Pub bombings are 'indelible memory' - survivor

Fifty years on from the Birmingham pub bombings, a woman from Shrewsbury who was inside a phone box clutching her 11 month-old son as the explosions rocked the city, remembers it like it was yesterday.

"It's one of those indelible memories... you never get over something so serious and so awful as murder," said Judy Arliss.

On the evening of 21 November 1974, 21 people died as bombs exploded in two pubs, the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town. Another 220 were injured.

Ms Arliss had just got off the train after visiting her mother in Dorset - the phone box was on the station, behind the two pubs.

"Suddenly, the sky went all sorts of colours, and the bangs... as you can imagine," she said.

"What I thought mainly was to save my son... and I thought 'I've lost two babies, I've got to keep him, he's got to live, he's got to live and I've got to get out of this.'"

When the bombs went off, Ms Arliss was on the phone to her husband.

"He couldn't hear a word I said so he put the phone down, and I kept ringing and ringing," she said.

"It seemed like hours, it must have been about 30 or 40 minutes."

When he picked her up some time later to return to their home - then in Castle Bromwich - the weight of the situation hit her.

"I was shaking, holding my son with the buggy and the case in the back seat of the car," she said.

"I got my son into bed, and I was still shaking."

The IRA is widely believed to be behind the attacks, but has never formally admitted responsibility.

It is one of the largest unsolved mass murders in British history.

"I think you have to come through it and stop hating... but to rise above it was very difficult," Ms Arliss said.

"I try to see it from both sides, it's not up for me to forgive.

"Maybe there will never be a resolution for the people who are still fighting and are, obviously, 50 years older."

Relatives, survivors and dignitaries will gather at two memorial services in the city on Thursday, with a one-minute silence observed at 14:00 GMT.

The first event, for invited guests, will start at 13:45 at the memorial at New Street Station.

A public service at Birmingham Cathedral begins at 17:00.

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