[Brighton] new Documentary tonight about the Brighton Bombing

[Hovegull]

BBC2 - anyone going to watch this?
40 years this week - what are your memories?

 

[Jam The Man]

I remember going into school the next day - I was 9 - and people were pretty scared.

 

[AK74]

My mother worked for a florist (The Conservatory, on The Drive, run by a charismatic South African called Willem). She had to deliver a bouquet to the RSCH, destined for Norman Tebbit. I went with her, and we were taken in a service lift accompanied by two armed policemen. It was very rare to see guns openly on display in the UK, and I recall this only becoming more prevalent in airports a couple of decades later.

I was ten at the time. Never forgotten it.

 

[Bry Nylon]

My dad worked for a company that supplied forensic coveralls, gloves, dust masks etc to, among others, Sussex police.

I remember being woken up by the sound of the phone in our hallway ringing and shortly afterwards hearing my dad drive away from the house.

I didn’t know at the time but it was about 4:30am and the call was the police HQ at Lewes, asking my dad to go and open up the warehouse because they were sending a fleet of police vans to collect loads of PPE-type stuff.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Watching it now.

 

[Ⓩ-Ⓐ-Ⓜ-Ⓞ-Ⓡ-Ⓐ]

I was about 3 months old, can’t remember it too well but it certainly scared my Mum

 

[wellquickwoody]

Worked for Sussex Police at the time at Lewis HQ. Maggie was said to have been taken to Leeds Castle in Kent, but was actually at Lewes HQ. Every entrance manned by officers of whatever nature carrying semi/automatic weapons which was intimidating for an 18 year old just turning up for work! As it was, members of the press just jumped the back fence!

 

[BN9 BHA]

I lived in Brighton back then and didn’t know anything about it until the next morning when the person giving me a lift to work told me about the bomb.
I was probably asleep when it went off but I was thinking just now how far away could the explosion be heard.

 

[Peacehaven Wild Kids]

Wasn’t living in Brighton at the time but bizarrely my memory is more of the Oxford fans throwing apples at us from a garden adjacent to The Manor Ground the following Saturday

 

[Greenbag50]

Peter Sissons on C4 was a revelation and reminded me of the difference of the media landscape between then and now.
Call me old fashioned, but think I preferred actual journalism then, in place of journalistic opinion now.
As someone once said, “just the facts ma’am’

 

[Zeberdi]

BBC2 - anyone going to watch this?
40 years this week - what are your memories?

I lived in Norfolk Square at the time. Was woken up by the explosion. I woke my flatmate up and we decided to walk down to the seafront to see what had happened - we couldn’t get close - access was all cordoned off a long way in either direction but we could hear alarms, see smoke/dust and an absolute sea of flashing blue lights. We hung around for 10 minutes or so before getting cold so went back and watched the news on tv.

 

[clapham_gull]

Remember quite well since my dad drove us down there a few days later to see the damage.

Warrington more in my memory since I lived there at the time. Everyone forgets the failed first bomb on the gas works which would have finished me off and thousands more.

I heard the next ones a few days later go off (I was in the bath) a bit later a house mate came home after shopping in the centre and just collapsed in tears in the floor. Never asked her what she saw.

 

[clapham_gull]

Watching it now.

Extraordinary documentary wasn't it ?

 

[jevs]

My dad was a dog handler for Sussex Police and one of two handlers to have an explosives dog. They were only told to search Thatcher's room on the build up to the conference. I remember, as an 18 year old still living at home, the phone going at around 2.30am and dad being told that they'd blown the Grand up. He was called out and had to search the rest of the hotel to see if there were further devices

Several months later, the Queen was due to stay at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne. Again dad searched it but this time, the dog found a "device" in a toilet cistern....which turned out to be a fake, possibly planted by the press as a "test"

 

[Chicken Run]

Went into School next day and two of the teachers claimed to have been drinking in the hotel bar earlier that evening having attended some fringe event, i was only 14 at the time so believed them

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Extraordinary documentary wasn't it ?

It wasn’t quite what I expected especially with the interview with McGhee.

 

[trueblue]

In these days when news is everywhere in seconds, seems astonishing now that I didn’t even find out until, I think, a couple of days later. We were on holiday and shocked to see pictures of The Grand with a great big hole in it on the front of every English newspaper. Back then, ‘papers abroad were always a day behind and presumably the bombing happened too late to make the front pages on the date it happened.

 

[jackanada]

Same night my brother was born.
My mum was well pissed off as she was planning to get her head down and leave the mewing infant to the nurses but as an experienced mother they booted her out.

 

[Lenny Rider]

Slightly off topic, not Shane Duffy’s finest moment playing for the Albion when he tweeted a tribute to the late Martin McGuinness, clearly a prime mover in this atrocity

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Slightly off topic, not Shane Duffy’s finest moment playing for the Albion when he tweeted a tribute to the late Martin McGuinness, clearly a prime mover in this atrocity

He comes from (London)Derry, where family values are still very divided. He chose to play for Ireland rather than Northern Ireland, so obviously has very strong beliefs.
After all, our late Queen shook hands with McGuinness in 2012.