Page 252 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

“It was a typically dark and damp November night on the 21st, in Birmingham’s city
centre. Being Thursday, it was also very busy with people about to participate in a
joyful night of entertainment or heading home after finishing late at work. Bright lights
still reflected out from shop frontages, adding to the luminous atmosphere beneath
the usual overhead street lighting, which also helped to characterise the shiny damp
pavements.

A week prior to the 21 November, James McDade, a member of the Provisional IRA,
had become victim of his own activities when planting a terrorist bomb at the
Coventry Telephone Exchange. Arrangements had been made for McDade’s body
to be flown back home to the Irish Republic on that same night, from Birmingham
Airport, and there were genuine fears that anti-British protests could take place,
resulting in some serious disorder.

‘Big Brum’, the clock supported by the Chamberlain Tower at the Council House,
had already chimed eight o’clock. Both the Tavern in the Town and Mulberry Bush
city centre public houses, both situated in New Street, were by then filled to
capacity with mostly young revellers, enjoying the warm atmosphere of relaxation
and merriment, unaware of the devastating atrocities that were to take place.

Bombs were exploded in both establishments, causing the deaths of 21 people with
182 other innocent victims being left seriously injured. What few emergency services
arrived first on the scene found the city centre one of chaos, shock, anger, and
disorientation, as rescue attempts got underway.

Much has been written about the incidents of that dreadful night. Some accounts
have been recorded accurately, although in a piece meal fashion. Unfortunately,
for whatever macabre reasons, much of the literary descriptions made by people
professing to have witnessed at first hand, the series of events that followed the Page252
explosions, are not true and misleading.