List of major crimes in the United Kingdom
This is a list of major crimes in the United Kingdom that received significant media coverage and/or led to changes in legislation.
Legally each deliberate and unlawful killing of a human being is murder; there is no crime of assassination or serial killing as such, for example.
Assassinations
See also the category ":Category:Assassinated British people|Assassinated British People".| Date | Victim | Location | Details |
| 1812 | Spencer Perceval | London | Shot by John Bellingham. Only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated. |
| 1978 | Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif | London | Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif was Prime Minister of Iraq in 1968. He was assassinated on 9 July 1978, in London. His gunman was quickly captured and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1979; Naif was reportedly killed on the order of Saddam Hussein. |
| 1978 | Georgi Markov | London | Markov was a Bulgarian dissident writer assassinated on 11 September 1978, in London. A micro-pellet containing ricin was fired into his leg via an umbrella wielded by someone with probable links to the Bulgarian secret police. |
| 1985 | Gérard Hoarau | London | Hoarau was an exiled opposition leader from the Seychelles and was head of the Mouvement Pour La Resistance that sought the peaceful overthrow of the France-Albert René regime which had come to power on 5 June 1977 in a coup d'état. He was assassinated on 29 November 1985, in London. |
| 2006 | Alexander Litvinenko | London | Litvinenko was a Russian dissident and ex-agent, poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 on 1 November 2006, and who died 22 days later. His killer remain unknown, but a link with Russia's Federal Security Service is suspected. |
| 2016 | Jo Cox | Birstall, West Yorkshire | 41-year-old Helen Joanne Cox, Labour Member of Parliament for Batley and Spen was assassinated on 16 June 2016 by Thomas Mair, known for his far-right affiliations. In November 2016, after a week-long trial at Old Bailey, Mair was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. |
Child/teenage killings
19th and 20th centuries
2000s–present
Individual murders
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought.19th century
1900s–1940s
1950s–1990s
2000s
Killed by medical and pseudo-medical staff
Multiple murders
Murdered police officers
| Date | Name of Incident | Location | Details |
| 1940 | The Death of Jack Avery | Hyde Park, London, England | War Reserve Constable Jack William Avery was a war reserve police officer who was murdered in Hyde Park, London, on 5 July 1940, having served less than one year with the Metropolitan Police Service. Avery was stabbed in the groin by Frank Stephen Cobbett, after Avery approached him having been advised by a member of the public that Cobbett was acting suspiciously. 42-year-old Cobbett, of no fixed address, was originally sentenced to death for murder, but after an appeal served fifteen years penal servitude for manslaughter instead. In 2007, Ian Blair, then Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, unveiled a memorial to Avery close to the place where he was attacked in Hyde Park. |
| 1952 | The Derek Bentley and Christopher Craig case | Croydon, Surrey, England | Derek Bentley and Christopher Craig were arrested by the Metropolitan Police following a shootout in which one police constable was killed and another wounded. Although Craig shot and killed the constable, his accomplice Derek Bentley was charged with the murder and hanged. |
| 1959 | The shooting of Detective Sergeant Raymond Purdy | Kensington London, England | German petty criminal Guenther Podola shot Purdy while fleeing arrest. Podola was the last man executed in Britain for killing a policeman. |
| 1966 | The Shepherd's Bush Murders | Shepherd's Bush, West London, England | Three plainclothes police officers of the Metropolitan Police's CID Division — Constables David Wombwell and Geoffrey Fox and Detective Sergeant Christopher Head — were killed while questioning three criminals parked near Wormwood Scrubs Prison. The three men, John Whitney, John Duddy and Harry Roberts were later arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Duddy remained in prison until his death in 1981, Whitney was paroled in 1991 but was murdered eight years later, and Roberts remained in prison for 48 years until he was finally released on parole in 2014. |
| 1969 | The Linwood bank robbery | Linwood, near Glasgow, Scotland | A bank robbery in Linwood, near Glasgow, where three police officers were shot in the aftermath ; two officers were later awarded George Medals. The lead robber, Howard Wilson, served 32 years in prison for the robbery, the murder of the two police officers and the attempted murder of the third; he was paroled in 2002. |
