Senior citizens enjoying Christmas dinner in St. Mary’s parish hall in Creggan in December 1996.Senior citizens enjoying Christmas dinner in St. Mary’s parish hall in Creggan in December 1996.
Senior citizens enjoying Christmas dinner in St. Mary’s parish hall in Creggan in December 1996.

NOSTALGIA: Derry and Inishowen in pictures - Christmas 1996

At Christmas 1996 there were calls for Derry to renew its links with crisis-hit Bethlehem, following a disclosure that the Palestinian town was facing an impoverished Christmas; there was a near catastrophe on the River Foyle when a large tanker leaving Derry harbour ran aground in the channel off Greenbank; and Tory MP Peter Bottomley said he was ‘deeply concerned’ at the treatment of pregnant bomb suspect Róisín McAliskey, who was being held without charge in an English jail. As ever the ‘Journal’s photographers were doing the rounds.