20 years ago exactly this week, a car - laden with explosives - was parked right in front of the glass fronted entrance of the BBC’s TV Centre building in Shepherds Bush. Someone from the so-called ‘Real IRA’ called the BBC and used a recognised code word to prove that they weren't hoaxsters and said a bomb was about to explode.
It had been a quiet Saturday night/Sunday morning and the Northern Irish peace process was working. The IRA had put their weapons ‘beyond use’, loyalist groups had declared a ceasefire, the Good Friday agreement had been turned into law and British troops were all but gone from NI.
But dissident Republicans weren't playing ball and they wanted to demonstrate that with a ‘spectacular’. And what would highlight their cause more than destroying the entrance to the biggest broadcaster in Europe.
Hundreds of BBC producers, editors, reporters and staff who were working in the newsroom were ‘Invacuated’ to a safer part of the rabbit warren that was known as TVC. Laurie Margolis, an intrepid NewsOrg or the guy on the news desk who tells colleagues what to do for programmes once news breaks, took himself and Jon Brotherton, a seasoned and wonderful cameraman outside to the multistory car park about 500m away to film the boobitrapped car parked outside the building. There they waited and filmed a non-moving red London taxi while the bomb disposal crew arrived. A few hours later they got ‘the shot’ - the controlled explosion. Except that wasn't the shot nor the end to the drama. The controlled explosion merely blew the boot off the back of the red car.
Moments later - and we’ll never know whether the bombers were actually watching the events unfold from somewhere else in the W12 postcode - the car bomb was remotely ignited. It destroyed everything around it for a radius of about 25m. Thankfully no one was hurt. It was all captured by Jon Brotherton with Laurie beside him.
Meanwhile in Dublin, an Irishman had just been offered a job with that same giant broadcaster and was in the process of moving his life to Britain. He had no job to quit because he was freelance and on a very precarious income. But he had a house to rent out with a big mortgage and accommodation to find in London. He had never really been to Britain (apart from doing the interview for that job as a very junior producer) and didn't know the attitudes that Brits or Londoners had towards Irish people. And in that vacuum of knowledge that young(ish) man had assumed that they had a general distrust, dislike and ignorance about Ireland.
Jon Brotherton and Laurie Margolis waited at a safe distance to film what happened next
So I remember waking up after a night out on the town in Dublin on March 4th 2001 to read that ‘Irish terrorists’ had set a bomb outside the BBC.
Even though I know now with hindsight that it was ridiculous, I recall being gripped with fear that the BBC might ‘pause’ the hiring of anyone from Ireland. I agonised for days about whether to say or do anything. Even though I had a job offer in writing, I wanted to message the editor who had hired me - without any TV experience whatsoever - and confirm that I was still expected on April 3rd 2001. In the end I did nothing. Thankfully.
Hardly anyone mentioned the bomb when I arrived a month later at TVC, even though the BBC had been physically and mentally shaken by it. It took months to fully restore the front of the building with bomb proof glass (if such a thing exists). And I never got any ‘Irish’ jokes nor sideways looks.
It was to be the start of a very long and mostly pleasant experience - not just with the BBC but also with Londoners, British people and all those superb journalists who must have been quite frightened exactly 20 years ago.
I learned rapidly that British people have a very warm and welcoming attitude to Irish people. They even cherish our accents and don't judge us or pigeonhole us by it. Now imagine hearing an English accent pontificating about the health (or otherwise) of the Irish economy on RTE or other Irish networks?
Why not take a listen to my latest Podcasts: Connected Investor, EUNICAST: Meet Visionary Europeans or Global News Podcast