| 1971 | The death of Gerry Richardson | Blackpool, Lancashire, England | Gerald Irving Richardson, GC was a police officer in the Lancashire Constabulary and one of the highest-ranking officers to be murdered in the line of duty in Great Britain. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1972. |
| 1975 | The Murder of Stephen Tibble | West Kensington, London, England | 22-year-old PC Stephen Andrew Tibble, QPM, was fatally shot by Liam Quinn, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, during a chase through Central London on 26 February 1975. |
| 1981 | The Death of Kenneth Howorth | London, England | Kenneth Robert Howorth, GM, was a British explosives officer with the Metropolitan Police Service who was killed whilst attempting to defuse a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Oxford Street. |
| 1984 | The shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher | St. James's Square, London, England | WPC Yvonne Fletcher was one of 12 people hit by bullets fired from the Libyan embassy in London while she was policing a demonstration outside. She died on her way to hospital. The other 11 people who were hit survived. Nobody has ever been charged with her murder, but this crime prompted Britain to end its diplomatic links with Libya. |
| 1984 | The Murder of Brian Bishop | Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England | PC Brian John Bishop was shot in the head by an armed robber in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, on 22 August 1984. He died from his injuries five days later in a London hospital. |
| 1985 | The Murder of Keith Blakelock | Broadwater Farm, London, England | PC Keith Blakelock, a London Metropolitan Police constable, was killed on 6 October 1985 during rioting on the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, north London. Violence broke out after a local black woman died of heart failure during a police search of her home the previous day. It took place against a backdrop of unrest in several English cities, including Liverpool and other districts of London, and a breakdown of relations between the police and black communities. Three local black men including Winston Silcott were convicted of PC Blakelock's murder in 1987, but their convictions were quashed in 1991, although Silcott remained in prison for a further 12 years for another murder, which he claimed to have committed in self-defence. |
| 1993 | The Death of Hugh Moore | Bushey, Hertfordshire, England | Commander Hugh John Moore, QPM, of the City of London Police, died from heart failure on 4 December 1993, eleven days after a violent struggle with a man who he had attempted to arrest. |
| 1995 | The Death of Phillip Walters | Ilford, East London, England | PC Phillip John Walters, of the Metropolitan Police Service, was shot dead while investigating a domestic disturbance in Ilford, east London, on 18 April 1995. Walters responded to reports of a domestic disturbance at a flat in Empress Avenue, Ilford, with his colleague Sergeant Derek Shepherd, who he had partnered in the job for the eighteen months since he entered service. Upon arrival, the pair discovered three men beating the male occupant of the property; it later transpired that they were hired to beat the man who was the former boyfriend of a woman. As the suspects attempted to escape, one produced a Smith & Wesson handgun and shot Walters in the chest as he was tackled by the officer. The bullet penetrated Walters' heart and he died later in hospital. |
| 1997 | The Death of Nina Mackay | Straford, East London | PC Nina Alexandra Mackay, of the Metropolitan Police Service, was fatally stabbed on 24 October 1997 by a paranoid schizophrenic man she was attempting to arrest. She is the only female police officer in Great Britain to have been stabbed to death while on duty and her killing was the first of a female officer since the murder of Yvonne Fletcher in 1984. |
| 1999 | The Murder of Raja Ahmed | Miles Platting, Manchester, England | PC Raja Bashrat Ahmed, of the Greater Manchester Police, was murdered when his motorcycle was deliberately rammed into the path of a moving lorry. Career criminal Steven Draper was jailed for life for murder in 2000. |
| 2003 | The Death of Ged Walker | Bulwell, Nottingham, England | PC Gerald "Ged" Walker was a police dog handler with Nottinghamshire Police who was killed in the line of duty in Bulwell, Nottingham. On 7 January 2003, PC Walker was dragged 100 yards and fatally injured by a stolen taxi as he reached into the vehicle to attempt to remove the keys from the ignition. He died in hospital two days later from serious head injuries. In December 2003, 26-year-old drug addict David Parfitt was convicted of PC Walker's manslaughter and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. He had been on licence at the time of the incident for a previous robbery offence. |
| 2004 | The Death of Michael Swindells | Birmingham, England | DC Michael Swindells, QGM, was stabbed to death on 21 May 2004 in Birmingham whilst attempting to arrest a suspect who had earlier threatened members of the public with a knife. The killer, who suffered from a mental illness, was later detained indefinitely for manslaughter. |
