CITY REACTION:DERRY'S MOODS are easy to read. Yesterday's bomb blast, which has followed 37 other attacks including a murder in February, is giving rise to a new edginess among the city's residents.
It had been a good summer. In June the Saville inquiry exonerated the 14 people shot dead on Bloody Sunday, and less than a month later the city was named as UK City of Culture. Last week former president Bill Clinton spoke positively of the future when visited the city’s Magee University.
Yesterday, old realities revisited the city. Young people resorted to social networking sites in an effort to understand something they had never personally experienced. They chatted on Radio Foyle, the local BBC service, about how the post-ceasefire generation deals with paramilitary violence. Using Facebook and Twitter helped them arrive at their own sense of what was happening. Wisdom is not inherited on an issue like this.
Businessman Garvan O’Doherty, owner of the Da Vinci complex bombed by the Real IRA, called it as it is. “There is a lot of good happening here at the moment in this city and I am determined to press ahead and not to be dragged back into the past,” he said. The man who was closely involved in the reaching of an accommodation on loyalist marches in the city added: “The peace process is set fast and we must all allow it to continue and not to be side-tracked by stupid events such as this.”
Guests at the Ramada Hotel in the Da Vinci complex were among hundreds of people evacuated. Among them were members of English theatre company R2 Digital Productions, who had just completed a sell-out performance in the Millennium Forum. Company proprietor Colin Rozee said: “No, this won’t deter us from coming back. In fact, we’re booked for Derry again next June as well as Belfast and Dublin and we’re really looking forward to coming back, especially here to Derry because of what’s happened,” he said.
Businessman Pat Rogers from Rathduff in Mallow, Co Cork, summed up the mood. “Last night I was celebrating the performances of Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell in the Ryder Cup, and then this happened. What happened here last night is just a shame but I would have no hesitation in recommending Derry as a tourism destination.”