1973 Westminster bombing


The 1973 Westminster bombing was a car bomb that exploded on Thorney Street, off Horseferry Road, in Millbank, London on 18 December 1973. The explosion injured up to 60 people. The bomb was planted in a car that was stolen, and it was parked in front of the Home Office building when it exploded on Tuesday morning. Two telephone warnings were given within half an hour before the blast. The Provisional Irish Republican Army was responsible for the attack, and was assumed to have been in retaliation to the jailing of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade members who bombed the Old Bailey earlier in the year. A day earlier, the IRA sent two parcel bombs that targeted two politicians.

Background

had been raging for four years in Northern Ireland and to a lesser extent in the Republic of Ireland since the Battle of the Bogside in Derry in August 1969. Great Britain had been relatively untouched from the violence up until the beginning of 1973 when the IRA Army Council had drawn up plans for a bombing campaign to take place in England.