I suggest you watch it.

Just turned it on now. Ian Simpson is being interviewed.

btw, its only on local tv...not on in newcastle!

Yeh, I thought it might have been Granada only. Lots of Lucy Meacock and Granada TV piccies. No Tony Wilson though! :eek:

Ian Simpson is being interviewed.
...again!! he's good at marketing himself is Ian!

i just missed it... anyone know of a repeat on the multitude of digital channels out there??

It was an interesting programme and it really showed the fantastic progress that Manchester has made since that terrible day.

Half of it was interesting. The second half was just the usual 'oh isnt manchester so fantastic and the rest of the north west blows bollocks'

Half of it was interesting. The second half was just the usual 'oh isnt manchester so fantastic and the rest of the north west blows bollocks'

It was a program about Manchester, not the North West. It didn't mention any other place (in a negative way or otherwise) and why should it, it was a program about MANCHESTER.

That's a big chip on your shoulder ;)

Yeah...caught this one too (we get Sky in Switzerland). The programme was poor. The main message that Manchester has transformed was repeated again and again. Yes it has...I agree and yes I think Manchester is fantastic (I love the place)...but this programme started to grate as if it were some long docu-advert for the city.

I also don't subscribe to it being down to the bomb. It was significant yes, and allowed for the wholescale redevelopment of Exchange Square...but I think Manchester is more than that. Much of the transformation would have occured in any case and this is a reflection of the city, its people and the council...and not the bomb.

Typical Granada piece. Started of well, but finished with a whimper. Still, Manchester certainly has changed for the better in the last 10 years, as we know. :wink2:

BTW. What's happened to the Manchester Forum again? Talk about passing tumble weeds over the last few days. Where are the usual suspects? Surely everyone can't be on holiday the the same time?

Roll call please! :)

Typical Granada piece. Started of well, but finished with a whimper. Still, Manchester certainly has changed for the better in the last 10 years, as we know. :wink2:

BTW. What's happened to the Manchester Forum again? Talk about passing tumble weeds over the last few days. Where are the usual suspects? Surely everyone can't be on holiday the the same time?

Roll call please! :)

If i count as a 'usual suspect' then a combination of work, international football friendlies and a self imposed 'quality not quantity' posting regime is my excuse.

It was a program about Manchester, not the North West. It didn't mention any other place (in a negative way or otherwise) and why should it, it was a program about MANCHESTER.

That's a big chip on your shoulder ;)
I have no chip on my shoulder. These kind of programs from Granada get boring and corny after a while though. And lets face it, they do a hell of a lot of them about Manchester. In case they havnt noticed, there are 5 other cities in the North West.

accura: preston just isn't important enough to have its own programme yet

it might do one day

anyway, does anyone know when this is repeated?

There is also a book out called "Detonation" by the Evening News' Ray King. Looks quite good, but won't be expecting anything too in depth.

Saw the programme. Though I wasn't in town when the incident occurred, it brought back some horrible memories of walking through town not long after.

I remember hearing the bang even 'though I was about seven miles from Market Street (as the crow flies) and thinking that has to have to have been a bomb.

Didn't reckon much to the programme, an interesting and thoughtful subject treated in a rather amateurish way I thought.

The programme was shite really. Production quality was terrible. When Granada are making local programmes what do they do? Hire some media students from Bolton fucking institute to make them? I'm so very glad it wasn't broadcasted nationally.

I didn't even watch it, if you want to see how Manchester has progressed since the bomb you just need to look at this website. I can just imagine how poor it was.

I found the lead up to the bomb going off interesting. I haven't seen any real footage of the devastation caused that day, and it really hit home, just what a massive bomb that was. Doesn't bear worth thinking about, if it had gone off early.

Regeneration has been bloody amazing though in just 10 years. :)

The programme was shite really. Production quality was terrible. When Granada are making local programmes what do they do? Hire some media students from Bolton fucking institute to make them? I'm so very glad it wasn't broadcasted nationally.

