On This Day PIRA

Going Home for Christmas George Arthur’s   wife was packing suitcases on the night of 17th December 1974. The couple were due to fly to Ghana where they were to spend three weeks visiting relatives over Christmas. As she was doing so news came through that her husband, a 34 year old telephonist, had been killed in a bomb attack on Bloomsbury telephone exchange on Tottenham Court Road. Other bombs exploded the same night at telephone exchanges in Chelsea and the West End. Mr Arthur worked night shifts. His inquest in April 1975 heard that staff had been evacuated when a duffle bag with a battery and wires was found. Seven minutes later it exploded. It was believed that Mr Arthur was on his way to the toilet at the time. Belfast Telegraph report on the London bombings (click to enlarge) Rodney Fenton   also had thoughts of getting home for Christmas when his life was suddenly cut short on 20th December 1973. The 22 year old bank clerk rented a room in...

Act I - The School Run William Staunton In 1972   the PIRA campaign was at its most intense but even in places profoundly impacted by the violence daily life went on. Thus it was that William Staunton, like parents all over the world, made the school run with his two daughters and some of their friends on 11th October 1972. He drew up outside St Dominic’s High School on the Falls Road around 8:45am. Most of the children had left the car when two men pulled up alongside on a motorcycle. One of the magistrate’s daughters was still in the car when the pillion passenger on the bike fired through the driver’s window hitting Mr Staunton in the head and body. Belfast Telegraph report on the shooting. He slumped forward over the wheel and the car went out of control, crashing into the nearby school wall. He was helped by passers by including a doctor from the nearby Royal Victoria, underwent a seven hour operation and spent 15 weeks in intensive care.  But the fa...

The three Rudman brothers were from West Hartlepool in Co Durham. Two of them, Thomas and Jack, were twins and all three joined the Light Infantry, a regiment with historic connections to Co Durham. It was formed by the amalgamation of the four remaining light infantry regiments of the Light Infantry Brigade including the Durham Light Infantry in 1968. John Rudman On 14th September 1971 21 year old John Ronald Rudman was among soldiers dispatched to Coalisland following disturbances in the town.  IRA murderers opened fire on the lead Land Rover with pump action shotguns, a rifle and a Thompson submachine gun.  Four women had what the News Letter at the time described as "miraculous escape" when their car was caught in the ambush.  They were returning from a party at Granville when they overtook the army convoy only to come under a hail of gunfire. The soldiers in some of the vehicles jumped out and took cover on the side of the road shouting anxiously for the w...

John Proctor The 14th September 1981 hadn’t been an easy day for John Proctor. Earlier he had served as a pallbearer for his friend and neighbour Alan Clarke, a UDR man shot two days earlier as he walked along Hall Street in the Co Londonderry town of Maghera. The two had been close friends. Paradoxically, however, as the off duty RUCR man arrived at Magherafelt Hospital his thoughts were of new life. He was going to visit his wife June who had just given birth to a baby boy, the couple’s second child, and his wife recalled some thirty years later how they teased one another over how fast she had been in getting back to her ward to watch her husband from the window after leaving him to the front door of the hospital. She said that as he passed the hospital ward window, he joked: "You're very fast tonight", to which she joked back: "I'm not as fat as what you are”. As her husband walked on, she told him for the last time: "God ble...