As the thirtieth anniversary of the Manchester IRA Arndale Centre bomb dawns, Martin Gray relives that day’s horrifying events whilst caught up in the city centre as it happened and experiencing the force of the blast. He also reflects with sadness and regret on the loss of many of the city’s old treasured places which were eventually swept away in the widespread regeneration which it triggered, as well as now dealing with the long term psychological effects of what happened.
Prologue 1988-1996
It is utterly inconceivable for many of the current generation to comprehend, visually at least, just how unrecognisable the city centre of Manchester has become today compared to what it looked like in the mid-1990s. Back then it was still an intriguing and fascinating, if still rather scuzzy, hotch-potch of grand Victorian and Edwardian civic edifices, older industrial buildings standing faded but still proud in all their dark satanic glory, customary post-war brutalist developments and run down back inner city streets and districts, with a few tentative pockets of sparkling new build and regeneration here and there.
At the very heart of the city centre lay Piccadilly Gardens, which during that time was still exactly that – a part-sunken green city square of gardens, with trees, shrubbery, flowers, benches, tiered terrace levels, and even public toilets. These were progressively run down by this point due to a combination of council neglect and public mis-use (think of what it was then and fast forward to the present) and towards the end of its increasingly unkempt life was more renowned for being litter strewn and stinking of piss and vomit and frequented by seedier characters than anything quite as fragrant as its pretty flower beds once promised.
Anyway, despite all this, the city centre, for all of its perceived ‘scuzziness’ then, still had a lot of great places to go to of a weekend – chiefly many of the old watering holes that littered the city centre at a time before all the usual sterile ‘designer bars’ were the norm. There was of course the eclectic and bohemian alternative shopping hangouts of the Corn Exchange (by Victoria Station on the other side of town) and the venerable Afflecks Palace on Oldham Street, plus countless clothing boutiques, record shops, book / comic shops and other emporia in the district known as the Northern Quarter (the name just-recently coined around 1993-94 by a cooperative of businesses – one of them being Cafe Pop [now Pop Boutique] – within the eight key thoroughfares that made up the area: Newton Street, Dale Street, Oldham Street, Stevenson Square, Tib Street, High Street, Hilton Street and Thomas Street).
Every weekend I would look forward to taking the train from my home just across the southern city boundary in Stockport – where I moved to in late 1988 for my first ever full time job in the town with the council’s publicity / marketing & communications unit – to call by at my usual city centre haunts and favourite social places. It was a ritual which I relished and needless to say over time I built up quite a large social circle of friends, acquaintances and contacts just from hanging out in these hallowed spaces.
By the middle of the 1990s (which I’ve always looked upon with nostalgic fondness as Manchester’s ‘golden decade’ for obvious reasons – it really was the best city in the whole fucking world then as far as I was concerned, cos it had pretty much everything I needed in order to live my life in relative bliss), the city was undergoing a definite transitional period of change. A few years earlier in 1988, the Central Manchester Development Corporation was set up initially to redevelop parts of the run down eastern side of the city centre (Ancoats specifically) as well as regenerate many of the areas to the west and south, such as Castlefield and Knott Mill. It also encouraged repurposing of many derelict industrial sites into residential and leisure quarters.
Manchester’s live music scene was also already pretty buoyant around this time thanks to the city’s profile now having risen considerably as a result of the Acid House club nights at the Hacienda from 1988 onwards, plus an ever growing uptake of new University students who chose Manchester as the city in which to study because of its burgeoning clubbing and music scene. Along with various other great venues that I had so many fond memories of at the turn of the new decade: The Boardwalk, The Roadhouse, Band On The Wall, Jilly’s Rockworld, Brickhouse, The Venue, The International 1 & 2, Paradise Factory, Night & Day, The Jabez Clegg, The Swinging Sporran, Sankey’s Soap, and countless others, we had our own buzzing music mecca right here on our doorstep.
