Terrorist attacks in Dublin during the Troubles
Between 26 November 1972 and 20 January 1973, there were four paramilitary bombings in the centre of Dublin, Ireland. Three civilians were killed and 185 people were injured. No group ever claimed responsibility for the attacks and nobody was ever charged in connection with the bombings. The first bombing in Burgh Quay may have been carried out by former associates of the Littlejohn brothers who were Secret Intelligence Service provocateurs, in a successful attempt to provoke an Irish government clampdown against the Provisional IRA, while the other three bombings were possibly perpetrated by loyalist paramilitaries, specifically the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), with British military or intelligence assistance. The UVF claimed in 1993 to have carried out the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings which incurred the greatest loss of life in a single day throughout the 30-year conflict known as the Troubles.
On 1 December 1972, when two separate car bombs exploded in Eden Quay and Sackville Place, Dáil Éireann was debating a bill to amend the "Offences Against the State Act" which would enact stricter measures against the Provisional IRA and other paramilitary groups. As a result of the two bombings, which killed two men and wounded 131, the Dáil voted for the amendment, which introduced special emergency powers to combat the IRA. It is believed that the 26 November and 1 December bombings were executed to influence the outcome of the voting. Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron commissioned an official inquiry into the bombings. The findings were published in a report in November 2004.
Background.
The bombings in Dublin occurred at the end of what was the bloodiest year in the entire 30-year-old religious-political conflict known as the Troubles, which had erupted at the end of the 1960s. Following the Bloody Sunday incident in Derry on 30 January 1972 when the British Army's Parachute Regiment shot dead 14 unarmed Catholic civilians during an anti-internment demonstration, a torrent of anti-British sentiment was unleashed in Ireland and beyond. An angry crowd in Dublin attacked the British embassy and burnt it to the ground. The Official IRA responded with the 1972 Aldershot Bombing in England, at the headquarters of the Parachute Regiment. This attack killed seven civilians. In retaliation for the shootings in Derry, the Provisional IRA escalated its armed campaign with a series of bombings across Northern Ireland which led to a high number of civilian casualties.
Much of these bombs that detonated in Northern Ireland and the ingredients used to make them (mostly stolen from Irish construction sites provided to the IRA by local sympathisers) originated from the Republic of Ireland, where the IRA Southern Command (headquartered in Dublin) was located and tasked in recruiting and training volunteers and manufacturing weapons for operations in the North and to provide shelter for fleeing IRA members from British security forces who were not permitted to enter the country (see Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland). In December 1971, Stratton Mills, MP for Belfast North, said that "there is virtually a gelignite trail across the [Irish] border", comparing it with the famous Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War. Mills stated that:
[S]ome 60 percent of the gelignite used in Northern Ireland has come from Southern Ireland, and the security authorities believe that the figure might well be higher than that because of the difficulty of definite identification in all cases. In Northern Ireland steps are taken to control the use and distribution of gelignite. Certain steps have been taken recently in the South, but there is a great need for much tighter measures.
Four days after the Donegall Street bombing in central Belfast on 20 March which killed seven people, British Prime Minister Edward Heath announced the suspension of the 50-year-old Stormont parliament and the imposition of Direct Rule from London. This caused Ulster loyalists and unionists throughout Northern Ireland to feel profoundly angry, shocked, and betrayed; moreover, they considered it to have been another "sign of continuing Government weakness in the face of IRA violence". On 29 May, the Official IRA declared a ceasefire, this was followed on 27 June by the Provisional IRA also declaring a ceasefire which loyalists regarded with suspicion, fearing it would lead to the British Government doing a secret deal resulting in a united Ireland. Representatives of the IRA and British Government held unprecedented secret talks in England, but these proved unsuccessful and the Provisional IRA's ceasefire ended in early July after a confrontation with the British Army in Belfast.
When the IRA exploded 22 bombs across Belfast in what became known as Bloody Friday, many Ulster Protestants, after seeing the televised carnage of victims' remains being scraped off the street and poured into plastic bags, rushed to join paramilitary organisations such as the legal Ulster Defence Association (UDA) or the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The bombings also led the British Army to launch Operation Motorman, which saw the arrival of an addition 4,000 troops to assist in the recapture of the mostly IRA-controlled "no-go areas" in Belfast and Derry. The dismantling of these "no-go" areas, which had been set up by residents in certain nationalist/republican districts to prevent access by the security forces, effectively prohibited the IRA from enjoying the same operational freedom it had known prior to the implementation of Operation Motorman. This made the Republic of Ireland a safe haven for IRA members throughout the entire conflict, where they can safely and effectively continue to carry out operations in the UK from Southern Ireland.
The UVF was led by Gusty Spence, who was imprisoned since 1966 for a sectarian murder. In July 1972, his associates on the outside staged a fake kidnapping while Spence was on bail and he was at liberty for four months. During this period he organised the UVF into brigades, battalions, companies and platoons. These were all subordinate to the Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) based on the loyalist Shankill Road. He also managed to obtain an arsenal of sophisticated guns and ammunition after a raid on King's Park camp, an Ulster Defence Regiment/Territorial Army depot in Lurgan by an armed UVF gang. The UVF also stole twenty tons of ammonium nitrate from the Belfast Docks. During the spring and summer of 1972, the UDA set up barricades and no-go areas in Belfast and paraded through the city centre in a massive show of strength.
