On the 20th March 1993 the town of Warrington was hit by two IRA bombs that exploded in metal bins on the town’s high street, known as Bridge Street. Three-year-old Jonathon Ball was killed instantly, while twelve-year-old Tim Parry died several days later in Warrington General Hospital. At the time I was also three years of age and my sister was thirty three days away from being born. Luckily I was with my parents in Wales at the time of the explosion, so I was none the wiser anything significant had happened. But I have grown in Warrington, knowing the names of these two youngsters despite having never them. I have visited the Peace Centre on a number of occasions with schools and even as part of a junior rugby side. I have taken part in activities and rugby festivals that remember these two victims of the worst day in our town’s history. I know all about the events that occurred fifteen years ago, how the terrorists targeted the gas works on, I think, Winwick Road weeks before the Bridge Street bombings.
On the 20th March 2003, Britain woke up to a war lead by the Americans when the invasion of Iraq began. The aim of the invasion was to recover and destroy, what Saddam Hussain boasted, were weapons of mass destruction. Five years on and we are yet to see these so called weapons. However, the war was justified by freeing the people of Iraq from a dictatorship that resulted in millions of innocent people being tortured or killed, and not by the fact the western world wanted a vast supply of oil from the Middle Eastern continent. Since the invasion, different sets of Iraqi people have bombed and destroyed the invaders, as well as themselves resulting in a death toll that has no doubt reached close to ten thousand over five years.
Both anniversaries were remembered in every individual’s special way, but I think that both events clash on the same day (albeit in different years) shows how terrorism and war are still a part of our lives in a global society, where we are connected better with each other than we ever have been before. While our leaders strive for peace on a larger scale, it is taking too long. Creating small and personal relationships with individuals across the world create the foundations of such a feat that our leaders can build on, and so we can accept each other in the world we live in. That is wherever we are in the world.