Add in also the various city centre pubs and bars we used to regularly frequent: Peveril of The Peak, Briton’s Protection, the original Tommy Ducks, the Lass O’ Gowrie, The Retro Bar, City Road Arms, The Salutation, Oldham Street’s The Castle and Gullivers, The Burton Arms, the original Frog & Bucket, The Abercrombie, Hulme’s The Royce, Oxford Road’s Amigos, Fleece & Firkin and McInally’s Sports Bar, etc. Back then these were on our itinerary most weeks when we ventured into town to either catch a few bands live or to play gigs ourselves, as I was then (1995 onwards) part of a couple of sprawling Brazilian / Latin-Fusion percussion collectives who would regularly take over the city centre with a deafening fusillade of carnival samba drums and suchlike. One of our favourite spots was the old Marks & Spencer’s wavy canopy by Shambles Square during most Saturdays. It was the best of times.
On the Friday of the 14th June, the eve of that fateful morning, some of us percussionists were gathered on the green directly outside the fabled student hangout The Salutation pub near the Metropolitan University. This was just before the whole grassed area was built upon and occupied with student accommodation halls some years later. What happened there that afternoon was a small mini-Glastonbury shindig of sorts – there were all manner of colourful characters floating about: musicians, students, winos, Rastas, DJs, punks, crusties, older worldly-wise poets, etc.
The intention was to hold a get-together to mark two things: one – the fact that the REAL Glastonbury festival had taken a hiatus in 1996, and two – that summer’s first ever European Football tournament, EURO ’96, in which the UK and a few of its football stadia were the hosts of the games that were to come, Manchester’s Old Trafford being one fixture of the programme (between Germany and Russia). That game was due to take place on Sunday 16th June, so there were a fair number of fans about in anticipation of attending.
The weather, needless to say, was utterly gorgeous – warm balmy sunshine and temperatures of around 72 degrees Fahrenheit. No complaints then there (too bad then that Glastonbury resumed the following year 1997 when it had the first of two notoriously infamous mud baths!). The forecast for Saturday was similar. Some of us Latin fusion drummers were also excited because the first ever Manchester Jazz Festival was also scheduled to start on the Saturday and we were going to be the act that kicked things off at Dukes 92 in Castlefield around mid-day.
15 June 1996 : The day that changed the city forever
Stepping out of the train at Piccadilly Station, feeling some mild excitement at what was coming up, I made my way – carrying my drum – down the approach road heading towards the other side of the city centre – about a mile’s walk. The time was 11.15 am. I was just crossing Ducie Street and continuing up towards Piccadilly when suddenly without warning there was an enormous deafening bang that shook the very insides of me – knocking my breath out – and caused people around me to scream and react in terror. The buildings ahead appeared to be wobbling but that illusion was probably due to the sheer personal shock of that sudden explosion. As you could imagine, everything turned into some surreal slow motion scene like you would see in a film at this point – things just seemed to lose all sense of coherence and logic and utter confusion and disorientation ensued. It felt longer but the time was still only 11.17 am – the exact moment the cataclysmic blast occurred.
A few seconds later I regained some of my pummelled senses and realised that the huge bang lay directly ahead where I was heading…. it was coming from behind the Arndale Centre. ‘Shit – they’ve targeted the shopping centre’, I and others gasped in barely disguised disbelief and horror. I could see thick black smoke now curling up into the air from the Arndale Tower office block. An appalling, terrifying thing to behold. People were panicking, some women screamed and some kids started crying hysterically; many others were running in all directions not knowing where to seek refuge in case of another bang from an as yet unknown location.
The terror was palpable as near chaos ensued, and my befuddled senses were screaming in total bewilderment and a state of barely restrained panic. I realised for a split second I was still walking TOWARDS THAT DIRECTION before I promptly asked my delayed reflexes what the hell was I doing, only to finally stop abruptly and, momentarily dazed and even dizzy, whip around and flee back towards where I came. Followed by other people doing exactly the same thing – heading back to the relative safe sanctuary of Piccadilly Station. Or was it really safe? Who knows if it was even back there?