Regional ITV pogrammes are deliberately shite, because the now homogenised, London-based company doesn't want to have to bother with them. They're forced to create a minimal amount by law, but obviously if no one bothers tuning in, they can argue for a change in broadcast regulations which omitts local programmes entirely.

From this weeks Enquirer.

Explosive book charts politics behind the rebirth of a city
Published on Jun 01 2006 by Robert Waterhouse
_____________________________________


© Howard Barlow

CITIES, like people, exist in a continuum. A moment in time is simply that: a snapshot of how things are, or were, at that very point in a long (or short) life. However, there are certain moments in time remembered as changing people’s existence.

To Mancunians the 3,300lb truck bomb which exploded outside Marks & Spencer, on the corner of Corporation Street and Cannon Street, a few seconds after 11.17 on the morning of Saturday June 15 1996, created one of those moments. The city would never be the same again.

Conventional wisdom (though King points out it is not endorsed by the authorities) says that the IRA bomb – the biggest ever on the UK mainland – was the best thing to hit Manchester in modern times. Thanks to the very specific advance warnings, the efficacy of the police and emergency authorities and a large measure of good luck there was no loss of life – although there were unpleasant injuries. The IRA had hit the city, but did not get to its people.

When the dust had settled – and there was plenty of that – the city was left with a huge hole in its commercial centre and an extraordinary opportunity to rebuild. It took it.

Destructive

The question of what might have happened to Manchester (and by implication the North West) without this great, big, dirty, destructive bomb in its midst remains unanswered in Ray King’s book, produced to mark the tenth anniversary by a small Warrington publishing house run by his friend and former Manchester Evening News colleague, Andrew Nott. But there are a few clues.

“Detonation” has the great merit of starting the story ten years before the bomb and running it right through to the present day. It may be over neat in concept, but the argument is that without the politics of 1986-1996, the decade of 1996-2006 would have been quite different.

From this perspective, the bomb was not the key moment in the recent history of Manchester. That took place almost a decade earlier with the unlikely conversion of its Labour council leader, Graham Stringer, from a left-wing Town Hall rebel at odds with the Thatcher regime to a moderate doing business with the enemy. It amounted, King suggests provocatively, to nothing less than the birth of New Labour.

The turning point, in fact, came with Thatcher’s 1987 election victory. Stringer’s ruling Labour group had, for a couple of years, declined to set a budget on the terms demanded by the Tories. It involved the city in a Walter Mitty period of so-called creative accounting – hocking the town hall and its attributes to keep municipal finances flowing. Then he wrote a letter of capitulation to the flamboyantly Thatcherite Environment Secretary, Nicholas Ridley.

Consternation

Stringer had faced up to the reality of a third-term Thatcher government with a 100-seat majority which had no intention of letting recalcitrant Labour councils off the hook. His move caused consternation, but was eventually endorsed by the party rank and file.

Manchester veered away from the confrontational path pursued by Derek Hatton and co in Liverpool. It was not the stuff headlines are made off, but Stringer’s Manchester had come to an uneasy compromise relationship with Thatcher’s government which accepted the imposition of a centrally-controlled urban development corporation in the city centre.

Here we get down to people. Manchester was blessed in that the relevant junior minister in the reshuffle following the 1987 election was David (now Sir David and chairman of The Enquirer) Trippier. Trippier’s background as a former leader of Rochdale MBC allowed him to understand the shadow boxing both sides would have to engage in to effect a partnership. Feint one way, punch another.

Throw in Bob (now Sir Bob) Scott, the man behind the creation of the Royal Exchange Theatre and Manchester’s burgeoning Olympic bids, Howard (now Sir Howard) Bernstein, then deputy chief executive of the city council and – most controversially – John (still plain John) Whittaker, the property developer who owned most Manchester Ship Canal Company shares, although the city council had historic voting control. Whittaker had his eye on land at Dumplington beside the M62, land which was to become the Trafford Centre.

East Manchester

As Ray King recounts, Manchester fought the Trafford Centre proposal as far as the House of Lords while agreeing with Whittaker a sum of £10m for relinquishing “control” of the Ship Canal. The two formed a joint venture to start regeneration of depressed East Manchester.

