Background to the bombings

The period of sectarian strife in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles began in the late 1960s and quickly escalated. By 1972, the bloodiest year of the conflict, the violence between Protestants and Catholics was out of control.

The situation had been steadily worsening since 'Bloody Sunday' in January of that year, when 13 civil rights demonstrators were shot dead by the British Army in Londonderry.

Fearing a full-scale civil war, the British government under Prime Minister Edward Heath imposed 'direct rule' from London on 24 March 1972. Heath appointed his close colleague William Whitelaw as the first secretary of state for Northern Ireland.

Secret talks

In public, Whitelaw refused to speak to the Provisional IRA, the most prominent paramilitary organisation opposed to British rule. In private, he agreed to talks and a secret meeting took place between British officials and the IRA on 20 June 1972.

Some progress was made. Provisional IRA prisoners were given 'special status' and the IRA called a ceasefire on 26 June.

A follow-up meeting on 7 July 1972 between six IRA men and William Whitelaw himself went badly. The IRA chief of staff, Sean MacStiofain, demanded British withdrawal from Northern Ireland within three years. Whitelaw could not agree. Two days later the IRA ceasefire was ended.

The Provisional IRA now embarked on a strategic escalation of its armed campaign with the intention of bringing widespread disruption to everyday life in Northern Ireland.

The bombing begins

At around 1pm, on the afternoon of Friday 21 July 1972, the bomb disposal team in Belfast got their first call of the day. Explosives had been found underneath the Albert Bridge.

Colin Tennant, a bomb disposal officer, recalls: "While we were dealing with that, trying to clear it up, the radio started to really crackle. Then we started to get these calls in from brigade saying here's another incident, another and another."

In all, the Provisional IRA had planted 23 bombs in and around Belfast city centre.

The first explosion happened at 2.40pm outside the Ulster Bank on the Limestone Road in north Belfast.

Philip Gault was nine years old at the time. He and his mother were out shopping and had been moved away from another bomb scare. Philip leaned against the vehicle where a bomb was concealed. He was blown 10 feet into the air by the force of the blast:

"All of a sudden you’re sitting on the ground looking at a pool of blood and seeing the aftermath, the wound. Not knowing where my mother was at that stage, not knowing where anybody was. I just felt sheer panic."

Terror spread. People were fleeing one bomb, only to run into another.

The bombing lasted approximately one hour and 20 minutes, causing unprecedented chaos across the city. Security and medical resources were stretched beyond their limits.

A Royal Ulster Constabulary officer recalled a young woman and her children:

"I'm directing them down one street and of course some policeman doing his job at the bottom of the street turned them back again. I ran into them two or three times, and the terror in that young family’s eyes. They were screaming hysterically."

A definitive list

News reports in the aftermath of Bloody Friday detailed conflicting numbers of bombs and different times for the explosions. The definitive list has only recently been established.

1. Albert Bridge - Discovered at approx. 1.00pm, defused 2. Limestone Road - Exploded 2.40pm 3. Botanic Avenue - Exploded 2.45pm 4. Star Taxis, Crumlin Road - Exploded 2.45pm 5. Brookvale Avenue - Exploded 2.50pm 6 . Queen Elizabeth Bridge - Exploded 2.55pm 7. Ormeau Avenue - Exploded 2.57pm 8. Garmoyle Street - Exploded 2.59pm 9. Liverpool Ferry Terminal - Exploded 3.02pm 10. M2 flyover - Discovered 3.02pm, failed to detonate 11. Oxford Street Bus Station - Exploded 3.02pm 12. Creighton’s Garage, Upper Lisburn Road - Exploded 3.05pm 13. Stewartstown Road - Exploded 3.05pm 14. Finaghy Road North Railway Bridge - Exploded 3.05pm 15. Electricity Substation, Salisbury Avenue - Exploded 3.05pm 16. Tate’s Avenue Railway Bridge - Exploded 3.09pm 17. York Street Station - Exploded 3.10pm 18. Smithfield Bus Station - Exploded 3.10pm 19. Eastwood’s Motors, Donegall Street - Exploded 3.12pm 20. Cavehill Road shops - Exploded 3.15pm 21. Dee Street flyover - Discovered 3.30pm, defused 22. Great Victoria Street Station - Exploded 4.00pm 23. NI Carriers, Grosvenor Road - Failed to detonate

Carnage

The greatest loss of life occurred at Oxford Street Bus Station in the centre of the city. There, a car bomb killed two soldiers and four civilians, the youngest of whom was only 15 years old.

Mutilated bodies were swept up and collected in black plastic bags, scenes that were broadcast on that evening's television news.

At 3.15pm a car bomb exploded in a busy shopping area in north Belfast’s Cavehill Road. This was a religiously mixed residential area. Two Catholic women were killed, one of whom was a mother of seven.

Another of the dead was Stephen Parker, a 14 year-old Protestant boy who was posthumously commended for bravery after warning others of the bomb that killed him. His father, Reverend Joseph Parker, identified Stephen from the box of trick matches in his pocket:

"My wife waited outside. His head was very badly disfigured. It wasn’t possible to recognise him as my son."

Of the 130 people injured that day, 77 were women or children. A police officer recalled:

"You could hear people screaming, crying and moaning. The first thing that caught my eye was a torso of a human being lying in the middle of the street."

Later in the day a Northern Ireland Office spokesman referred to the assault on the people of the city as ‘Bloody Friday’, the name by which it has been known ever since.

The raw emotion of the day was captured in this BBC radio bulletin, read by Jackie Gillot.

Around 150 IRA members carried out the bombings on Bloody Friday. Just three were convicted and only one served a jail term.

Reaction and consequences

Following Bloody Friday, William Whitelaw took action to end the 'no-go areas’ held by republicans in Belfast and Londonderry.

This was called Operation Motorman, the British Army’s biggest military operation since the Suez Crisis of 1956.

The shadow of Bloody Friday

The Provisional IRA refused to accept responsibility for the atrocity and blamed the security forces for the carnage. IRA chief of staff, Sean MacStiofain, claimed that warnings had been ignored:

"It required only one man with a loud hailer to clear each target area in no time.”

But Kevin Sheehy, an RUC officer on duty that day, recalled things differently:

"The system couldn’t possibly have coped with Bloody Friday; the number of hoax bombs, the number of incidents."

On Tuesday 16 July 2002, the Provisional IRA issued a statement timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Bloody Friday in which it offered "sincere apologies and condolences" to the families of all civilian victims of IRA violence.

The horror of Bloody Friday continues to resonate.

Robert Gibson,the son of Jackie Gibson, an Ulsterbus employee who was killed at Oxford Street Bus Station, said of the bombers:

"I would quote the American playwright who said there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. It doesn’t matter what the flag is, it was a shameful act."