Some of us knew immediately what that huge bang was… well I did anyway. A fucking bomb. Then it dawned on me straight away: it was the work of the Provisional IRA. Of fucking course it was, who else could it be? They’d only gone and targeted us in Manchester again for the second time in less than four years (the previous occasion – two separate smaller bombs! – being in December 1992 behind Kendals in Parsonage Gardens and also on Cateaton Street) – and this time strategically because, and this is only speculation, Manchester was one of the major cities taking part in hosting Euro ’96, so what better reason to disrupt everything than to plant another fucking huge explosive device to cause maximum damage?
Things became more of a blur around this point but suffice to say that I nearly got knocked winded and flying by a screaming girl who was trying to flee from something in a most distressing manner – it was few pigeons suddenly taking off from the road – she clearly thought it was airborne shrapnel in her terrified confused state. I would have done too if I saw the same thing. But she ploughed right into me and screamed ‘Oh my god, Please help me…..!’. All I could do – whilst quickly gathering up my own scrambled thoughts – was to play the good Samaritan (even though I too was racked with considerable fear and terror and sense of delayed shock) and hold her against me in a big comforting hug, hearing her sobbing hysterically against me.
Tears were already stinging my own eyes as I whispered my reassurance to her… ‘Hey, it’s only birds, it’s okay…. it’s all okay… you’ll be all right. I’m here….’. We were both trembling. Even though I knew those words sounded ineffectual as she continued to hold onto me tightly before slowly relaxing her grip and then, strangely, apologising for the outburst. I insisted she head towards the station and she sheepishly thanked me and carried tentatively on her way. I hoped she was okay though, as I watched her disappear into the crowds all standing shell-shocked outside Piccadilly Station entrance. My eyes welled further with tears of sympathy for the girl and also confusion and shock at everything around me.
All immediately around us the city fell quiet – and an almost uncanny, eerie silence descended upon the streets – streets which were throbbing and bustling and making so much noise only moments earlier, now reduced to a stunned, traumatised state of suspended animation. No one was saying much, people probably literally had the stuffing (and words) knocked out of them by that explosion. What was there actually to say other than what we’d already suspected about it being a huge bomb? In the distance, there were some very disquieting noises: mixed in with the police sirens, and now helicopters, we heard plenty of wailing alarms, some sounding positively distressed and almost ghost-like … and worse, I could still hear the sounds of very distant screaming. Oh god, that really chilled me to the bone.
Any panic that was evident was actually now subdued – tempered by a load of police appearing from cars and taking the decisions to close off entry and exits from many of the streets around the station. In effect we were now all stranded in one area as all operations suddenly ceased as a cordon was quickly placed around most of the city centre, pending what they would deem in common parlance as ‘a major disaster scenario’: buses and trains in and out of the city centre all ground to an instant halt – there were immediate curtailments of through trains from Piccadilly towards Warrington and Liverpool, as well as trains heading in a southerly direction to all other parts of the country. Manchester had effectively come to a complete standstill and it was the strangest, and most disturbingly surreal and frightening thing I – or indeed any other person caught up there that morning – had yet experienced.
Now fully resigned to the fact that the inaugural Manchester Jazz Festival would in all likelihood not be taking place – as police sirens got louder and more officers arrived to shepherd all the stunned pedestrians to safety, or herding them back to the train station, I likewise retreated back the way I came and headed for Piccadilly Station concourse again, only to soon find another new nightmare awaiting us all: total gridlock as the city was now effectively in lockdown.
It took several agonising hours before any semblance of movement across the various transport corridors was re-established and now that all music events including the opening day of the Jazz Festival were postponed indefinitely, the next challenge was how the hell was I and others now going to get back home? As it was, the plan was for me to return to my family’s on the Wirral after the Jazz Festival event so it took me more than EIGHT HOURS to finally do so. The journey home on the crowded train was one that was eerily hushed with very few people making much noise except speaking in low voices about what they’d just experienced. The collective atmosphere was unlike anything I’d ever felt before – so thick with traumatised, almost catatonic, shock that you could cut it with a knife.
