Remembrance Day Bombing
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| Remembrance Day Bombing | |
|---|---|
| Location | Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Target(s) | Remembrance Sunday commemoration ceremony |
| Date | November 8, 1987 (GMT) |
| Attack Type | Bomb |
| Fatalities | 12 |
| Injuries | 63 |
| Perpetrator(s) | Provisional Irish Republican Army |
The Remembrance Day Bombing (also called the Remembrance Day Massacre) was a Provisional IRA bombing in the County Fermanagh town of Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The bombing took place on November 8, 1987 at the town's war memorial during Remembrance Sunday commemoration ceremonies for those killed during the First and Second World Wars.
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[edit] Casualties
Eleven people were killed in the bombing, all except one were civilians. One further person was to die after spending 13 years in a coma. 63 people were injured. Those killed in the bombing were:
- Edward Armstrong (52), member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve
- Bertha Armstrong (53) wife to Wesley
- Wesley Armstrong (62) husband to Bertha
- Samuel Gault (49)
- Jessie Johnson (70) wife to Kitchener
- Kitchener Johnson (70) husband to Jessie
- John Megaw (68)
- Agnes "Nessie" Mullan (70) wife to William
- William Mullan (72) husband to Agnes
- Georgina Quinton (72)
- Marie Wilson (20) (daughter of Gordon and Joan Wilson)
- Ronald "Ronnie" Hill, a former headmaster of Enniskillen High School, who had been in a coma since the bombing, died in December 2000.
[edit] Reactions
The bombing led to a public outcry throughout Ireland, Britain and elsewhere. In the aftermath of the attack the IRA insisted that its leadership had not sanctioned the bombing. However, most Irish politicians dismissed the claim. The Fermanagh Brigade of the IRA was stood down after what was one of the most horrific and brutal attacks of Northern Ireland's Troubles.
The Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan, told Dáil Éireann
- I am quite certain there is no Member of this House who does not share a profound sense of horror at this atrocity by the men of violence in Enniskillen last Sunday — a sense of outrage and horror which is shared by all decent Irish men and women throughout the island and throughout the world. There can be no question but that those who planned and perpetrated this act did so in the clear knowledge that many civilians would be attending the ceremony and would be killed or maimed. We all recognise something obscene in the fact that this attack was planned and carried out on a day which many ordinary Irish men and women had gathered to commemorate those of their families and friends who had died in two World Wars. There is a long Irish tradition of respect for those paying tribute to our dead. This outrage is the latest and most horrific example of the pattern of violence of the IRA — a pattern which shows clearly their contempt for the sanctity of human life and for a sense of human decency.
The leader of the The Workers Party, Tomás MacGiolla, told the Dáil that what had
- occurred was entirely consistent with the strategy that the Provisional IRA have been pursuing for the past 18 years — sectarian warfare. The objective of this is to provoke an all-out civil war between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
In Seanad Éireann Senator Maurice Manning told the House
- In the long catalogue of horror over the past 17 years on this island, few events can have generated such total revulsion as the massacre of innocent, decent Irish people, gathered together to solemnly honour their dead in Enniskillen last Sunday. Our hearts and our prayers go out to the families and friends of those so shamefully slaughtered in the name of Irish unity.
The bombing has come to be seen as a major tactical error by the IRA. In killing people honouring their war dead the IRA created a backlash which was perceived to have undermined its claim to be a non-sectarian organisation defending nationalists.
In reaction to the bombing Bono, of the Irish rock band U2, paused during the singing of his famous protest song about the Troubles, Sunday Bloody Sunday, to denounce the violence and the Irish-Americans supporting it with an ignorant romanticism, as seen in the rockumentary Rattle and Hum.
In 1997 Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams apologised for the bombing.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ BBC News Report - 30 December, 2000 - IRA bomb victim buried - [7]
- ^ Dáil Éireann - Volume 375 Column 483 - 11 November, 1987 [8]
- ^ Dáil Éireann - Volume 375 Column 486-487 - 11 November, 1987
- ^ Dáil Éireann - Volume 375 Column 482 - 11 November, 1987
- ^ Seanad Éireann - Seanad Éireann - Volume 117 Column 1346 - 11 November, 1987
- ^ BBC News Report - 8 November 1997 - Adams apologises for Enniskillen bombing - [9]