| 2005 | The Murder of Sharon Beshenivsky | Bradford, West Yorkshire, England | Sharon Beshenivsky, a West Yorkshire Police constable, was the 89th police officer and the sixth female officer to die in the line of duty in England and Wales, and the second female officer to be fatally shot. She was shot dead by a criminal gang during a robbery in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Her colleague, PC Teresa Millburn, was also shot in the incident, receiving serious wounds to the chest. Closed-circuit television cameras in Bradford tracked a car rushing from the scene and used an automatic number plate recognition system to trace its owners. Six men were later found guilty of killing PC Beshenivsky and sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| 2007 | The Murder of Jonathan Henry | Bedfordshire, England | Jonathan Henry was murdered in Luton, Bedfordshire, whilst on duty and responding to reports of a stabbing in the town centre. |
| 2012 | The Murders of Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone | Mottram in Longdendale, Tameside, Greater Manchester, England | PC Nicola Hughes and PC Fiona Bone were two Greater Manchester police constables killed during a "routine call" in response to a burglary in Mottram in Longdendale, on the edge of the Hattersley housing estate, in Tameside, Greater Manchester, on 18 September 2012. Hughes and Bone had completed three and five years of service at the time of their deaths, respectively. It was the first time two female officers were killed on duty in the United Kingdom. Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy called the killings "cold blooded murder". Dale Cregan admitted murdering both officers, as well as two other men in an unrelated incident earlier in 2012, and was sentenced to life imprisonment the following year. |
| 2019 | The Death of Andrew Harper | Sulhamstead, Berkshire, England | On the evening of 15 August 2019, Police Constable Andrew Harper of the Thames Valley Police was killed while responding to reports of a burglary in Bradfield Southend, on the A4 west of Reading, Berkshire. It is believed PC Harper was dragged under a vehicle fleeing the scene and may also have been struck by a police car. The cause of PC Harper's death was multiple injuries. An initial investigation turned up ten suspects, one of whom, Jed Foster, went to trial; but the charge was dropped. Three teenagers, aged 17 to 18, are due to appear at the Old Bailey on December 13. Meanwhile, investigations in the cause of PC Harper's death are still ongoing. |
Organised crime
Robberies
| Date | Name of Incident | Location | Details |
| 1963 | The Great Train Robbery | Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, England | After using railway signals to stop a Royal Mail freight train en route to London, Bruce Reynolds leads a 15-man group to storm the train and successfully escaped with £2.3 million. However, because the culprits left their fingerprints behind, police were able to trace thirteen of the robbers to their safehouse in Oakley, Buckinghamshire. Several members of the group, Ronnie Biggs, Ronald "Buster" Edwards and Charlie Wilson, managed to escape from prison soon after their trial. Biggs returned to Britain in 2001 after spending more than 30 years on the run, but was returned to prison for eight years before being released due to ill health in 2009. He died in December 2013. |
| 1983 | The Brink's-Mat robbery | Heathrow Airport England | Six armed robbers broke into the Brink's-Mat warehouse in Heathrow Airport and got away with £26 million in gold bullion with the inside help of security guard Anthony Black. |
| 2000 | The Millennium Dome raid | Greenwich, London, England | On 7 November 2000, a criminal gang attempted to steal the flawless Millennium Star diamond valued at over £200 million, from an exhibition at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, London. Five men were later sentenced on various different robbery charges. |
| 2004 | The Northern Bank robbery | Belfast, Northern Ireland | £26.5 million was stolen from the Donegall Square headquarters of Northern Bank by a large armed gang. |
| 2006 | The Securitas depot robbery | Tonbridge, Kent, England | The largest cash robbery in British history, netting £53,116,760 in cash. The majority of the suspects were arrested. |
| 2009 | The Graff Diamonds robbery | Bond Street, London | Two men wearing prosthetic make-up steal £40 million of gems in an armed robbery on Graff Diamonds, a jewellery store in Bond Street, London. |
| 2015 | The Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary | Hatton Garden London, England | In April 2015, the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company, an underground safe deposit facility in London's Hatton Garden area, was burgled. The burglary occurred during a period in which both the Easter Bank Holiday and Passover coincided. The police first announced that the facility had been burgled on 7 April, and reports based on CCTV footage state that the attack on the facility commenced on 2 April. The theft is being investigated by the Flying Squad, a branch of the Specialist, Organised & Economic Crime Command within London's Metropolitan Police Service. |