Whittaker’s Peel Holdings now owns not just the Manchester Ship Canal but the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, Liverpool John Lennon Airport and much of the development land between the two cities.

Peel has been the absolute winner of this partnership, but private sector investment was the key at that time to levering central government support, since the council itself had no money. AMEC, the construction company, joined the party via Alan (now Sir Alan) Cockshaw.

The scene was set for the rebirth, by Central Manchester Development Corporation, of a swathe of land from Piccadilly Station to Castlefield with the Bridgewater Hall planned as the centrepiece.

Fast forward to 1996. Two brave, if failed, bids by Manchester to stage the Olympic Games of 1996 and 2000 had led to the successful Commonwealth Games 2002 nomination – which used the 2000 proposals for a sports city in East Manchester.

Thriving

The Tories were still in power, but Thatcher had gone in 1990. John Major had brought Michael Heseltine back into his cabinet. The impetus for change in northern cities was, if anything, stronger and no longer controversial. Partnership was thriving.

There is something symmetrical about the IRA’s choice of Corporation Street. The bomb was planted between two of the worst examples of modern commercial architecture in the country – the infamous Arndale Centre, itself the result of “partnership” with the city back in the 1960s and the tired Marks & Spencer building with its frivolous wavy canopy.

The blast shook the Royal Exchange, St Ann’s Church and Manchester Cathedral itself. It opened up for regeneration a side of the city which would never, otherwise, have stood the chance of serious public funding or fresh private-sector interest.

If the IRA’s aim was to secure maximum impact on a prime shopping area the result was the translation of a bustling, but ugly, high street into an elegant sequence of spaces with the commercial element offset by badly-needed walkways and squares. Spaces which offered genuine improvement to the city centre life. And, incidentally, it succeeded in attracting prime commercial names like Selfridges and Harvey Nichols.

Of course, this didn’t happen by itself. Richard Leese, Manchester’s new Labour leader took over where Stringer had left off. The Millennium Task Force, headed by Bernstein, included Trippier (who had lost his parliamentary seat in 1992). It was partnership in action, all over again.

Commonwealth Games

Urgency was ensured by the Trafford Centre’s imminent opening and the upcoming Commonwealth Games. All the same, vision was in order and this came from Ian Simpson, the Manchester architect (he of whistling tower fame), who seized the opportunity to plan linked, quality space from St Ann’s Square to the cathedral, Chetham’s School and Victoria Station.

It wasn’t easy. It was controversial. Early plans for badly-needed public open space were overtaken by commercial realities. But, five or six years on from the scheme’s completion the question must be asked – was it that good?

A stroll round the area leaves little confidence that New Cathedral Street and its environs will be seen as one of the great urban spaces of the 21st century. Its brash ability to mix classy modern (Urbis – Simpson again) with reconstituted medieval (the Shambles and Wellington pubs were moved for the *second time) is already – on a Sunday morning visit – looking frazzled at the edges. Disneyworld does it better.

Compare this with the magnificent restoration of Albert Square by the Greater Manchester Council before being dissolved back in – yes – 1986. Albert Square is on a par with the best Lille, Munich and Barcelona can offer. You can’t say the same for New Cathedral Street, or for that matter the reworked Piccadilly Gardens.

“Detonation” is a tribute to Manchester’s realism, to the city’s refound ability to compromise and create. The danger is that tribute veers towards celebration.

1960s

Manchester stepped back from the brink in 1987, but you cannot blame Thatcher for the overambitious 1960s and the tawdry 1970s. A major international trading centre should not have got into the state where imposition from London of an urban development corporation was deemed necessary.

Ray King’s book offers a fascinating blow-by-blow account of politics behind closed doors between small groups of (mainly) men in the public/private sector battleground. If there is one lesson to be drawn, it’s that the market rules. Labour-controlled Manchester took on the market and lost during the 1960s-1980s. Labour-controlled Manchester accepted the market and sort of won from the 1990s.

