NOTE: In this post, references to the City refer to the City of London, which is a separate entity to the city of London as a whole, with its own traditions, laws, police, etc. The City is now the home of the financial district of the UK. To read more about the City click HERE.
It is 25 years ago today since the devastation inflicted on Bishopgate, a thoroughfare in London’s financial district. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a truck bomb after giving coded warnings. As a result of the warnings, only one person was killed – a news photographer, Ed Henry of the News of the World, who had remained in the area – but 44 people were injured. Casualties would have been far greater but for the warnings and the fact that it was on a Saturday so the area was less populated with people working in the finance industries in the area. Nevertheless, the blast caused massive damage estimated at £1 billion (about £2 billion today). The nearby St Ethelburga’s church was half destroyed. The church was one of the few medieval churches in London to survive the Great Fire of 1666 so it’s loss was even more greatly felt. It was decided to demolish the damaged church but following an outcry it was rebuilt afterwards to the original plan, although the interior changed a great deal. The 1993 blast also heavily damaged the Liverpool Street train station and the NatWest Tower. The bombing was the costliest terror attack in financial terms up to that date and remained so until the September 11 attacks eight-and-a-half years later.
The bombing came just over a year after the bombing of the nearby Baltic Exchange and the two attacks prompted the development of the so-called “ring of steel” to protect the City of London. Many of the financial business in London implemented “disaster recovery plans” in case of further attacks. By 1994 the police investigating the Bishopgate bombing believed they knew who was responsible but had insufficient evidence to arrest anyone.
The bomb was a 1-tonne ANFO bomb made by the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade and had been smuggled into England. In March 1993 it was placed in a stolen Iveco tipper truck (similar to the one pictured above), which had been stolen from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in Staffordshire. The bomb was hidden under a layer of tarmac. On the morning of 24 April two IRA volunteers drove it to Bishopgate and parked the truck outside 99 Bishopgate, which was then the HQ of Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and promptly left the scene in a car driven by another IRA accomplice. Using a phonebox in Forkhill, Couny Armagh, Northern Ireland, a series of warnings were sent, using recognised codewords and stating: “[there’s] a massive bomb […] clear a wide area.” The first warnings were sent just an hour before the bomb detonated, with the explosive power of 1,200 kg of TNT. It seems that when the first warning came, police in London were already suspicious of the truck and were making inquiries into it. This perhaps aided the evacuation of the area.
The blast at 10.27 am created a mushroom cloud that could be seen across much of London and left a 15-foot wide crater in the street. Buildings up to 500m away were damaged and it estimated that 1,500,000 sq. ft. of office space was affected and 500 tonnes of glass windows were broken. The NatWest Tower was one of those buildings to suffer heavy damage. It was the tallest building in London at the time. The Daily Mail reported: “black gaps punched its fifty-two floors like a mouth full of bad teeth.” As for St Ethelburga’s Church, it was just seven metres from the blast
The reaction from the City was to call for more measures to protect the financial heart of the country, with one leading figure calling for “a medieval-style walled enclave to prevent terrorist attacks.” The Lord Mayor of London at the time, Francis McWilliams, called the prime minister of the day John Major and reminded him that “the City of London earned £17 billion last year for the nation as a whole. Its operating environment and future must be preserved.” John Major was determined to ensure that business continued as normal in the City and that his Government would continue to push for a peaceful settlement to the troubles in Northern Ireland, which then had been going on for about 25 years. He later said:
“Frankly, we thought it was likely to bring the whole process to an end. And we told them repeatedly that that was the case. They assumed that if they bombed and put pressure on the British at Bishopsgate or with some other outrage or other, it would affect our negotiating position to their advantage. In that judgment they were wholly wrong. Every time they did that, they made it harder not easier for any movement to be made towards a settlement. They hardened our attitude, whereas they believed that their actions would soften it. That is a fundamental mistake the IRA have made with successive British governments throughout the last quarter of a century.”