Once I got back home, amid total relief from my family who were obviously clearly concerned about whether or not I was in the city centre at the time (well, I most certainly was, and the after-effects would affect me for life – of which more later) I watched the news reports and was aghast and almost speechless at the level of utter destruction that the explosion had caused. Apparently it was a 3,300 lb bomb – the largest mainland device ever detonated in the history of IRA attacks – and the devastation it wreaked was horrifying. The beloved scuzzy old Shambles Square was decimated as was parts of the Corn Exchange but the worst fate was dealt to the Arndale Centre itself : the damage wreaked was just totally horrific. That very beating heart of central Manchester resembled a war zone after the Blitz, but now it was some fifty years later from the original one.
The only godsend – though it’s little comfort in lieu of the carnage – was that nobody lost their lives: a miracle given that 212 people were injured by flying debris and shrapnel in their attempts to escape, despite being given ample early warning by the coordinated actions of the police to evacuate the immediate area of a half mile radius. Whilst Manchester’s Arndale Centre was pretty much totalled, damage was dealt to the buildings nearby: Shambles Square, Royal Exchange, Barton Arcade, The Corn Exchange, Manchester Cathedral and also St Ann’s Church. One office building next to the wrecked Marks & Spencer’s, Longridge House, was also so badly hit its future was likewise doomed. The only thing left untouched was the red postbox on Cross Street.
Click here to see a gallery of the images of the devastation taken by the Manchester Evening News
The aftermath
Many businesses, including a fair number of friends of mine who had stalls in the beloved Corn Exchange, pretty much lost their livelihoods as the council did not allow them to return to retrieve any of what remained of their stock in the days and the week following the explosion. Despite it being dry weather for a few days more, which at least meant nothing was rain damaged, and it being deemed safe for the time being as long as strict safety precautions were adhered to upon re-entering the building, stall owners were forbidden to return. Until when the heavens did finally open up again some time later, resulting in everything finally perishing and beyond salvageable. It didn’t help either that some of the traders were not even fully insured for the extensive losses, thus this sounded the immediate death knell for the Corn Exchange as a place which I used to so love frequenting every Saturday. It really was a tragic irreplaceable loss to many of us.
I mean the Arndale itself could be rebuilt (which it was), but it was the grass roots and independent traders I felt most sorry for as, despite a fair number of them lucky enough to relocate in the Northern Quarter along High Street (in a building called The Coliseum) a few months later, their fortunes were never the same again, and what happened later was all too inevitable: them trying to survive against rising rents and shorter (and less favourable) tenancy agreements. All too predictably, the Coliseum’s footfall gradually started to decline and it was inevitable that come the end of the 1990s and the start of the new decade, even that place would close and all its traders have to seek alternative premises to continue – at which point some of them sadly became victims of adversity and folded for good. As of the late 2000s, the Coliseum building has since been given over to – and extended upwards as – more residential apartments.
Manchester’s cityscape took such a knock from the direct after effects of the bomb that plans were quickly drawn up for the biggest renewal and redevelopment programme ever experienced in the city’s history post-World War II. This enormous undertaking amounted to the largest inner city regeneration ever seen at the time. It may have initially focused on the Arndale being rebuilt but instead new proposals were put in place using this as an opportunity – a clean slate if you like – to completely reconfigure parts of the city centre. This would of course be a once in a lifetime opportunity to rise to the challenge of bringing the city of Manchester out of the ‘dark satanic ages’ and into a brand new glistening future, phoenix-like.
Ironically in 1996 the Central Manchester Development Corporation had already folded after its intended lifespan of 8 years since its 1988 beginnings, leaving as its legacy some commendable urban renewal projects which have taken full advantage of repurposing and redeveloping the old derelict industrial buildings which the city still had so many of. These were nearly all converted into office or residential (in some cases leisure) spaces to great success. By this point, one of the city’s most notable and respected development companies Urban Splash (set up by Tom Bloxham in 1993 and with headquarters based in Castlefield) had begun to make inroads to acquiring a lot of the older heritage buildings of the city and reconfiguring them into bold new projects. Another local architect, Ian Simpson, was responsible for a dynamic new residential development at No. 1 Deansgate in 2000 which would be the first of his many audacious new projects to bring city centre living into the 21st Century.
