Editorial: Jonathan Ganesh has kept alive the memory of innocent victims of IRA's Canary Wharf bombing

The Canary Wharf terrorist blast in February 1996 was a heinous crime.

​The IRA had declared ceasefire in August 1994, to a fanfare in west Belfast and acclaim elsewhere. After 25 years it had stopped killing.

Almost none of the Provisional IRA’s various previous tactics had worked: its bombing campaign in Belfast failed, its bombing campaign on the mainland failed, its attacks on the security forces failed, on businesses here failed, its attempt then to terrorise military based in continental Europe had failed, its attempt to murder lawyers and judges failed, its attempt to single out Catholic members of the police and legal system failed, its murder of unionist politicians failed and even Tories in England.

Finally, its depraved and desperate murder of those who supplied the security forces and even its targeting of civil servants failed. However, its bombing of the City of London got the government to pay attention. First at Baltic Exchange in 1992 (three deaths) then Bishopsgate the next year (one death). Then, because Sinn Fein was not getting progress under John Major the IRA wanted it returned to huge commercial bombing at Canary Wharf (two deaths).

You would barely hear a word about this. UK governments who bend over backwards to give the IRA what it wants are never so impolite as to cite their blood-soaked record. And barely a person outside this newspaper and politicians like Jim Allister even mentioned the fact that in February NI got a first minister who will not condemn these atrocities.

But Jonathan Ganesh, who was badly injured that day in 1996, and whose contempt for the murderers is total, has as president of the Docklands Victims Association kept alive the memory of that attack and the newsagents killed, Inam Bashir and John Jeffries.

It is a pleasure to read that he has been made an honorary fellow by Sunderland University.