Where were you at 10:45 this morning? I expect some of you were attending one of the Remembrance Sunday services that take place at war memorials in towns and villages up and down the UK in order to commemorate the dead of the two world wars and other wars since then.
In 1987, just as it did this year, Remembrance Sunday fell on the 8th of November. At 10:45am on that day, the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb at a Remembrance Sunday parade in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. There was no warning. Eleven people were killed at the time. Another victim died in 2000 after spending thirteen years in a coma.
This video shows how the atrocity was reported on the BBC news that evening.
One and a half minutes into the video, the newsreader, Nicholas Witchell, observes that “So far the IRA has said nothing, which is unusual”. I remember that silence, as if the bombers themselves could scarcely believe what they had done. I have read that even the IRA’s Russian and Libyan donors were appalled. As it said eleven minutes into the 1987 BBC report, the Soviet news agency TASS called the bombing “a barbaric act”, and film of the aftermath of the bombing was shown on Russian television.
As I said, I remember noticing at the time that a whole day went by before the IRA admitted responsibility. But in 2026 I seem to be unusual in remembering the attack at all.
This bombing was despicable; the skulking PIRA thugs know it was.
And I say this as a Catholic from a family that is half Irish by descent.