Scribblings from Silverlawn: Christmas Shopping in Belfast 1973: My narrowest escape from a car bomb

The British Film Institute (BFI) announced a few years ago that of all the vast range of documentaries, home movies, news footage, forgotten TV programmes and government films from throughout the last century that feature in its National Lottery funded project Britain on Film, the second most watched is Christmas Shopping in Belfast, 1977 https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-christmas-in-belfast-1977-online.

In the film, traditional holiday activities and images – Santa on his sleigh, the tree outside City Hall, a children's choir – are punctuated by reminders that not all is as it should be. British Army jeeps prowl the streets and shoppers make small talk as they have their bags searched at security checkpoints. There’s another similar film from the same period on the BBC Northern Ireland online archive – a local TV report on a campaign to encourage shoppers into Belfast, launched with the switching on of the Christmas lights and the unveiling of the traditional Nativity scene under a spectacularly garish 1970s municipal tree, covered in streamers and balloons, in front of the City Hall. https://www.facebook.com/BBCNI/videos/1783801241728245/?v=1783801241728245

In the BBC Northern Ireland film, one of the shoppers talks fairly optimistically about the security checks being a little less through than in the past, and a military policewoman actually smiling as she searched her bag ‘which is the first time that’s ever happened’. But the previous interviewee, who speaks of ‘waiting on hearing an explosion any time really’ is describing the reality with which I, and everyone of my generation in the province, grew up.

My teenage diary describes my close shave when one of the city centre’s biggest car bombs went off with very little warning just before Christmas in 1973.

Thursday 20 December was the last day of the school term at Victoria College, Belfast. I was 17, and in my Lower Sixth year. We’d had a short morning with a carol service, some free time and final assembly; I got home in time for lunch, but then went back into town on the train to do some Christmas shopping. My mother had cracked a bone in her ankle a couple of weeks previously and her leg was in plaster, so I was in charge of buying stocking fillers for my younger brother and sister as well as my own presents for family and friends, including my boyfriend.

The following diary entry is very lightly edited for clarity, with explanatory notes in square brackets.

I went straight through the gates [security checkpoints into pedestrian precincts] down Castle Lane to British Home Stores, on Dad’s recommendation, to look for a wallet for [my boyfriend]. The leather goods counter is just beside the only exit, into Castle Place, from that section of the shop. [The photo below from local historian Richard Graham's collection shows Castle Place a few years earlier than this, with British Home Stores towards the left of the photo, between Wallis and Dolcis.]

I then had to go outside, [down Castle Place towards High Street] and through the gates again after being frisked [body-searched by security officers], to get back into Cornmarket. In the middle of Cornmarket, opposite Mooney’s Bar and Wings boutique, a police band was playing "Jingle Bells" and "O Come all ye Faithful"; mingled with this as I headed for Eason’s newsagents was the whine of a fire siren.

In Eason’s I heard a rumour of a bomb scare in High Street. When I came out after purchasing a clatter of things for stockings, I saw that the area I had just been in was sealed off, and bumped into [a school-friend], who had just been turned out of Woolworths. After a call at the APCK bookshop I tried to go to the Bank Buildings, but couldn’t get through to Donegall Place. As I turned back along Callender Street I heard a small explosion.

I went the long way round to Erskine Mayne’s bookshop in Donegall Square, and while I was browsing a much louder explosion was heard. Leaving the shop I saw clouds of smoke filling the air beyond Robinson & Cleavers on the other side of the Square. Chattering starlings rose startled from the City Hall as I walked briskly down Wellington Place. I called at the Church House bookshop and then abruptly terminated my expedition and headed for the Great Northern Railway station in Great Victoria Street and a train home.

‘Train services suspended due to bomb on line between Belfast and Lisburn’, proclaimed a notice in the dingy, battle-scarred forecourt. One return ticket wasted, I thought as I trudged through puddles, caused by the practically non-existent roof, to the bus station, with sirens wailing noisily round the city as brigades tore down Great Victoria Street. The bus was packed with people turned out of town and off the trains by bombs, and all had tales to tell of being hounded from pillar to post in the middle of doing their Christmas shopping.

When I got home and saw the news at 5.45, I was horrified. There were shots of British Home Stores, Wallis and Robb’s, devastated by the bomb, and of turntable ladders being employed to fight a fire almost as spectacular as the recent one at theCo-op. There was the very counter from which I bought John’s wallet only half an hour or three-quarters of an hour before the bomb went off, and the street along which I walked 15 minutes before it was cleared. The idea that I could have walked past that 500lb bomb makes me sick with fear. That is the price of living in Belfast today …

Some of our friends and relations avoided Northern Ireland’s main shopping centres for 20 years through fear of incidents like this – harder to do in those days before internet shopping – but our family carried on more or less as normal. Two days after the Castle Place bomb I went on another Christmas shopping expedition to our neighbouring market town of Lisburn, and my sister went into Belfast. She reported that ‘High Street was barely recognisable, there was nothing left of BHS, Wallis or Dolcis, and Robb’s is badly damaged’.

The first explosion I had heard was a controlled explosion set off by the army in response to a call about a bomb in a van parked in Castle Place. It was followed by the bomb itself exploding. Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) I’ve been able to find reports of the incident in editions of the Belfast Telegraph for that evening and the following day. A surprisingly small amount of space is devoted to them, probably because, miraculously, noone was killed or even injured. But it was a massive bomb, which ruptured a gas main and started fires that caused catastrophic damage on both sides of a very wide street.

A fascinating archive of slides recently shared on social media includes evidence of the extent of that damage. Guy Butler, an architecture student, photographed the streets of Belfast in 1973/4 for his Masters thesis, and has now made his collection available to the Ulster History Hub website and Facebook page. There are several shots of Castle Place, showing the burned out and boarded up facades of H Samuel, Castle Fashions, Wallis, British Home Stores and Robb’s: