Terrorists will always take aim at the easiest targets
IT WAS the crudest of weapons, the easiest of targets. The Bastille night massacre in Nice had all the hallmarks of a barbaric act of mindless terrorism. This year is the first time in over a decade that I did not attend the Bastille night fireworks in a French town with my children. And be in no doubt, anyone who knows France knows that the July 14 celebrations are a family affair. Each city, town, commune or village hosts a fireworks display to round off their national day espousing liberty, fraternity and equality.
There is good-natured competition between communities to see who can put on the most spectacular firework display with accompanying music and dance – to desert your own village for a competing Bastille night display nearby is an act of intolerable neighbourly betrayal.
From early evening on July 14, we would head down to the quayside in Bergerac, our young children in buggies, clutching our fold-up chairs to get a good viewing point for the display.
The anticipation would mount as night fell, leading to the countdown to the fireworks just after 10 o’clock.
If you forgot to bring food or a glass of wine with you, you were handed one by a French family.
For 40 minutes we were mesmerised by a display of colour, sound and rainbow explosions into the night sky. You barely looked sideways during the fantasia; the sky was where the action was.
So we can see now why the fireworks display on the promenade in Nice was such an easy target.
It could have been any one of 10,000 communities in France who celebrate Bastille Day in this way. The terrorists chose Nice because of the volume of people, the straight promenade and the impossibility of escape.
But this has always been the way with terrorists. The no-warning Dublin and Monaghan car bombings on May 17, 1974 killed 34 including four members of one family – an atrocity for which noone has ever been brought to justice. Only this week I had contact from relatives of a family in Britain who saw four close relatives – a complete family of parents and their two children – killed when the IRA planted a no-warning bomb under a commercial coach that was transporting them along the M62. The fact that some of the passengers on board were sleeping soldiers deemed it a ‘legitimate target’.
No-one has ever been brought to justice for that massacre. Easy target, the crudest of weapons.
Only a few short weeks ago, 10 relatives of the 21 people killed in the Birmingham bombings called for a new inquiry into their loved ones’ deaths. This year, a Dublin solicitor who admits to having been a member of the Provisional IRA claims he was present when the then IRA chief of staff and Sinn Féin vice-president Dáithí Ó Conaill, since deceased, debriefed the bombers. Again, the Birmingham attack involved crude methods, the victims easy targets.
One could go on about the terror which permeated this island up to quite recently. The lessons of the Chilcot report on the use of violence by a nation state are devastating for the British government. The taking of human life, the use of violence – invariably on civilians – is a most heinous act. Those who participate in these crimes should be brought to justice, however long ago the crime.
We should learn from history, never forget it, or ignore the lessons at our peril.