I remember it well.

I was cleaning my car and my great uncle had been shopping and came back saying he had heard the IRA had bombed the Arndale.

I went to the city the day after and couldn’t believe it. The main thing I remember is all the glass everywhere and the noise of the alarms in what is normally a busy area was weirdly quiet apart from the alarms.

I went a few times that week just to get my head around it. I remember buying a car radio from a shop at the bottom of Deansgate which was about 1/2 mile as the crow flies from the truck which blew up and they said everything fell off their shelves.

At least no one was killed.

Wow. It really is amazing no-one was killed. What’s the story behind giving a warning before a bombing? Seems quite a civilised thing to do in the grand scheme of things. Do the Iraqi’s etc get a warning before we bomb them? Is it a standard tactic?

I was close when the bomb went off. I was on foot on my way to M&S to buy a suit for an interview. The whole world shook like you see in a disaster movie coupled with the sound of the explosion itself and breaking glass, falling brickwork etc. Scary stuff.

I was in the air having flown out of Manchester and my then girlfriend now wife was meant to be going shopping with friends in Manchester.
No mobiles, dodgy time zones and news reports that weren’t that clear initially (she’d heard a report that it was the airport that had been bombed) meant that it was almost 24hours before we’d confirmed to each other that neither of us was where the bomb was.

Meanwhile… A friend was in Russell Square for a conference when London was bombed a few years ago, turned to a colleague and said “that sounds like a bombs gone off”. The response was how would you know. Ah she says well I was in Manchester when the IRA did the Arndale.
Don’t go to big cities with that lass – or if you do stay very close; she survived both without a scratch.

Nice that they picked Father’s day,I am sure that they made their dads proud.

If I remember correctly Granada TV took a call that a security guard answered. They was based in the City till recently before moving to Salford. They were called about 90 mins previously and told a Bomb was due to go off and given a code word in the call which the police intelligence knew meant they weren’t messing about.

They just wanted to cause damage. They destroyed everything apart from that post box outside M&S which is still there with a plaque about the bomb on it.

I’ve still alot of images taken from inside the cordon no one has ever seen, I was thinking of doing a exhibition at some point 🙂

Known in NI as the Republican Redevelopment Corporation.

It was saturday when it happened so not fathers day.

There was one woman with life changing injuries as a result iirc, but otherwise the power of serendipity was strong.
If you consider how the Trafford Centre was starting to be developed at the time, the city centre could have died – the IRA saved Manchester.