William Craig, leader of the Unionist Vanguard movement, addressed a meeting of right-wing MPs in Westminster who belonged to the Monday Club on 19 October during which he claimed he could mobilise 80,000 men who "are prepared to come out and shoot and kill". On 28 October a bomb was found in Dublin's busy Connolly Station and fire-bombs detonated inside four Dublin hotels. On 4 November Spence was recaptured in Belfast by the British Army.
In response to the IRA members using the Republic of Ireland as a safe haven, the Irish Government began its clampdown against them in that same year. On 19 November the Provisional IRA's Chief of Staff, Sean MacStiofain was arrested in Dublin and immediately went on a hunger and thirst strike. The same month, a controversial amendment to the "Offences Against the State Act", giving the Garda Síochána special powers to deal with the IRA and other subversives was brought before Dáil Éireann.
Keith and Kenneth Littlejohn.
On 12 October 1972, an armed gang executed what was at the time the biggest bank robbery in Irish history. The robbery was carried out at the Allied Irish Bank's Grafton Street branch and the gang made off with £67,000. Four days later, Garda officers raided the Drumcondra residence of two Englishmen, brothers Kenneth and Keith Littlejohn where they recovered £11,000 of the sum taken. The brothers were arrested in England on 19 October and were flown to Ireland in March 1973 following the issuing of an extradition warrant from Dublin. Prior to and during their trial, the brothers claimed to be MI6/Official IRA double-agents who were introduced to the British security forces by Pamela Dillon, Lady Onslow, the Anglo-Irish ex-wife of William Onslow, 6th Earl of Onslow. She had become acquainted with Keith Littlejohn through her work with the ex-Borstal organisation "Teamwork Associates" in London.
Keith Littlejohn had spent time in Borstal, whilst Kenneth had served a prison sentence from 1965 to 1968 for robbery. During an encounter with Lady Onslow, Keith told her that his brother Kenneth "had information about arms and sources of arms for the IRA which might be of interest to Her Majesty's Government. He would be prepared to make this information available only if he could be seen by a Minister whose face he could recognise from having seen him on television". She passed on Keith Littlejohn's words to her friend, Lord Carrington, the Secretary of State for Defence. A meeting took place between Kenneth Littlejohn and the Under Secretary of State for Defence, Geoffrey Johnson Smith, at her London flat on 22 November 1971. After Littlejohn had told Johnson Smith what he knew about the IRA, Johnson Smith then put him in "touch with the appropriate authorities".
The Littlejohns claimed they were ordered to infiltrate the Official IRA and after this was accomplished, they were instructed by the British Ministry of Defence to act as "agent provocateurs" by carrying out robberies and other acts of violence in the Republic of Ireland to provoke the Irish Government into taking a stronger stance against the IRA and other republican subversives. The Ministry of Defence issued a statement acknowledging to having met Kenneth Littlejohn once to discuss information he had in his possession regarding the IRA but denied that he had worked for the Ministry and denied British Government involvement in the Dublin bank robbery.
The Official IRA, while admitting to having been acquainted with the Littlejohns after the brothers arrived in Newry in 1972, denied the brothers had ever been members of the OIRA. The Littlejohns were found guilty of bank robbery on 3 August 1973 and sentenced to imprisonment; Kenneth received 20 years and Keith 15 years. The brothers escaped from Dublin's Mountjoy Prison in 1974. In 1975, Lady Onslow received minor injuries when she opened a letter bomb which failed to detonate properly.
The bombings.
26 November 1972, Burgh Quay.
The first of the four bombs exploded on Sunday 26 November 1972 at 1.25 a.m. outside the rear exit door of the Film Centre Cinema, O'Connell Bridge House during a late night showing of a film. The bomb went off in the laneway connecting Burgh Quay with Leinster Market injuring 40 people, some very badly, including facial, leg and serious bowel wounds. There were 156 patrons and three employees inside the cinema at the time of the blast, although were no fatalities. The force of the explosion hurled customers out of their seats and onto the floor. There was much panic as people, fearing a second bomb would explode in their midst, rushed to escape from the crowded cinema. Shops and buildings in the immediate vicinity received extensive damage.
The area was sealed off by the Garda and they launched an investigation; a ballistic officer determined that the explosion's epicentre had been on a doorstep outside an emergency door leading to the laneway. However, no trace of the bomb or explosives used were ever found at the scene. The Gardaí interviewed a number of witnesses who came forward alleging to have seen the bombers in the laneway prior to the explosion and although photofits of the suspects were drawn up, the bombers were never apprehended. The Garda Síochána believed the bombing was carried out by republican subversives, including former associates of the Littlejohn brothers.
The night following the bombing an eight-man IRA unit unsuccessfully tried to free MacStiofain, who had been taken to Dublin's Mater Hospital for treatment due to adverse effects of his hunger and thirst strike on his health. The ward in which he was kept was under heavy police guard. The armed IRA unit exchanged shots with two members of the Garda Special Branch; one detective, two civilians and one of the IRA gang suffered minor injuries from gunfire.
1 December 1972, Eden Quay and Sackville Place.
On Friday, 1 December 1972 at 19:58 a blue Hillman Avenger, registration number OGX 782 K, exploded at 29 Eden Quay close to Liberty Hall tower block. The blast blew the Avenger apart and what remained