Serial killings
See also List of serial killers by country.| Date | Name of Incident | No. of Deaths | Location | Details |
| 1827–1828 | The Burke and Hare murders | 17 | Edinburgh, Scotland | William Burke and William Hare sold the corpses of 17 victims to provide material for dissection. |
| 1865 | The Edward William Pritchard case | 2 | Glasgow, Scotland | A doctor who was hanged for murdering his wife and mother-in-law by poisoning. He was also suspected of the murder of a servant but was never tried for it. |
| 1865–1873 | The Mary Ann Cotton murders | 21 | England | Believed to have murdered up to 21 people, mainly by arsenic poisoning. Many of her victims had married her. |
| 1896 | The Amelia Dyer case | 247 | Reading, Berkshire London England | Amelia Elizabeth Dyer, was the most prolific baby farm murderer of Victorian England. She was tried and hanged for one murder, but there is little doubt she was responsible for many more similar deaths — possibly 400 or more — over a period of about 20 years. |
| 1888 | Jack the Ripper | 5+ | Whitechapel, London, England | At least five prostitutes were murdered and mutilated by an unidentified serial killer, dubbed "Jack the Ripper" by the press. The killer was never apprehended. |
| 1915 | The George Joseph Smith case | 3 | Leicester, East Midlands, England | George Joseph Smith, a con artist and polygamist, murdered three of his wives before being arrested and executed on 13 August 1915. |
| 1943–1953 | The John Christie Killings | 6–8 | Notting Hill, London. England | John Reginald Halliday Christie murdered at least six women — including his wife Ethel — by strangling them in his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. Christie moved out of Rillington Place in March 1953, and shortly afterwards the bodies of three of his victims were discovered hidden in an alcove in his kitchen. Christie was arrested and convicted of his wife's murder, for which he was hanged in 1953. |
| 1944–1949 | The John George Haigh case | 6–8 | London, England | John George Haigh murdered six people and disposed of their bodies in drums of sulphuric acid. He then forged documents turning the murder victims' possessions over to himself. Haigh was eventually caught after the disappearance and eventual murder of socialite Henrietta Durand-Deacon, apparently believing the police would be unable to prosecute him without her body. |
| 1951–1952 | The John Straffen case | 3 | Bath, Somerset, Broadmoor, England | John Thomas Straffen who was the longest-serving prisoner in British legal history. He killed two young girls in the summer of 1951. He was found to be unfit to plead and committed to Broadmoor Hospital; during a brief escape in 1952 he killed again. This time he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Reprieved because of his mental state, he had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment and he remained in prison until his death more than 55 years later. |
| 1956–1958 | The Peter Manuel Case | 7–9 | Glasgow & Lanarkshire, Scotland | Peter Manuel was an American-born Scottish serial killer who was convicted of murdering seven people across Lanarkshire and southern Scotland between 1956 and his arrest in January 1958, and is believed to have murdered two more. Prior to his arrest, the media nicknamed the unidentified killer "the Beast of Birkenshaw". Manuel was hanged at Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison; he was one of the last prisoners to die on the Barlinnie gallows. |
| 1963–1965 | The Ian Brady and Myra Hindley case | 5 | Oldham, Lancashire, England | Five children were killed in the area of Greater Manchester over a two-year period by serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. After being turned in by Hindley's brother-in-law David Smith, Brady was found guilty of three murders and Hindley of two at their trial in May 1966, for which they received life sentences. They admitted the two other murders 20 years later. Hindley remained in prison until her death in November 2002, while Brady was held at a secure mental hospital until his death in 2017. |
| 1968–1969 | The Bible John Murders | 3 | Glasgow, Scotland | Three women were found strangled between 1968 and 1969 by an unidentified serial killer known only as Bible John. Although police investigated the murders for over 20 years, the murderer was never identified although serial killer Peter Tobin is a suspect. |
