On this day 24 years ago, the IRA detonated a 1,500-kilogram lorry bomb on Corporation Street
24 years ago today, Manchester city centre fell silent after an explosion from the inside of a large lorry parked on Corporaton Street shattered windows and destroyed buildings for miles.
24 years ago today, Manchester city centre fell silent after an explosion from the inside of a large lorry parked on Corporaton Street shattered windows and destroyed buildings for miles.
When the 1500kg IRA bomb went off in 1996, it was the biggest bomb detonated in Great Britain since the Second World War, and caused an estimated £700 million worth of damage to Manchester’s infrastructure and economy.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army had sent telephoned warnings about 90 minutes before the bomb detonated. At least 75,000 people were evacuated from the area, but the bomb squad were unable to defuse the bomb in time.
Thankfully, despite over 200 injuries to people in the vicinity of the explosion, there were no fatalities. Many of the reported injuries came from the shattering of thousands of windows, and other damage to buildings in which unsuspecting people were getting on with their days.
Several buildings near the explosion were damaged beyond repair and had to be demolished, while many more were closed for months for structural repairs. This prompted the biggest regeneration of Manchester city centre ever, and you could argue that regeneration is still happening to this day.
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The city lay dormant for days after the explosion, as people came to terms with what had happened, and kept their distance. Many moved out of the centre for a period of time, while many more simply decided not to visit for fears of another incident. It was a desolate place, eerily quiet, and in need of some serious TLC…
Much like how it sits on this very day, in 2020, after a global pandemic deemed it a non-essential place to visit for the majority of Greater Manchester’s residents for the past few months.
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Today, on 15 June, 2020, a regeneration of its own has begun in the city centre as businesses get ready to reopen their doors to customers for the first time since the end of March. If you walked through the city this morning, and are old enough to remember how Manchester looked and felt 24 years ago, the parallels will present themselves to you in a very sobering way.
Much like it did back in 1996, the city has a long way to go until it feels normal again, and there will be some major changes to how it both looks and feels – and just like business owners and operators did 24 years ago, shops, bars, restaurants and venues across the most visited metropolis in the North West will have to be rebuilt and reshaped to adapt to a post-emergency era.
According to Home Office statistics, an estimated 400 businesses within half a mile (0.8 km) of the 1996 blast were affected, 40% of which did not recover, and Market Street, near the explosion and at that time the second-busiest shopping street in the UK, was considered by some a “fearful” place, to be “avoided like the plague”.
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The prospect of pulling Manchester’s bustling city centre out of its darkest depression was not casually approached by those in charge and was acknowledged as a mammoth task from the get go – and that is just how Manchester’s significant needle-movers feel in 2020.
However, Greater Manchester has never let anything get in its way, and despite how steep the hill is that we’re stood at the base of, we always manage to reach the peak ready to go again.
Feature
Liam Broady is on the comeback – here’s why you need to watch out for him at Wimbledon
The Manc
Local tennis player Liam Broady is quietly rising back up the ranks on the ITF Tour, and here’s why we think you should watch out for him come Wimbledon 2026 this summer.
He is physical proof that the ATP Tour ranking means so much to a player’s career.
The Stockport-born tennis player has suffered many injury setbacks since turning pro in 2014. With a host of ankle and back injuries plaguing his playing career, he has had to turn to the ITF (International Tennis Federation) Tour to climb the rankings once again.
He is currently placed at 283* on the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) Tour after reaching two semi-finals in the space of a month.
With wins on two of Portugal’s hard courts in Faro and Santo António, the 32-year-old has climbed from rank 303 at the start of the year to under the threshold in less than three months.
His hard work on outdoor courts is paying off as his seeding is slowly improving, and his opponents are becoming less of a challenge.
For the unititated, the ATP ranking is decided by a points system that determines your playing level, and therefore who you can possibly draw, with lower seeds getting tougher games as they need more points, and vice versa.
These point tallies factor into every win, loss, serve, and shot as it propels you up or down the table.
With an injury over Christmas, the Stopfordian Team GB player came back stronger for the start of the annual tournament calendar and now looks to be in fighting form on the ITF Tour.