A timely re-birth for the Manchester music scene
In the immediate aftermath of the June IRA bomb, a few members of Manchester city centre’s already booming club and music scene drew up proposals to stage a new festival to promote a sense of community and togetherness, resilience and hope for a brighter future by bringing together DJs and local bands/artists of repute to show the world that, despite these knockbacks, the city of Manchester refuses to be beaten.
This they succeeded emphatically with a series of annual ticket-free events held at Castlefield Outdoor Arena which drew the crowds back. The first such festival took place to mark the first anniversary of the bomb in June 1997 and went under the name Re-Percussion*. The prefix changed later to reflect current affairs (‘Re-‘ was the inaugural prefix, obviously taking its cue from the massive challenge faced to Rebuild and Redevelop Manchester), thus a further two festivals would be called D-Percussion – the ‘D’ now representing ‘Digital’ to celebrate both the city’s pioneering digital revolution and of course the vast array of digital electronic music that was now widespread. In 2002, the festival went under the one-off name G-Percussion, by way of reference to the city hosting the Commonwealth Games, but for more than a decade since its initial launch it has been proudly continuing as a free annual eclectic multi-cultural music showcase under the D-Percussion name.
*not to be confused with the current ongoing Repercussion festival – brainchild of The Warehouse Project.
The years after the Manchester IRA bomb as the (otherwise glorious) 1990s wound towards its close in anticipation of the upcoming new millennium did bring with it some bittersweet symphonies nevertheless. It didn’t matter that barely a year after the blast in 1997 we enjoyed, or endured as it later transpired, the first new Labour government for an eternity – 18 years in fact – when the fresh-faced FA Cup lookalike with the leering shit-eating grin swept to a landslide victory, and soon turned out to be nothing more than the sanctimonious Cliff Richard of politics. I won’t even mention his name here, such is the amount of festering rancour he has now inspired in some, suffice to say that his election anthem of choice, D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was of course a blatant lie. And allow me now to count the many ways how and why…
Many of the older venues of the city so beloved by us had sadly started closing down one by one: the famous Manchester Boardwalk had already gone by 1995 (to be converted to yet more studio apartments) and its loss has been greatly mourned by many, including myself, as completely unnecessary. The fabled Hacienda club finally closed its doors for the last time in July 1997 – fifteen years after it first opened, again its facade has been replaced by another anonymous apartment block development which had the sheer audacity to call itself by the same name. Other Manchester clubbing meccas like The Venue, The Brickhouse and Rafters/Jilly’s Rockworld (later the Music Box) have all gradually disappeared off the face of the city’s streets in the 10-15 year period after the bomb, to be replaced with either sterile apartment blocks, fast food restaurants, or – in the case of Jilly’s – another branch of Tesco sodding Express.
The venerable Sankey’s Soap – based at Beehive Mill – was another stalwart Manchester venue and location which has since seen a complete change of use after it too finally closed its doors in 2017 almost exactly 20 years after the Hacienda (it still lasted 23 years however, which is at least something). It is of course a sign of the times, and it’s sad that many of these older places are now consigned to history as those of us of a certain age and generation, having lived in and around the city during its first truly epochal musical heyday and golden era of the 1990s, have certain emotional attachments and memories connected with them.
Even some fabled record shops (of which the city had plenty) had felt the impact of the blast. A couple that were situated immediately at the epicentre – Decoy Records on Deansgate and Goldmine Records within Shambles Square itself – both soon ceased trading as a result of the bomb’s aftermath, and were a sad loss to the city’s obsessive crate diggers like myself. Two others that were actually located inside the Corn Exchange – Clampdown Records and Earwaves – were also forced to relocate elsewhere (Paton Street off Piccadilly) before the latter finally stopped trading altogether around the turn of the new decade, its premises now occupied by the long-standing Clampdown business.
