“The pain on the Shankill Road still resonates today, three decades after the Provisional IRA took nine innocent lives. It was a shocking and indiscriminate attack which tore through a busy shopping street on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Three decades later the community in the greater Shankill area remain united in a determination that those murdered on that day will never be forgotten.
The Shankill bombing was one of the worst atrocities in our troubled past and it sparked retaliation, creating other innocent victims in its wake. The new memorial on the Shankill is one of many which bears testament to the suffering imposed on our country by terrorism.
There was always an alternative to such actions. As time passes, the pain remains but that is exacerbated by an inability by some to acknowledge that there was no justification for placing a bomb in a crowded shop. There was always an alternative to terrorism.”