There remain huge quality gaps in housing, education, health, social services and infrastructure where the public sector has drawn back but which the market has proved unwilling or unable to tackle. No matter how good the PR, Manchester will be a two-dimensional city until such forces have achieved equilibrium.

Detonation: Rebirth of a City
By Ray King
Clear Publications, £14.99

from todays guardian

Reach for the sky
Ten years ago, an IRA bomb left the centre of Manchester utterly devastated. But out of the rubble came a stunning and unexpected urban renaissance. Peter Hetherington reports

Wednesday June 7, 2006
The Guardian

Manchester's Urbis centre
Manchester's Urbis centre will hold an exhibition on the bombing. Photograph: Don McPhee


From his new penthouse on the 47th floor of Britain's tallest residential building, architect Ian Simpson will soon look down on a city he helped to transform from the rubble of a terrorist outrage. Ten years after an IRA bomb destroyed much of Manchester's central core, removing more than a third of the city's shopping, office and commercial space, Simpson is philosophical. "Not many cities have the opportunity of trying to make good the mistakes of the 70s," he points out.

Rarely will an anniversary - June 15 - prompt such mixed feelings. In the immediate aftermath of the 3,300lb bomb in 1996, there was huge shock and anger. Several people were badly injured, but, remarkably, none were killed as the police had evacuated 80,000 people from the city centre after receiving a coded warning. But the anger was soon followed by a feeling that Manchester had been given a golden opportunity to begin planning a city centre from scratch.

"To be honest, it would have been an easy exercise for the city to simply rebuild itself with the insurance money," says Simpson. "But the council took the courageous step of deciding to reinvent itself, developing a masterplan that then became the framework into which they were able to encourage developers, landowners, long leaseholders, to engage. It took a lot of persuasion over two years to move forward."

A decade on, the result is a city reborn, with a completely remodelled centre embracing new squares, streets, shops, offices, apartments and much more. While the bomb caused damage estimated at up to £1bn, the subsequent rebuilding is reckoned to have cost "well over £2bn to £3bn", according to those who many have labelled the dynamic duo responsible for the remarkable transformation: the chief executive of Manchester city council, Sir Howard Bernstein, a municipal developer; and the council leader, Richard Leese.

The city had laboured under a variety of labels, from "Madchester" in the 80s - on the back of the famous Hacienda nightclub and the indie band Happy Mondays - to "Gunchester" in the early 90s, when a spate of gangland shootings sent out messages the council prefers to forget (and a serious shooting last weekend underlines the fact that Manchester still has a darker side). Yet it has progressed to become Britain's most successful regional city, drawing international investors, creating thousands of new jobs and pioneering city-centre living. At least 20,000 people have moved into the city's central core since the bombing, which ended the IRA's mainland terrorist campaign.

"We're a brand now," says Bernstein in his modest office deep inside the city's magnificent, neo-Gothic town hall. "People now come to work in Manchester from all over the place. Everybody now sees Manchester as a distinctive, commercial, world-class centre in its own right. People can be hung up about what is [England's] second or third city, but what really matters is how potential investors view us ... as a respected, valued, regional city, up there with the best in Europe, punching above its weight. Now, I think we're on that road, but we're not there yet."

The way forward was charted by Bernstein, Leese and a team of others - including the then deputy prime minister, Michael Heseltine - days after the bombing. It had been made possible by the transformation of the ruling Labour group - from the hard left, openly challenging capitalism and the Tory government, to the new realists in the late 80s, warmly embracing big business and willing to cooperate with conservatism.

"In the early 90s, we had spent a lot of time working with the private sector, landowners, developers, working through the way we wanted to see the city centre flourish," recalls Bernstein, a Mancunian. "The bomb was a catastrophe, but it gave us an opportunity to accelerate the process of change that would otherwise have taken us 20 years to complete."

Heseltine swept into the city less than two weeks after the bombing. "He was brilliant and cut through all the crap," says Bernstein, who was then deputy chief executive." He said: 'Look, what we need here is an international design competition, a clear focus.' He grasped [our] proposals to set up a taskforce, a very tight, focused, generically-skilled group of people in a small executive, who were custodians of a vision."

