Reclaim our past to guard our future: Omagh massacre 20 years later

We sometimes have peculiar, evasive attitudes towards our past; sometimes we remember too much, sometimes maybe we don’t remember enough. Sometimes we do both on the same day. Today, the 20th anniversary of the Omagh bombing, may just be such a day.

We remember the barbarism, the fascist contempt, and immorality, the plain, undisguised evil, of the terrorists. But most of all, those of us old enough, remember a market town, one like so many others on this island, one just like the one in which so many of us were born, with its heart torn out.