| 1970–1974 | The Ronald Jebson Murders | 3 | Epping Forest Greater London. England | Ronald Jebson killed Susan Blatchford, and Gary Hanlon. Their bodies were discovered in a copse on Lippitts Hill, after they went missing from their homes in Enfield, north London, in March 1970. 30 years after the murders, Jebson confessed to the crimes; he was already serving a life sentence for the 1974 murder of 8-year-old Rosemary Papper. Jebson remained in prison until his death in April 2015. |
| 1973–1978 | The Robert Maudsley case | 4 | Robert John Maudsley was a serial killer responsible for the murders of four people. Jailed for life for a single murder in 1975, he committed three of the murders in prison. He was reported to have eaten part of the brain of one of three men he killed in jail, which earned him the nickname "Hannibal the Cannibal" among the British press. | |
| 1974–1975 | The Patrick Mackay case | 5–12? | Dartford, Kent, England | Mackay was a serial killer who confessed to murdering 11 people in London and Kent. |
| 1975–1981 | The Peter Sutcliffe Murders | 13-20+ | Yorkshire, England | Peter Sutcliffe, known to the press as the "Yorkshire Ripper", murdered 13 women and attacked seven others in the north of England between 1975 and 1980. Captured in January 1981 and sentenced to life imprisonment later that year, he was imprisoned at Parkhurst Prison until his transfer to Broadmoor Hospital later in the 1980s after he was violently assaulted by another inmate. |
| 1978 | The Peter Dinsdale killings | 26 | Hull, England | Dinsdale was one of Britain's most prolific killers. He confessed to a total of 11 acts of arson, and was convicted of 26 counts of manslaughter. 11 of these were overturned on appeal. Lee was imprisoned for life in 1981. |
| 1978–1983 | The Dennis Nilsen murders | 15+ | London | Dennis Nilsen murdered several men over a period of five years, including foreign students as well as local homeless men and male prostitutes, who were lured to his apartment and strangled before being dismembered. A number of Nilsen's victims have never been identified. |
| 1982–1986 | The Robert Black murders | 4+ | Scotland & North of England | Robert Black is a Scottish serial killer and child molester. He kidnapped, raped and murdered three girls during the 1980s, kidnapped a fourth girl who survived, attempted to kidnap a fifth, and is the suspect in a number of unsolved child murders dating back to 1969 and the 1970s throughout Europe. On 16 December 2009 Black was charged with the murder of Jennifer Cardy, a 9-year-old girl whose body was found at McKee's Dam near Hillsborough, County Down, in August 1981. He was initially jailed for life for abducting a seven-year-old girl in July 1990, and police soon found evidence to charge him with the murders of three girls during the 1980s. He was convicted of all three murders in May 1994 and sentenced to a further 10 concurrent terms of life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum term of 35 years. |
| 1991–2006 | The Peter Tobin case | 3 | Margate, Kent | Prior to his first murder conviction, Tobin served ten years in prison for a double rape committed in 1993, following which he was released in 2004. In 2007 he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years for the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk in Glasgow the previous year. Skeletal remains of two further young women who went missing in 1991 were subsequently found at his former home in Margate. Tobin was convicted of the murder of Vicky Hamilton in December 2008, when his minimum sentence was increased to 30 years, and of the murder of Dinah McNicol in December 2009. He is now being investigated for other unsolved cases of murder dating back to the 1960s. |
| 1993–1994 | The Steven Grieveson Case | 4+ | Sunderland, County Durham | Grieveson murdered four teenage boys in Sunderland in North East England between 1993 and 1994. |
| 1993–2004 | The Peter Bryan case | 3 | East London, England | Peter Bryan is a cannibal who committed several murders between 1993 and 2004. |
| 1994 | The Fred and Rosemary West case | 12 | Gloucester, England | Between April 1973 and September 1979, Fred and Rosemary West lured young women into their home where they were sexually assaulted and murdered. In February 1994 they were arrested after corpses were found buried in the garden and under their house in Gloucester. It is speculated that the pair committed further murders between 1980 and 1992, and may have killed a total of around 30 people, but their only known victim after 1980 was their 16-year-old daughter, Heather, who was murdered in 1987 by Fred West, who hanged himself whilst awaiting trial at Winson Green Prison on New Year's Day 1995. On 22 November 1995, Rosemary West was sentenced to life imprisonment and the trial judge recommended that she should never be released. Fred West had committed two murders during the 1960s before he met Rosemary, including that of his wife. Fred's eight-year-old daughter Charmaine is also believed to have died at the hands of Rosemary West while Fred West was serving a prison sentence for theft in late 1970 or early 1971. |