This was to be a fast-track process, driven by the knowledge that a huge out-of-town shopping complex - the Trafford Centre, west of the city and just outside its boundaries - was due to open shortly, challenging Manchester's retail dominance. Bernstein became chief executive of the taskforce, which morphed into Manchester Millennium Ltd, a public-private sector company charged with overseeing the vast rebuilding exercise.

The winner of the design competition, announced in November 1996, was a consortium that included Simpson, a Mancunian with a deep pride for his native city.

North-south divide

Simpson, too, had a vision. "Manchester at the time was very much divided along Market Street," he recalls. "To the north was just poverty, and that seemed to go all the way into Lancashire, whereas to the south there was quite a lot of wealth into Cheshire, and the division appeared right in the middle of Manchester."

But to break Manchester's north-south divide and build those new squares and streets required hard cash up front. Bernstein and Leese went to London to see Heseltine. "We said we needed around £90m to lever in at least £500m from the private sector initially - and it took him only 20 minutes to agree," Bernstein says.

Leese, a former teacher and youth worker, was only four weeks into his new job as council leader when the bomb exploded. He remembers being at a Labour party meeting in the town hall, which shook as the blast ripped through the city centre at 11pm. Other buildings nearby, notably the cathedralesque Royal Exchange, were badly damaged, with the Exchange needing repairs totalling £30m. The town hall was spared. Leese prefers to look forward, not back. "We don't go out of our way to remember the bomb, although we had a commemoration a year afterwards," he says. "We decided to turn it into an opportunity. People would have got insurance money and rebuilt almost as before. Instead, we recognised we had an opportunity to undo some of the planning mistakes of the 60s and 70s and rebuild the city in a different way."

Fortunately, the council owned the freehold for much of the land and was able to influence the rebuilding process, although gentle persuasion and arm-twisting was the order of the day.

Today, the partners in the new Manchester, from the council to the government's regeneration agency, English Partnerships, are pushing the centre steadily to the more deprived north and to the east - where new communities are being established around old canal basins, redundant textile mills and warehouses. "We have to look at the scale of the city," insists Simpson, downplaying the significance of his own penthouse home. "Most people do not want to spend millions on a family apartment, and want a place where there are schools, health centres and other facilities."

In the eastern Ancoats area, close to the centre, the council and its partners are preparing to provide these essential facilities in an attempt to create more balanced communities. "They've been successful in extending the centre of gravity of the city, and also creating opportunities for wealth and further development in the east and the north," Simpson says. "But, overall, there is no doubt that the perception of the city as a place to invest in has been greatly enhanced. There is a 'can do' attitude here, politically driven."

That philosophy has certainly led a stream of investors, such as the Bank of New York, to take big office and IT stakes in the city, ahead of London and the rest of Europe. The council still hopes that the BBC will keep its promise to transfer Radio 5 Live, sport, new media and technology and other functions to the city in a new "media zone" along the Oxford Road corridor. "Developments like the BBC are fundamental to the growth path we've established," Bernstein says. "If the BBC does not come, it makes a mockery of government policy."

City's assets

He means that the oft-repeated commitment to disperse significant parts of government departments away from London in an attempt to further stimulate regional economies would be seriously undermined if the BBC has second thoughts. But Manchester is not standing still. By judiciously using the city's assets, and projected income streams from sectors such as car parking, it believes it can spur further development by raising money, under the government's new prudential borrowing regime, to extend the conurbation's Metrolink tram system.

Next week, on the 10th anniversary of the bomb, a new exhibition opens at the futuristic Urbis centre - designed by Simpson - which celebrates cities and their contribution to civilisation, with a range of displays on four floors. The exhibition, entitled Every Cloud, will recreate the giant dust cloud following the explosion. A giant aerial photograph of the city immediately after the bombing will be laid on one floor, while the words and images of 10 people who were close to the blast will be featured on plasma screens. The message is clear: without diminishing the impact on some of the people who were injured and tormented by the blast, there was - almost - a silver lining.

