Thursday 1 May 2014

The good old days?

Times have changed! Mostly I thnk for good though sometimes the politically correct faction seem to go too far....

The historic offences now being publicised so graphically are hopefully righting the wrongs that were done during the sixties and seventies by powerful people who thought they could get away with abusing children because of their fame....and did .

To only find out after the perpetrators are dead , the current revelations are very uncomfortable to read about. I knew the MP for Rochdale very well as a girl .

The arrest this week of a member of the IRA for a murder thirty odd years ago comes as a shock too. We have mostly forgotten what life was like during the eighties if you lived and worked close to London.

Trips to the theatres and concert halls were often interrupted by bomb threats! The knowledge that life and work could be disrupted in order to search premises became almost common place for a while.

The morning we woke to the news that my husbands work place had been bombed is still vivid in my mind.

The Nat West Tower, then the tallest building in London had taken a massive hit.

It was before computing replaced paper. Reports of documents lying all over the near bye roads came in and my husband was off....many more like him him joined in the search that day for bank documents containing personal information just sitting on the ground.

The tower could not be accessed for months and then only by people wearing safety ropes and helmets!

Nat West moved out. The tower was let..... Another great victory for the IRA.

We forget how it was until something brings it back. "It was war" is the often repeated justification.

The men who abused children knew they could get away with it...and did .

Times have changed and thank God mostly for the better...

This electronic world we now live in makes hiding things much harder....I hope.

3 comments:

Paddy Briggs said...

Not sure that has happened to the "Statute of limitations" whereby after a long period of time prosecution was no longer possible. 40+ years is a very long time. Memories fade. Evidence disappears.

Revjeanrolt said...

That is certainly true...and leads to the uncomfortable thought that justice may not be done much of the time!

UKViewer said...

Memories of those days when bomb scares or actual bombs going off are quite personal. I was in the Army throughout that period and first served in N.I in 1969 at the very start. To know that 30 years later I would still be being evacuated from an Army base due to a bomb threat seems quite strange these days. After than came the bombings in London 7/11, and in particular the ones on the tube, which ran right underneath the building where my spouse was working close to Russel Square. I can't see why historic crimes should be ignored - from whatever side. Bloody Sunday is still being investigated with the prospect that troops involved might yet find themselves in court as old men.

If a crime is committed and reported or detected it's beholden upon us to find out the truth and where necessary (or possible) hold offenders to account - we owe it to the victims of violence or abuse to try to allow them to see justice done.