{"id":4372,"date":"2018-10-22T09:23:49","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T08:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=4372"},"modified":"2018-10-22T09:24:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T08:24:30","slug":"25-years-after-shankill-bombing-even-in-darkest-days-compassion-flowed-across-sectarian-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=4372","title":{"rendered":"25 years after Shankill bombing: Even in darkest days compassion flowed across sectarian divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

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IT WAS the horror 25 years ago which was the catalyst for a series of tragedies that brought the peace process back from the knife edge. Bimpe Archer hears how, even in the darkest days after the Shankill Bomb<\/a>, compassion flowed across the sectarian divide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWE BELIEVE\u00a0it was the beginning of the end of what was called the Troubles \u2013 the madness had stooped so low it couldn\u2019t get any lower.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday it will have been 25 years since Charlie Butler and his neighbours dug the dead and injured out of the rubble of what had, until moments before, been Frizzell\u2019s fish shop on west Belfast\u2019s Shankill Road<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He did not know then that the little broken body in the cerise pink coat lying lifeless and face down amid the carnage was that of his seven-year-old grand-niece Michelle Baird.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had given [my relatives] assurances that if my own family would have been there I would have known,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Nine shoppers were murdered in the IRA attack which also killed bomber Thomas Begley. Begley and Sean Kelly had entered the shop disguised as delivery men to plant the device.<\/p>\n

October 23 1993 had been a beautiful, bright autumn day and the road was bustling with its usual Saturday trade. Michelle Baird would usually have been watching her father, Michael Morrison (27), play football with his Saturday team \u2013 she never missed a match \u2013 but his father had died two days earlier and, along with her mother Evelyn Baird (27), they had gone down the road to order a wreath for his funeral. The blast killed all three.<\/p>\n

Charlie Butler and his wife Linda were unaware of the family\u2019s plans as they drove from their Forthriver Road home to the Shankill, passing the staunchly republican Ardoyne area as they went.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have passed the bombers at the roundabout,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It is a thought that has haunted him for a quarter of a century. Both Begley and Kelly hailed from Ardoyne.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe might have been that close.\u201d<\/p>\n

The taxi company owner found out about the blast as he drove, when another driver, parked near Frizzell\u2019s, came through on the radio.\u00a0By the time they arrived, minutes later, it was chaos.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a woman lying in the middle of the road and ran over. It was really, really horrific. Her head and body injuries were terrible,\u201d Mr Butler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDust was swirling around everywhere. It was hard to see and I looked over to Frizzell\u2019s and all I saw was a gap. There was a roof but nothing below.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rescue attempt began immediately. Shoppers and shopkeepers, police and paramedics, passing motorists, everyone began desperately to search for survivors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI dug the body of little Leanne Murray out. Something like that lives with you. It doesn\u2019t go away,\u201d Mr Butler said.<\/p>\n

The 13-year-old Girls Model pupil, who had lost her father to a stroke eight months earlier, had gone into Frizzell\u2019s to buy a tub of whelks while her mother Gina was in the shop next door.<\/p>\n

She died along with John Frizzell (63), who had been selling fish at the popular shop since 1966, and his daughter Sharon McBride (29) who was helping him that day.<\/p>\n

Also killed were husband and wife George (63) and Gillian Williamson (49), who had been shopping for curtains for their new house.<\/p>\n

Wilma McKee (38), a mother-of-two from Westway Gardens, was pulled alive from the rubble but succumbed to her injuries the next day.<\/p>\n

While Begley died in the blast, the second bomber was still alive and gravely injured.<\/p>\n

\u201cSean Kelly owes his life to the people of the Shankill,\u201d Mr Butler said bitterly.<\/p>\n

\u201cSean Kelly was put into an ambulance with another man, Walter Harrison, and Walter says to the paramedic attending: \u2018Look at that wee lad. Leave me alone and help that wee lad.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the ambulance, although Kelly was very injured, he still had the sense enough that he was trying to peel the rubber gloves off his hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalter has never forgiven himself for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Chris McGimpsey, then a UUP councillor for the area, arrived back from a funeral, 45 minutes after the blast, all the survivors were out of the rubble.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have been on the road that day. I was in Frizzell\u2019s fish shop the week before. There are thousands of people that might have been there, that had been there at that time on another Saturday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr McGimpsey dismisses claims that, had the bomb not detonated prematurely there would have been no innocents killed, that the target was the local UDA leadership who had made its headquarters in offices upstairs and the shop would have been evacuated in time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IRA decided to plant a bomb on the busiest part of the road on the busiest day of the week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey knew that. There would not have been enough time for people to get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Butler said he will never understand how the bombers did what they did.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat made it awful hard for people was [while] there were other bombs left in places or thrown into places, the people who did this had to walk through crowds of women and children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care how stupid they are. They must have realised \u2018I\u2019m walking through woman and kids here\u2019. How could a human being do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Exhausted and traumatised by his part in the rescue effort, \u201ccovered head to foot in deep, deep white dust\u201d, he went home to have a hot bath.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife came in and said; \u2018Charlie, you may come in here, Evelyn and Michael haven\u2019t returned home yet, your sister is here,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI turned round and said: \u2018Tell\u00a0her not to worry, they\u2019ll be away into the town having something to eat and not even know what happened\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came down the family had gathered and we were ringing round the hospitals and sending people round the different hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen a detective came round and said they had some bodies that weren\u2019t identified, was there any distinguishing about them, tattoos or piercings.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone said: \u2018Michelle had a pinkish, cerise coloured coat.\u2019 Immediately a hammer hit me. I said: \u2018Joe, they\u2019re all dead. Joe, Joe, they\u2019re away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw someone lying face down and she had a cerise-coloured coat. If that\u2019s Michelle, her mummy and daddy\u2019s dead too, because they never left each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe Baird, Evelyn\u2019s brother, went to the morgue with his father and uncle Jim McKay. It was Jim who told the others to wait while he went in to identify them.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven to this day I know what he did was a lot harder than what I did. I still feel for him, even after 25 years. I know what I\u2019m living with. I know what he\u2019s living with,\u201d Mr Butler said.<\/p>\n

Evelyn and Michael were survived by six-week-old baby Lauren \u2013 who is now a mother herself \u2013 and nine-year-old Darren. The children were brought by their mother\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n

In the immediate aftermath a friend of Mr Butler\u2019s from west Belfast arrived at the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was one of the first people up in my house. The police brought him up. I live in a staunch loyalist area and they stopped his car because they knew he was from Andersonstown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve lost touch over the years, but he called me there and said \u2018After 25 years I haven\u2019t forgotten about you.\u2019 Those things keep you going.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UDA retaliation for the bombing saw a wave of violence, including, three days later, a gun attack on a council cleansing depot in Kennedy Way during which James Cameron and Mark Rodgers were murdered.<\/p>\n

Mr McGimpsey said other unionist councillors warned him not to attend the men\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was told I would be ripped apart when I got back to the Shankill. I got nothing but people coming up and shaking hands and saying \u2018Well done, I\u2019m glad you represented us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Butler later met Mark Rodgers\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said: \u2018Mark, they didn\u2019t take your daddy\u2019s life in my name or our name. We didn\u2019t want that. We wanted the Shankill to be the last and we asked for it to be the last,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know it\u2019s the innocents that suffer. We bleed the same and we grieve the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This article first appeared in the Irish News<\/p>\n

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