Psychological impact of the IRA bomb
For this writer, the 1996 Manchester Arndale bomb brought with it an unexpected, and at the time unforeseen, side effect. A few short weeks after the incident, I was becoming aware that my cognitive perceptions of sounds had changed. I’d started to flinch at sudden unseen loud noises: hammering, banging, doors slamming, even people shouting, as well as dogs barking and young children screaming or crying. Police, fire engine and ambulance sirens were the worst. It would happen every time.
Even my boss at work noticed these changes and helpfully advised me to go check with my GP to see if anything had developed. Turns out that the doctor said all my reactions were a delayed form of PTSD. Which later was fully diagnosed as such. This now meant from that point in time onwards I would flinch at the sound of fireworks or explosions going off that I could not see and it meant I would have to find a way of escaping the annual torture of Bonfire Night (or ‘firework season’ as it is now known as) as well as the annual New Years Eve ‘celebrations’. That has been pretty much the order of the day for the rest of my life, whether I liked it or not.
As if that wasn’t enough the ensuing years also brought with it a further recurring neurological condition as I developed Menieres Syndrome in my right ear, a progressive disorder that affects the inner ear and causes increasingly distorted hearing, tinnitus and violent vertigo attacks without warning whenever it flares up episodically in between substantial periods of asymptomatic remission. Ear Nose and Throat specialists with whom I have consulted many times over the years have found a very likely link between the sensory trauma gained from the explosion and the gradual onset of this disease due to abnormal electrical synapses arising from inner ear fluid irregularities.
It makes for a pretty dire state of affairs but what remains indisputable is that the Manchester IRA bomb has changed me in many ways I never foresaw, and its long term psychological effects have manifested itself in my PTSD, which, coupled with my already long-extant Aspergers and ASD (encompassing both OCD and ADHD), now presents many obstacles for me on a day to day basis. It helps that I have background sounds (usually white noise at adjustable volumes) to mask or block out the unwanted intrusions. Being a drummer playing with various Manchester percussion ensembles – and for a few years later, a well known punk rock band fronted by none other than the Editor-in-Chief of this website – meant that I could at least enjoy the cacophony I was creating once in their collective company, and of course appreciate others doing the same, as long as I was always wearing ear plugs to protect them. But once I was out of my comfort zone I would always be on edge. Always.
Unfortunately, such issues that afflict one’s cognitive perceptions of sounds and the psychological reaction to them do not simply just fade with time. In this case it’s pretty much for life. I am of course only speaking for myself personally here, but I am sure that there may well have been many others who may have been caught up in the unreal events of that traumatic day who may have similar stories to tell of how their later dealings with unseen and unexpected adverse situations presented challenges in some way or another.
If any readers of this piece happen by chance to have also been in Manchester city centre that fateful day – and may likewise have developed even the smallest (undetected) changes in behavioural traits, or indeed mild PTSD symptoms themselves – it would be so gratifying to hear them share their experiences in any comments below. But do bear in mind that, even if these appear like ‘little things’ and may be of minor importance, my earnest advice is always to at least get things checked out with a professional medical practitioner to in turn establish whether or not it is something which could potentially impact day to day activities.
Whilst tearful emotions still occur whenever I reflect on this cataclysmic incident, I would like to hope that this article remembering the events of Saturday 15th June 1996 will bring a degree of comfort and even closure to some of those other people who may have been there witnessing the very same thing unfolding. It may well have changed the face of the city of Manchester beyond recognition in the years that followed, but for some of us, our lives too have been irreversibly changed as a consequence.
Watch this 2008 documentary on YouTube ‘After The Bomb’ featuring archive footage and interviews with many who were witness to the day’s awful events.
Two other interesting articles looking back at the 1996 Manchester bomb can be found here and here
All words written by Martin Gray
Other articles and blog features can be found on his profile.
(Credit Disclaimer: The four images used to illustrate this article are sourced from Manchester Libraries, Manchester Evening News, and Manchester Confidential)
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