I was wondering if the experience British citizens have had with the IRA would influence how they react to the awful bombings there. Here’s a post over on Gran’s On Bran that suggests to me that they might.
We’ve been through it before but when you get the bombs going off one after the other you just fear that it will never stop.
I remember a book of WWII photos that included a London milk deliveryman, stepping over rubble in a shattered urban landscape with smoke still rising from broken buildings, four bottles of milk in a wire carrier. He had a grin on his face that seemed to be saying; “Damned if the bloody Nozzis will keep the little blighters from getting their milk with porridge!” Admirable.
The milkman sounds typical of many, though I personally know one or two who are scared.
To me, the modus operandi of these terorists seems different to the IRA. Unless I am mistaken, it was mostly military and police targets that were hit by bombs and they went for maximum damage to property rather than life. In practise, people were still killed and maimed whether they were part of the military or bystanders.
Also, IRA bombs were usually one off events. Not always, but generally. We had bomb alerts as second nature and some days you couldn’t travel round London for the bomb alerts on different tube trains. It wasn’t pleasant, it was sometimes scary but we coped and got on.
Maybe it is really part of the British psyche to be pragmatic or maybe we have just adapted.