He’s definitely had to tackle some obstacles over the years, both on and off the court…
Competing solely on outdoor hard courts to gain his fitness levels back is necessary, but the grass courts – his speciality – will come around with time and consistent form, with Wimbledon being his home tournament and his highlight of the competitive calendar.
His career best ranking was 93, after becoming the first British wildcard entry to beat an ATP top five player in 2023 when defeating Casper Rudd on Wimbledon’s centre court.
His win against the Norwegian in round two sent him into the top 100 rankings for the first time, and into the shining spotlight alongside British tennis stars.
The adverse effects of time away from the tour are clear to see with Broady’s peaks and dips in the table below; this means taking a hit to player motivation, game-to-game momentum and teamworking within doubles pairs.
Liam Broady’s career rankings progression chart. (Credit: ATP Tour)
It is a likely situation for players to neglect their doubles career without the added stress of injury, so if they are to arise, it does not just impact individual physicality levels but also communication between doubles pairs.
A fellow British player with similar injury problems is Emma Raducanu, who rose to fame with a shocking US Open grand slam win as a qualifier. Since her win, she has had multiple surgeries, which saw her plummet down WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) standings due to time spent off court.
The issues that come with injury upsets can make a career really difficult to reclaim, even at a young age; tour rankings can be brutal on game time and match opponents, such as Broady’s Wimbledon draw against Holland’s Van De Zandschulp and Raducanu’s recent draw against American no.3 Anisimova.
We hope to see Team GB’s athletes fit and ready to fight on tour, and we have a strong feeling we’ll see native talent Broady back in the spotlight where he belongs.
Gig review | KEO at the O2 Ritz in Manchester – Sometimes you just KNOW…
Danny Jones
Fontaines D.C., Turnstile, Wunderhorse, Sleep Token, Neck Deep; sometimes it only takes a few listens and a live show to KNOW that a band is going to catch fire and go on to be huge – for Audio North and KEO, it only took a few.
But having now seen KEO for a third time, collectively, we’re more convinced than ever that they’re going to be massive.
Sadly, a prior engagement meant that we just missed catching the support act, Tooth (though we did hear great things rumbling around the eager young crowd), but there was no chance we were going to miss this lot show off how very good they are at what they do.
And there was absolutely no chance they were going to disappoint us, either…
We first caught this fast-rising post-grunge outfit live in action at Kendal Calling last year, where they somehow turned a daytime slot on the Woodlands stage into a moody mid-evening mosh.
They had even less fully produced and officially released music out then, but then we had the pleasure of watching them at The Key Club in Leeds this past October, and they were even better; punchier, more graduated at their game, and their fandom seemed plenty strong already.
As it turns out, that same progression proved true in Manchester, as KEO played their biggest headline show to date, and that same cult following only appeared more fervent than ever.
They might be based down in the capital, with roots in Portugal, brothers Finn and Conor having grown up there, but they certainly know a thing or two about how to please a Northern audience.
Of course, we’re sure they go off just as hard down in the capital – in fact, we’re certain they do – but the response they got from two sold-out rooms full of Yorkshire folk and us equally discerning Mancs felt like they had well and truly passed the litmus.
With flying colours, may we add.
Everything from the raw ’90s rock feel to the aesthetic hits just right. (Credit: Audio North)
It’s also worth noting that these London lads have built up this hype like very few ever manage to do: by developing a sterling live reputation right from the off and putting top-notch shows first.
For those unaware, they only just released their first five-track EP, Siren, back in June 2025, yet they’ve been packing out venues and festival stages pretty much since day dot, with die-hards growing their love for the band via performance and initially only learning the lyrics through social clips and snippets online.
While some have questioned why they’ve been chosen to headline this year’s Neighbourhood Festival here in Manchester city centre before they’ve even dropped a debut album, you only need to hear the entire Ritz screaming back the lyrics to ‘I Lied, Amber’, ‘Thorn’ and ‘Hands’ to know they fit the bill.
Frontman Finn pours so much unbridled power and emotion into his vocals, guitarist Jimmy Lanwern didn’t even need to look to know that his riffs were ripping the roof off, and they’ve quickly moved far beyond the early Wunderhorse parallels – they’re their own beast just waiting to be fully woken.
The Manc -
15th June 2020 
