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| 1976 Olympia bombing | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Troubles | |
| Location | West Kensington, London, United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 51°29′47″N 0°12′35″W / 51.49639°N 0.20972°W |
| Date | 27 March 1976 (UTC) |
Attack type | Bomb |
| Deaths | 1 |
| Injured | 85 |
| Perpetrator | Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) |
The 1976 Olympia bombing was a bomb attack on 27 March 1976 carried out by the Provisional IRA at the Olympia exhibition centre in west London.[1][2] At 4:40pm,[3] a 2 lb (0.91 kg) bomb exploded in a litter bin at the top of an escalator inside the centre, which at the time was crowded with over 15,000 people attending the Daily Mail's Ideal Home Exhibition.[4] 85 people were injured, including 8 children,[5] and several people lost limbs.[6] One casualty, 79-year-old Rachel Hyams, died from her injuries 21 days later.[7][8] According to Scotland Yard, eleven of the victims were Irish.[4]
Police said they received no coded warning from the IRA, but the Sunday Mirror in Manchester said it received a call from the Provisional IRA's “Irish Brigade” claiming responsibility, as did the BBC.[9][4] The caller reportedly stated, "This is a warning to the British Government to take troops out of Northern Ireland, and more than bombs are on the way if this demand is not met".[10] An unconfirmed report suggested that a man in his twenties placed a packaged in the litter bin just prior to the explosion.[3]
A subsequent report on BBC's Nationwide stated that the bombing resulted in a change in security practices at the Olympia exhibition centre and may have involved a type of "explosive hardware" not previously used by the IRA in Britain.[6]
Due to the outrage caused, the IRA temporarily halted its bombing campaign in Britain.[citation needed] Writing in 1986, the academic Yonah Alexander suggested that the Olympia bombing contributed to Muammar Gaddafi, at least temporarily, "reconsider[ing] his support for the IRA".[11] In the subsequent period, IRA activity in Britain "dropped off significantly".[12]
- ^ "85 Hurt in London Blast". Democrat and Chronicle. Rochester, New York. 28 March 1976. p. 4. Retrieved 16 May 2018 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ McGladdery, Gary (2006). The Provisional IRA in England: The Bombing Campaign, 1973-1997. Irish Academic Press. pp. 110, 242. ISBN 9780716533733.
- ^ a b "Four People Maimed in London Blast". Sunday Independent. 28 March 1976.
- ^ a b c Punch, Mary (29 March 1976). "Eleven Irish Among Show Bomb Victims". Irish Independent.
- ^ "Bomb Injures Eleven Irish". Cork Examiner. 29 March 1976.
- ^ a b Stapleton, John (21 July 2011). "Bombing of the 1976 Ideal Home Exhibition, 02/04/1976, Nationwide - BBC One". BBC. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
- ^ Wharton, Ken (19 July 2013). Wasted Years, Wasted Lives Volume 1: The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77. Helion and Company. ISBN 9781909384552.
- ^ McKittrick, David (1999). Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Mainstream. ISBN 9781840185041.
- ^ "London Bomb Explosion Injures 80 at Exhibition Hall". The New York Times. 28 March 1976. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
- ^ Hennigan, Aidan (29 March 1976). "Blast Injured Eleven Irish". The Irish Press.
- ^ Alexander, Yonah (1986). The 1986 Annual on Terrorism. Martinus Nijhoff. p. 251. ISBN 9789024736089.
The bombs planted in London in that year, in Oxford Street, the Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia and Oxford Circus underground station seemed for a time at least to have caused the Libyan leader [Qadhafi] to reconsider his support for the IRA
- ^ Alexander, Yonah, ed. (2002). Combating Terrorism: Strategies of Ten Countries. University of Michigan Press. p. 204. ISBN 9780472098248.
[IRA] terrorism in Great Britain dropped off significantly in 1976 [..] the bulk of the damage resulted from a single bomb at the Olympia Ideal Home Exhibition [..] which injured some eighty people. From 1977 onward, Irish terrorism within Great Britain [..] slowed significantly