Nevertheless, Phil Griffin, an architecture journalist born and living in the city, who created the exhibition, has mixed feelings. How, he asks, can you notionally "celebrate" a devastating IRA bomb that came so close to killing people? "It's difficult to articulate because of that feeling of 'thank goodness, it could have been so much worse,'" he says.


http://society.guardian.co.uk/communities/story/0,,1791390,00.html

has anyone just seen the ITV news??? they've just shown video taken from a police helicopter of the bomb going off..............christ almighty :eek2:

Thanks Fallowfieldian, interesting read that. Just think none of the bombers will get prosecuted now incase it upsets the NI peace process, I'm not sure how I feel about that as I was in town that day and shit myself when it went off, it was so loud and it shook the office at work in Piccadilly. Obviously scum like that will never break us and now we have a city centre that is something to be extremely proud of, and it will only get better and better.:cheers:

That was a really cool video! I wanted to see the whole thing! Its amazing how close it was to Arndale House.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41736000/jpg/_41736650_bombsmoke_bbc203.jpg

http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/manchesterbombing.htm

does that work for anyone?

Infact click this link and then click the video link to see the Arndale get blown up.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/5055218.stm

Still amaze's me how no-one was killed that day , the police did a fantastic job clearing the city so quickly .

Fuck......













................me!

Fuck......















................me!

Thanks for the offer Longloin, but I think I'll have to pass on that one. :)

Amazing explosion.

Is it just my imagination but does the Commercial Union building to the right actually move at the point of explosion?

legend has it that the royal exchange lifted of it's foundations.. :eek2:




i hate to think what would have happened if there wasn't a coded warning (we all know who don't give warnings) a bomb half the 1996 size would kill 000's..

Is it just my imagination but does the Commercial Union building to the right actually move at the point of explosion?

If you use the slow play setting in Media player you can see the shockwave rip through the windows. It chills me to think how recent this really was and that the people responsible have got off, but no doubt of the benefits it has brung either. Fuckin' nuts!

Numerous articles and images.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/features/Manchester_bomb/index.shtml

I noticed there is a book out aswell , published by the MEN.

Video exclusive: New footage of Manchester bomb aftermath

Exclusive by Chris Slater

February 01, 2011

Chilling footage of the aftermath of the Manchester bomb can be seen for the first time today.

The M.E.N. has obtained a video filmed inside the police cordon the day after the devastating attack on June 15, 1996, which left more than 200 people injured.

Retired police officer Ian Mack, 60, was a member of the video surveillance unit ‘Spyhawk’ set up to monitor crowds during the Euro ’96 football tournament.

The day after the explosion – which destroyed large parts of the city centre – he filmed the devastation from a police van.

Ian, from Clifton, Salford, said: “There were no crowds to control so I just went out with one of my colleagues and filmed.

“It was really eerie and quite chilling. All you could hear was alarms going off.

“You could see mannequins that had been blown out of shops in the Arndale Centre.

“It was like something from the last day on earth.”

The video shows smashed glass littering the deserted streets and buildings reduced to rubble.

Ian also filmed close to the spot where the bomb went off, outside Marks and Spencer on Corporation Street. He shot the footage while on official duties but from his own camera.

He offered it to his bosses and was told they didn’t need it.

But he said he was ‘honoured’ to have helped record the landmark event.

He said: “I showed it to the superintendent at the time but he said they had their own footage. But I thought I’d keep it as a historical document and it’s just been sat in a drawer ever since.”

Ian came forward with the footage after reading in the M.E.N. that a film, Rose Gold, is set to be made about the IRA attack. It will star former Corrie actress Suranne Jones and New Order legend Peter Hook.

Ian said he is happy for his to be used in the movie.

He said: “I think people’s memories these days are very short. People should always be reminded of what happened in their city, and how something so small could cause so much destruction. But Manchester has never looked back since.

“I am glad they are doing the story, as long as they get it right. If they want to use it, I am happy for them to use it.”

http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1406833_video_exclusive_new_footage_of_manchester_bomb_aftermath

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