The political leaders in Northern Ireland, John Hume and Gerry Adams, issued a joint statement (their first major one) stating: “We accept that the Irish people as a whole have a right to national self-determination. This is a view shared by the majority of the people of the island, though not by all its people. […] The exercise of self-determination is a matter for agreement between the people of Ireland.” The IRA also issued a statement, in which they said: “the British establishment to seize the opportunity and to take the steps needed for ending its futile and costly war in Ireland. We again emphasise that they should pursue the path of peace or resign themselves to the path of war.” They also pressured the British government by sending a statement to non-US foreign-owned businesses in the City warning that “no-one should be misled into underestimating the IRA’s intention to mount future planned attacks into the political and financial heart of the British state […] In the context of present political realities, further attacks on the City of London and elsewhere are inevitable. This we feel we are bound to to convey to you directly, to allow you to make fully informed decisions.”
By May 1993 the City of London Police (which is a separate force to the Metropolitan Police) confirmed they were planning a security cordon for the City, conceived by its Commissioner Owen Kelly. The “ring of steel” was introduced at the beginning of July 1993. This involved most routes in the City being closed or made exit-only with the remaining eight routes having checkpoints placed on them manned by armed police. CCTV cameras were also extensively used to monitor each entry point, with cameras reading vehicle registration plates and also monitoring drivers and passengers. “Camera Watch” was launched in September 1993 to organise cooperation between police-owned cameras and those belonging to private companies and the Corporation of London. Within 9 months of the attack some 12.5% of buildings had cameras and by 1996 over 1,000 cameras in 376 systems were operational in the City alone.
The disaster recovery plans introduced following the Bishopgate and Baltic Exchange bombings were to prove crucial in coming years. The lack of such plans was clearly evident following the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing which saw 40% of affected businesses go bankrupt within two years. Although this affect was not yet clear in April 1993, the reaction to the bombings in London created plans for what financial businesses would do after a bombing. As a result they were well prepared to cope with the aftermath of the 1996 bombing and from the international fallout of the September 11 attacks. The 1993 bombing did, however, create a crisis in the insurance industry in the City who faced massive payouts which led to the near-collapse of the Lloyd’s of London market. This led directly to the Government introducing a scheme known as Pool Re, which essentially made the Government the insurer of last resort for losses over £75 million.
The campaign by the IRA to bomb the UK’s financial district was described as one of the most important of its long campaign but the Bishopgate bomb proved to be the last major bombing in England. The IRA carried out a number of smaller bomb and mortar attacks in England again in 1993 and early 1994 but on 31 August 1994 declared a “complete cessation of military operations.” The ceasefire was broken in February 1996 when the IRA bombed London’s Docklands, killing two people. The Docklands attack was targeting London’s secondary financial district known as Canary Wharf.
Despite the renewed bombings, peace talks continued. In December 1993 the Irish and British governments signed the Downing Street Declaration. This stated that the right of the people of Ireland to self-determination would be guaranteed and that Northern Ireland would only be transferred to the Republic of Ireland if a majority of its population was in favour of such a move – which it isn’t. The Declaration also stated that the people of the island of Ireland had the sole right to solve issues between the North and South by mutual agreement. This was known as the principle of consent.
The Declaration led to more talks which, although never truly inclusive of all political parties, reached an Agreement on Good Friday 1998, which became known as the Good Friday Agreement. This created a number of institutions between the North and the Republic as well as between the Republic and the UK. It also led to the current devolved system of government in Northern Ireland. The Agreement was approved by voters in the Republic in May 1998, allowing the government in Dublin to sign the Agreement and make the necessary constitutional changes. Voters in Northern Ireland were asked in a referendum if they supported the multi-party agreement section of the Good Friday Agreement, which related to the planned cooperation between parties in the North.
The Good Friday Agreement came into force on 2 December 1999. The parties that did sign the Agreement, along with the British and Irish governments, were the Ulster Unionist Party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party, the Progressive Unionist Party, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, the Ulster Democratic Party and Labour, which was a coalition of left-wing and labour groups including Militant Tendency (forerunners of the Irish Socialist Party), the Newtownabbey Labour Party and the British and Irish Communist Organisation. The coalition was formed to stand in the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum elections. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was the only major political party in the North to oppose the Agreement. It is the DUP who, today, are propping up the Conservative government of Theresa May after her inability to win a sufficient enough majority in 2017’s General Election to rule without the support of other parties.
STEPHEN NULTY 