by the frequency and randomness of the violence," he contended.
"Whatever the cause," Gillespie concludes, "the Coleraine bombing arguably deserves greater notice from historians than it has received to date, not least because its casualties were among the most vulnerable in society."
Describing the murders as "cowardly", DUP councillor Sam Cole said he fully supported Mr Gilmour's call for a memorial and looked forward to it being debated in Council in the near future.
He said: "This atrocity should no longer be known as the 'forgotten massacre', it must be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Coleraine Borough.
"June 12th 1973 was a day when the Provisional IRA visited its most callous savagery and butchery upon Coleraine's civilian population. It was the slaughter of the innocents carried out by Republicans in the warped cause of so-called Irish freedom.
"I visited Railway Road shortly after the two car-bombs had exploded without warning, butchering six elderly civilians and injuring 33 others, men women and children.
"The carnage was awful, the street littered with glass and debris and blood on the footpath. Everyone was shocked and numbed by the mindless, bloodthirsty, barbarity that had been visited upon them."
Calling for a memorial to be erected similar to that in Claudy, councillor Cole added: "This atrocity must be marked as a period of intense grief and sorrow for the victims and their relatives and for all the people of the Borough. The crime must be rigorously investigated and there should be no cover-up."
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