| 2002–04 | The Levi Bellfield case | 3+ | Surrey, Hampton, Isleworth, Twickenham, England | Murder of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl, murder of Marsha McDonnell, 19-year-old woman, attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, aged 18 and finally murder of Amélie Delagrange, a 22-year-old French student in foreign languages applied, by serial killer Levi Bellfield. For these 3 criminal cases, Levi is sentenced to life imprisonment. Levi is also suspicious in other cases of missing women in the 1990s, as well as the murder of his childhood girlfriend, 14-year-old Patsy Morris in 1980. |
| 2006 | The Steve Wright killings | 5 | Ipswich, Suffolk, England | Five women from Ipswich who were working as prostitutes were found murdered around the town in December 2006. Steve Wright, a local forklift truck driver, was charged with five murders and found guilty on all charges in February 2008. He was jailed for life and the trial judge recommended he should never be released. A subsequent appeal against his convictions by Wright was rejected by the High Court. |
| 2013 | The Peterborough ditch murders | 3 | Peterborough. Cambridgeshire, England | Three men were stabbed to death in March 2013, with their bodies found dumped in ditches outside Peterborough. The perpetrator of the murders was Joanna Dennehy, a local woman who was later sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that she never be released. |
| 2014 | The Stephen Port case | 4 | Barking, Essex | Stephen John Port is a convicted serial rapist and serial killer, and is responsible for murdering at least four men and committing multiple rapes. Port received a life sentence with a whole life order on 25 November 2016. Police announced they are now investigating at least 58 deaths connected to the use of gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid in response to the Port case. |
Sex crimes
Spree killings
Terrorism
Excludes incidents that happened during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. See also Attacks on the London Underground, List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain, and List of terrorist incidents in London.| Date | Name of Incident | No. of Deaths | Location | Details |
| 1867 | The Clerkenwell explosion | 12 | Clerkenwell, London | A bomb planted by Fenians at New Prison in Clerkenwell exploded, killing twelve passers-by with more than 120 injuries. |
| 1972 | The 1972 Aldershot bombing | 7 | Aldershot, England | A bomb attack by the Northern Ireland-based Official Irish Republican Army, the first of its kind on the mainland, targeted a British Army base in Aldershot. Seven civilian staff were killed. |
| 1973 | The 1973 Old Bailey bombing | 1 | London, England | The first attack in England by the Provisional IRA. Four car bombs were planted at significant targets in London including Scotland Yard & the Ministry of Defence. Two bombs were defused but two bombs exploded, the worst damage was caused by the bomb at the Old Bailey were over 200 people were injured & one man died of a heart attack. The attack caused outrage in England & got extensive media coverage. |
| 1973 | The Bombings of King's Cross and Euston stations | – | London, England | Two bombs at mainline stations injured 13 people and brought chaos to central London. The first explosion at King's Cross station – which injured five people – occurred without any warning at 1224 BST, seconds after a witness saw a youth throw a bag into a booking hall. Fifty minutes later a second blast rocked a snack bar at Euston station, injuring a further eight people. |
| 1973 | The 1973 Westminster bombing | – | London, England | A bomb exploded in Thorney Street, which leads off Horseferry Road. The bomb was planted in a car which was known to have been stolen in London, and was parked outside Horseferry House, a building occupied by the Home Office, and opposite Thames House, which is mainly occupied by the Department of Trade and Industry. Both these buildings, and others nearby, were extensively damaged. At least 40 people were injured. |
| 1974 | The M62 coach bombing | 12 | M62 motorway, West Riding of Yorkshire, England | A bomb attack on a coach killed nine British Army soldiers and three civilians. The attack was carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. |
| 1974 | The 1974 Houses of Parliament bombing | – | London, England | A bomb exploded at the Houses of Parliament in London, causing extensive damage and injuring 11 people. |
| 1974 | The 1974 Tower of London bombing | 1 | London, England | An explosion in the Tower of London left one person dead and 41 injured. This was the second bomb in London on this day. At 0430 BST there was an explosion at government buildings in Balham, South London. Nobody was injured in the morning blast but there was substantial damage to surrounding buildings. |
| 1974 | The Guildford pub bombings | 5 | Guildford, England | Two bombs at a pub in Guildford cause the deaths of four soldiers and a civilian. IRA terrorists were responsible. |
