Relatives of victims of an Official IRA bombing at Aldershot barracks in Hampshire marked the 30th anniversary of the attack yesterday with a wreath ceremony.
Representatives of the British army based at Aldershot and the Mayor of Rushmoor Borough Council, Cllr Charles Choudhry, joined the relatives in a low-key, dignified ceremony, placing floral tributes next to a stone pillar inside the barracks.
The pillar is inscribed with the names of the seven people killed in the bombing.
The ceremony was followed by a minute's silence in honour of the victims, including four female kitchen workers, killed on February 22nd, 1972, in retaliation for the shooting of 14 people on Bloody Sunday by soldiers from the Parachute Regiment three weeks earlier. The bomb was intended for members of the16th Parachute Brigade at the barracks.
"It's a day when it's all at the front of my mind again," said Mr Karl Bosley, whose mother, Thelma, worked as a cleaner at Aldershot and was killed when a 50 lb car bomb exploded beside the officers' mess.
Speaking to The Irish Times after the ceremony, Mr Bosley (44), who was 14 when his mother was killed, said he was angry that the suffering experienced by him and others had been forgotten by the British government.
"If Tony Blair is willing to pour millions into the Derry inquiry he could put a few million into victims' organisations here. There are so many films and documentaries about Bloody Sunday, but the feeling is that we're forgotten. Gerry Adams demanded an apology for Bloody Sunday and I remember thinking 'Where's my apology?' ."
As he continues his fight for more compensation than the £1,500 sterling he has received so far, Mr Bosley says the British government has ignored his request for an inquiry into the bombing.
The bombing set him on a destructive path for many years during which he beat up an off-duty soldier and petrol-bombed an Irish pub in south London. He also joined the Parachute Regiment hoping he would be sent to Northern Ireland where, he admits, he wanted to kill terrorists, but the posting was turned down.
"After the Birmingham pub bombing I had a burning ambition to get back at Irish people. It was like living through Aldershot all over again, because to me the IRA were Irish, therefore the Irish were responsible. I saw things in black and white then and I got some people together and petrol-bombed an Irish pub in south London," he says.
It was only after he met his future wife's Irish parents that his attitude began to change, and he found help at the Glencree reconciliation centre.
"I lost my mother and my home. I lost everything that day but I began to realise it was not Irish people: it was a minority within Ireland that caused the problems. You're attitude changes and it's ironic that the most help I've had has come from Ireland."