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Birmingham Pub Bombings

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Hi Jim

If memory serves me, The Tavern in the Town was renamed The Yard of Ale and The Mulberry Bush was renamed The Bar St Martin.

Phil
 
I was working in the Bullring on the escalators from the bridge down to the main shopping area when the first bomb went off (we didn't know where at that time) and within a few minutes the Mullberry Bush went up and we saw the blast and felt the vibration as we were looking across at the Rotunda, we wrapped up as fast as possible then got out of there. Later (a couple of weeks) I had to go back to King Edward house (Teddys Bar) to help survey the lift equipment and then down to the Mulberry Bush to do the same thing on the escalators which led up to the bank in the Rotunda. It was not a pretty site and the way the blast had left the front of the bar in Teddys looking like a porcupine with splinters and yet all the glasses intact was astonishing. I remember it very clearly and I also remember some of the people who were lost due to the blast, they worked locally in the Bull Ring and in the offices and shops in New Street. There were many scares and false alarms during the following months but November 1974 was a sad time and a bad time for the Irish community (of which I was a part) tempers were running high and people were all to ready to lash out verbally and physically at any Irish accent. But the vast majority of the Irish community abhored the whole idea and the means of what the IRA were trying to achieve.
 
I have some photos of the aftermath of the damage to the Rotunda some where. I was in Corporation Street/Cherry Street when the bombs went off. I felt the ground move and then people were running past me then the sound of the emergency services arriving and a police cordon being put across Corporation Street.
 
IMGP3245.jpg
The shattered remains of the Mulbery Bush.
I find it very hard to post these clippings as I narrowly missed being in the tavern that evening.
 
I used to drink in the Tavern in the Town every evening but that evening I didn't have enough money so I gave it a miss and kept on working. When it reopened as the Yard of Ale it didn't have the same atmosphere as the Tavern.
 
I was learning shorthand at Sight and Sound by the Birmingham Post and Mail Building on that evening. I was not aware of the bombings until I got home on that night and it was on the news, but I do remember sirens continually going. Our teacher at the time never came back as apparently she witnessed the aftermath.
 
This brings back memories for me as the Birmingham bombings were instrumental in our leaving Birmingham to live in Lincolnshire.

I was at my mum's in Sutton that night, and my step-sister worked at Bernie Inn in town.
After we saw what had happened on the TV news my step-father went into town to find her as we hadn't heard anything from her and we couldn't get through on the phone, of course my step-father wasn't allowed near the town and had to come back home without news of her.

Thankfully we finally heard from her and that she was safe.

Our three daughters were then teenagers and beginning to want go into town in the evenings, that was when we decided to leave the city for rural Lincolnshire and hopefully a safer environment for them.

It was very traumatic at the time, and sadly a tragic time for the families affected.
 
I had been in the Tavern the night before the bombings and my sister was, we thought, in the Tavern the night of the bombings - my uncle who was an ambulance driver/crewman was at our house when the news flashed on the TV .................. we were worried to death about my sister - and my uncle had to go straight into Brum to help as he knew it would be terrible scenes. We finally heard from my sister and that she was OK, they hadn't gone into Birmingham afterall (luckily)
 
a-deserted-new-street-following-the-ira-pub-bombings-429097219.jpg emergency-services-arrive-at-the-tavern-in-the-town-707158002.jpg
The first one shows a very quiet New Street the next day and the second one was taken shortly before daybreak.
 
I have vivid memories of one incident that happened just after the police cordon went across Corporation Street. A bloke pushed his way through going up the street and when he was clear of the police line he yelled Up the Provos Up the IRA as he got to the front of Rackhams. Three blokes who were walking slowly grabbed him and beat seven bells out of him, the police turned around and ignored what was happening.
 
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