| 1974 | The Brook's Club bomb attack | – | Brook's, St James's Street, London | A bomb exploded in the Brooks Club, London, injuring three members of staff. |
| 1974 | The Harrow School bombing | – | Harrow, England | The Harrow School bombing happened on 24 October 1974, when the Provisional IRA's Balcombe Street Gang bombed Peterborough Cottage, a three-storey former caretaker's house in the grounds of Harrow School. A warning was given and there were no deaths or injuries. |
| 1974 | The Birmingham pub bombings | 21 | Birmingham, England | 21 people were killed when bombs went off in two pubs in central Birmingham. Six men were wrongly convicted and spent 16 years in prison before being released in 1991. |
| 1974 | The 1974 London pillar box bombings | – | London, England | Provisional IRA exploded bombs inside pillar boxes in various places around London, injuring 40 people. |
| 1974 | The Oxford Street bombing | – | London, England | The IRA carried out a bomb attack on Selfridge's department store in Oxford Street, London. A time bomb had been placed in a car which was then parked outside the store. Three telephone warnings were given and the area was evacuated. The explosion was later estimated to have caused £1.5 million worth of damage. |
| 1982 | The Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings | 11 | London, England | Bomb attacks against a military ceremony in London killed eleven soldiers. |
| 1983 | The Harrods bombing | 6 | London, England | Six people were killed when a bomb detonated near the Harrods department store in London. |
| 1984 | The 1984 Heathrow Airport bombing | – | Heathrow Airport, England | On 20 April 1984, a bomb exploded in the baggage area of Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport. The bomb exploded at 7:55 pm, as 60 people were inside the baggage area. The blast injured 22, one seriously. The Angry Brigade, an anarchist group, claimed responsibility for the bombing. British officials dismissed the claim, and instead pointed their fingers at "Libyan-related Arab groups". coming just three days after the murder of Yvonne Fletcher. |
| 1984 | The Brighton hotel bombing | 5 | Brighton, England | A bomb attack targeting members of the government killed five people. The then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, narrowly escaped injury. |
| 1988 | The Lockerbie Disaster | 270 | Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland | In one of the worst terrorist attacks in the UK, London-New York commercial flight Pan Am Flight 103 crashed near Lockerbie, Scotland as the result of a bomb having been planted in the forward cargo hold. A joint investigation by the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Federal Bureau of Investigation linked the bombing to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines. He was jailed for life in January 2001 with a recommended minimum of 20 years, but was released on compassionate grounds due to terminal cancer in August 2009, and returned to his native Libya, where he died in 2012. |
| 1989 | The Deal barracks bombing | 11 | Deal, England | Eleven soldiers died after the IRA bombed a military facility in Deal. |
| 1992 | The Baltic Exchange bombing | 3 | London, England | Three people were killed in a bombing targeting London's financial centre, causing severe damage. |
| 1993 | The Warrington bomb attacks | 2 | Warrington, England | Two bombs caused the deaths of two children in Warrington. |
| 1994 | The Heathrow mortar attacks | – | Warrington, England | The IRA launched a series of mortar attacks at the capital's main airport. On 9 March, four mortar bombs fired from a car parked at the Excelsior Hotel landed on or near the northern runway. On 11 March, four mortar bombs fired from waste ground landed on an aircraft parking area near Terminal Four. On 13 March, five mortar bombs launched from waste ground landed in the vicinity of Terminal Four. None exploded and there was no damage, but the attack caused much disruption to travel when areas of the airport were closed over the period. |
| 1996 | The 1996 Docklands bombing | 2 | London, England | The IRA bombed the South Quay area of Canary Wharf, London, killing two people and injuring more than 100, and causing an estimated £100 million worth of damage. |
| 1996 | The Aldwych bus bombing | 1 | London, England | A bomb detonated prematurely on a bus travelling along Wellington Street, Aldwych, London WC2, killing Edward O'Brien, the IRA terrorist transporting the device and injuring eight others. |
| 1996 | The 1996 Hammersmith Bridge bomb | – | London, England | A major bomb that could have caused catastrophic damage failed to explode properly in west London. |
| 1999 | The 1999 London nail bombings | 3 | London, England | A series of nail bombs in London caused the deaths of three people, including an unborn child. |
