THE CITY of Belfast has been changed out of all recognition by 30 years of bombings and by the reconstruction that followed. With a motorway running through its centre and the so-called peace walls dividing its inner city, to me, it has lost its heart and its character.
The majestic railway station on Great Victoria Street that delivered me from Dublin to Belfast, first with my mother when we came up shopping in the 1960s, and later as a reporter for this newspaper, is gone. It has been replaced by a soulless terminal on the eastern perimeter which requires a long walk or a bus to the city centre.
Many of the hotels have also vanished, most notably the Grand Central on Royal Avenue and the International behind City Hall, where I was in residence for several weeks at the end of 1970. But the Europa Hotel, which was built the next year, lives on and is celebrating its 40th birthday this month.
The Europa is so proud of its reputation in its early years as the most bombed hotel in the world that it is delighted with the television documentary on its dramatic story which is due to be broadcast on BBC1 on September 26th. The Hastings Group hosted the premiere in the hotel earlier this month and yours truly, who has a very small scene, more a sentence really, was there along with others who lived through those times. The guests included journalists who frequented the hotel in the 1970s and 1980s and many of the staff who worked there. Others who hung out at the hotel – politicians, paramilitaries and various shady characters – have since moved on and did not feature. In the days before mobile phones and the internet, the Europa, and the bizarrely named Whip and Saddle Bar in particular, was the place to be if you were to be on top of events. Because it was the meeting place for all that happened in Belfast and because of its location on the border of West Belfast, it was an easy target.
Not only was publicity assured but every bomb that went off challenged the determination of the Northern Ireland administration to depict the North as a properly functioning entity.
The Europa Hotel – Bombs, Bullets and Business As Usualhas been produced and directed by Richard Weller for Waddell Media. It opens with footage of the huge blasts that resulted from bombs planted by the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s. The sequence is terrifying to view but those of us who were there at the time had become so used to the bombs that we ceased to be amazed. The noise, the smoke, the shattering glass, the sudden darkness and the running people were all caught on camera and reproduced in the programme. What was amazing was that no one was killed and that each time the hotel, and its valiant staff, picked itself up and reopened for business often only a couple of hours after such massive destruction.
This reporter was caught in one such blast. Lunch in the Europa one day in March 1972 was interrupted by a waiter running through the first floor dining room shouting “no need to panic”. We knew the drill. We left with glasses in hand and stood across the street. My car was parked around the corner in Glengall Street and a British soldier allowed me through the barrier, as long as I was quick.
A couple of steps down the street the bomb went off. First there was a bang which seemed to shake the ground and buildings for some time. I was blown off my feet. Showers of glass and debris rained down and looking up I saw whole panes of glass come out and shatter in mid air. Glass and rubble fell on top of me. People screamed. The air went dark with smoke. I picked myself up, wandered round dazed for a while, refused an ambulance and got out my notebook. A couple of hours later my voice went and didn’t return until the next day.
These experiences were commonplace in Belfast in the 1970s. The journalists interviewed on Bombs, Bullets and Business As Usual, most of them now big names in Britain, have similar tales but they also speak of the adrenalin, the camaraderie, and the pranks. We worked hard and played hard. The Europa was part of our lives. The top floor was a nightclub where bunny girls known as the Penthouse Poppets held sway. Many turned up at the premiere to remember those times. The view over the city from its windows was spectacular, and still is.
The documentary pays homage to the manager at that time, Harper Brown, who kept the show on the road despite all the mayhem and who had a great regard for the journalists from the UK as opposed to those from Dublin. He saw the hotel through many years of destruction but retired in 1985, long before it played host to Bill Clinton, George Mitchell, John Major and nearly everyone of note who came to the city. Harper Brown died in 1989. While he would certainly have gloried in the presence of celebrities – he introduced the Poppets to give his hotel international glamour – his thoughts on the fact that one of the guests of honour at the premiere was the Sinn Féin lord mayor of Belfast, Niall Ó Donnghaile, who at 26 admitted he was far too young to have any knowledge of the goings-on of a pervious era, can only be imagined.
Shortly before I left Belfast in September 1973 to become London Editor of The Irish Times, our office actually moved into the Europa Hotel. We had a suite on the third or fourth floor where we set up our telephones, typewriters and telex machine.
The move was necessary after a massive car bomb destroyed our office in Lombard Street. Five of us were in the building when a suspect car was noticed parked in the middle of the road directly outside our first floor office. We rang the RUC. They said hold on. They thought they had evacuated the street. And so they had, but they didn’t know we were upstairs. They would ask the army (British) what to do. In the meantime, take shelter where you can. We fled to the back room, crouched under the table and brought the phones with us. It was eventually decided we should make a dash for it. We ran for our lives, down the stairs, past the car, and up the street where soldiers were urging us on. Ten minutes later the car blew up. It contained 150lbs of explosives. The street was destroyed and we moved to the Europa Hotel.