IRA terrorists aimed to bomb the Palace
Wednesday October 28 2009
IRA terrorists behind a two-year bombing campaign in the 1970s compiled lists of hundreds of possible targets, including MPs, soldiers and Buckingham Palace, newly released files revealed yesterday.
Police found a huge number of names and addresses when they raided a north London flat used as an IRA bomb factory after the Balcombe Street siege of December 1975.
A list of the potential targets was prepared for then-prime minister Harold Wilson. It included high-profile visitor attractions in the heart of the English capital such as the British Museum, Madame Tussauds, the National Gallery, the Imperial War Museum and the Tate Gallery.
Also listed were the Queen's Gallery in Buckingham Palace, University College, London, the Stock Exchange and Brixton and Wormwood Scrubs prisons.
Detectives found evidence that the terrorists were also considering less well-known targets, including power stations, aerodromes, shooting ranges, water pumping stations and sewage works. The previously secret list, made public by the National Archives, includes the dates and venues of specific functions, among them events held by the British Law Society, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and the Combined Cadet Defence Corps.
The list was prepared by the Special Branch based on items found in a flat occupied by the terrorists in north London.
The original document is 86 pages long, but dozens of pages including the names of individuals have not been released.
Among the excluded sections are 23 pages listing "MPs, Lords and other civilian personnel", nine pages listing police officers and 35 pages listing named military personnel.
In a covering letter to the document, Bill Innes, then-private secretary at the Home Office, stressed that it was not a "death list".
The IRA members involved -- Martin O'Connell, Edward Butler, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty -- carried out a wave of bombings and murders in 1974-75. They were captured by police in 1975 after a six-day siege and jailed for life in 1977 but freed in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.
- Sam Marsden
Irish Independent