| 2000 | The 2000 MI6 attack | – | London, England | The SIS Building in Vauxhall, Lambeth was attacked using a Russian-made RPG-22 anti-tank rocket. Striking the eighth floor, the missile caused superficial damage. The Anti-Terrorist branch of the Metropolitan Police attributed responsibility to the Real IRA. |
| 2001 | The 2001 BBC bombing | – | London, England | of high explosive had been placed in a red taxi and left near the main front door of BBC Television Centre, on Wood Lane in the White City area of West London. Just after midnight, police were attempting to carry out a controlled explosion on the bomb when it went off. Staff had already been evacuated after a coded warning. One person suffered cuts to his eye caused by glass debris. Damage included numerous smashed windows in the front entrance. |
| 2001 | The 2001 Ealing bombing | – | London, England | A car bomb containing of explosives in Ealing Broadway, West London, England, injuring seven people. Apart from the damage caused directly by the explosion, around £200,000 of further damage to property in the adjacent Ealing Broadway shopping centre was caused by flooding from a ruptured water main. |
| 2005 | The 7 July 2005 London bombings | 56 | London, England | Four suicide bombers detonated explosives in camping rucksacks on three underground trains and a double-decker bus, resulting in the deaths of 52 people. |
| 2005 | The 21 July 2005 London bombings | – | London, England | Four attempted bomb attacks disrupted part of London's public transport system two weeks after the 7 July 2005 London bombings causing 1 wounder. The 27-year-old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes is shot dead by mistake by police. The perpetrators of this attack are heavily condemned. |
| 2007 | The 2007 London car bombs | – | London, England | Two unexploded car bombs were discovered in London. The first device was found in a car parked near the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket. Two large gas canisters and a large number of nails were found in the car. The second device was left in a blue Mercedes-Benz saloon in nearby Cockspur Street, but was not discovered until after the car had been towed away for illegal parking. |
| 2007 | The Glasgow Airport attack | – | Glasgow Airport, Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland | A day after the failed car bomb attacks in London, an attack at Glasgow International Airport occurred. A flaming Jeep Cherokee was driven into the entrance of Main Terminal. Two men, one alight, fled the vehicle before being apprehended by a combination of police officers, airport security officers and witnesses. One of the men died in the following months due to injuries sustained in the attack. New barriers and security measures have been added to prevent a similar incident from taking place. |
| 2017 | The 2017 Manchester Arena bombing | 22 | Manchester, England | A terrorist attack took place at the Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017, where singer Ariana Grande was performing. |
| 2017 | The 2017 London Bridge attack | 8 | London, England | An Islamic terrorists attack on the evening of June 3, 2017, causing 8 deaths and 48 wounders; the three assailants Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba are shot dead. |
| 2017 | The 2017 Finsbury Park attack | 1 | London, England | A white pickup truck drives on worshipers leaving a mosque in North London, killing 1 and injuring 10. The perpetrator, Darren Osborne whose investigation shows that he acted out of racism, is sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 43 years with simultaneous terms for murder and attempted murder. |
| 2018 | The 2018 Westminster car incident | – | London, England | A terrorist attack on August 14, 2018 injuring three people in front of the British Parliament near Westminster by Salih Khater, the 29-year-old male British citizen, of Sudanese origin. Khater was due to stand trial on 4 February 2019, but in January 2019, Mr Justice Sweeney pushed the date back to 24 June 2019. The defendant entered not guilty pleas to all charges, but did not provide any further comments. Khater was remanded in custody. |
| 2019 | The 2019 London Bridge stabbing | 2 | London, England | A terrorist attack on November 29, 2019, killing two young people committed by Usman Khan; he has been convicted of terrorism. |
| 2020 | The 2020 Streatham stabbing | 1 | London, England | Sudesh Amman stabbed two people whilst being surveyed by specialist police before being shot and killed, resulting in one other civilian being injured from shattered glass. Sudesh Amman was released from prison two weeks prior to the attack. |
| 2020 | The 2020 Forbury Gardens stabbings | 3 | Reading, Berkshire, England | On 20 June 2020 shortly before 19:00 BST, a man with a knife attacked people socialising in Forbury Gardens, Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Three people died from their wounds, and three others were seriously injured. A 25-year-old Libyan man was arrested nearby shortly afterwards on suspicion of murder, and subsequently under the Terrorism Act 2000. |