The Balcombe Street siege was an incident involving members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and London's Metropolitan Police lasting from 6 to 12 December 1975. The siege ended with the surrender of the four IRA members and the release of their two hostages. The events were televised and watched by millions. [1]
In 1974 and 1975, London was subjected to an intense 14-month campaign of gun and bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA. In one incident the Guinness Book of Records co-founder and conservative political activist Ross McWhirter was assassinated; he had offered a £50,000 reward to anyone willing to inform the security forces of IRA activity. [2]
The four members of what became known as the "Balcombe Street gang", Joe O'Connell, Edward Butler, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty, were part of a six-man IRA Active Service Unit (ASU) that also included Brendan Dowd and Liam Quinn. Quinn had recently shot dead police constable Stephen Tibble in London after fleeing from police officers. The flat he was seen fleeing from was discovered to be a bomb factory used by the unit. [3]
The Balcombe Street siege started after a chase through London, as the Metropolitan Police pursued Doherty, O'Connell, Butler and Duggan through the streets after they had fired gunshots through the window of Scott's restaurant in Mount Street, Mayfair. They had thrown a bomb through the restaurant window a few weeks before on 12 November 1975, killing John Batey and injuring 15 others. The Met's Bomb Squad had detected a pattern of behaviour in the ASU, determining that they had a habit of attacking again some of the sites they had previously attacked. In a scheme devised by a young detective sergeant, the Met flooded the streets of London with plainclothes officers on the lookout for the ASU, in what was known as Operation Combo. The four IRA men were spotted as they slowed to a halt outside Scott's and fired from their stolen car. [4] [5]
Inspector John Purnell and Sergeant Phil McVeigh, on duty as part of the dragnet operation, picked up the radio call from the team in Mount Street as the stolen Ford Cortina approached their position. With no means of transport readily available, the two unarmed officers flagged down a taxi cab and tailed the men for several miles through London, until the IRA men abandoned their vehicle. Purnell and McVeigh, unarmed, continued the pursuit on foot despite handgun fire from the gang. Other officers joined the chase, with the four IRA men running into a block of council flats in Balcombe Street, adjacent to Marylebone station, triggering the six-day standoff. [6] [ unreliable source? ] Purnell was awarded the George Medal for his bravery. [7] Several other police officers were also decorated. [8]
The four men went to 22b Balcombe Street in Marylebone, taking its two residents, middle-aged married couple John and Sheila Matthews, hostage in their front room. The men declared that they were members of the IRA and demanded a plane to fly both them and their hostages to Ireland. Scotland Yard refused, creating a six-day standoff between the men and the police. Peter Imbert, later Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was the chief police negotiator. [9] Max Vernon, who was later chief negotiator of the Iranian Embassy siege, was another of the police negotiators. [10]
The men surrendered after several days of intense negotiations between Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad officers, Detective Superintendent Peter Imbert and Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Nevill, and the unit's leader Joe O’Connell, who went by the name of "Tom". The other members of the gang were named "Mick" and "Paddy", thereby avoiding revealing to the negotiators precisely how many of them were in the living room of the flat. The resolution of the siege was a result of the combined psychological pressure exerted on the gang by Imbert and the deprivation tactics used on the four men. The officers also used carefully crafted misinformation, through the BBC Radio news—the police knew the gang had a radio—to further destabilise the gang into surrender. [6] A news broadcast stated that the Special Air Service were going to be sent in to storm the building and release the hostages. This seemed to deter the gang and they eventually gave themselves up to the police. [9]
The four were found guilty at their Old Bailey trial in 1977 of seven murders, conspiring to cause explosions, and falsely imprisoning John and Sheila Matthews during the siege. O’Connell, Butler and Duggan each received 12 life sentences, and Doherty received 11. Each of the men were later given a whole life tariff, the only IRA prisoners to receive this tariff. [2] [9] During the trial they instructed their lawyers to "draw attention to the fact that four totally innocent people were serving massive sentences" for a bombing in Woolwich and two in Guildford. [11] Despite telling the police that they were responsible, they were never charged with these offences and the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven remained in prison for 15 more years, until it was ruled that their convictions were unsafe. [11] [12]
After serving 23 years in English prisons, the four men were transferred to Portlaoise Prison, County Laois, Republic of Ireland, in early 1998. [9] They were presented by Gerry Adams to the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis as 'our Nelson Mandelas', [3] and were released in 1999 as part of the Good Friday Agreement. [2]
Alan Ross McWhirter was, with his twin brother, Norris, the cofounder of the 1955 Guinness Book of Records and a contributor to the television programme Record Breakers. He was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1975.
The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were the collective names of two groups people, mostly Irish, who were wrongly convicted in English courts in 1975 and 1976 for the Guildford pub bombings of 5 October 1974, and the Woolwich pub bombing of 7 November 1974. All the convictions were eventually quashed after long campaigns for justice, and the cases, along with those of the Birmingham Six, shattered public confidence in the integrity of the English criminal justice system.
The Guildford pub bombings occurred on 5 October 1974 when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated two 6-pound (2.7-kilogram) gelignite bombs at two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, England. The pubs were targeted because they were popular with British Army personnel stationed at Pirbright barracks. Four soldiers and one civilian were killed. Sixty-five people were wounded.
PC Stephen Andrew Tibble, was a police officer in London's Metropolitan Police Service. During a chase through West Kensington, Tibble was fatally shot by Liam Quinn, an American member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Hugh Aodh Doherty is a Scottish-born Irish republican, who was a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), known for his role in the Balcombe Street Siege, in London in December 1975.
Peter Michael Imbert, Baron Imbert, was Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service from 1987 to 1993, and prior to that appointment Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police from 1979 to 1985.
The Harrods bombing refers to the car bomb that exploded outside Harrods department store in central London, England, on Saturday 17 December 1983. Members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army planted the time bomb and sent a warning 37 minutes before it exploded, but the area was not evacuated. The blast killed three police officers and three civilians, injured 90 people, and caused much damage. The IRA Army Council said it had not authorised the attack and expressed regret for the civilian casualties. After the bombing, the IRA shifted its emphasis towards attacks on military targets in England.
William Joseph Quinn, known as Liam Quinn, is an American former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army who shot dead Stephen Tibble, an off-duty police officer, in London on 26 February 1975.
Paul "Dingus" Magee is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980. After serving a prison sentence in the Republic of Ireland, Magee fled to England where he was imprisoned after killing a policeman in 1992. He was repatriated to the Republic of Ireland as part of the Northern Ireland peace process before being released from prison in 1999, and subsequently avoided extradition back to Northern Ireland to serve his sentence for killing the member of the SAS.
Roger Philip Goad, was an explosives officer with London's Metropolitan Police Service who was posthumously awarded the George Cross for the heroism he displayed on 29 August 1975. He had previously been awarded the British Empire Medal in 1958 for gallantry whilst serving with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Cyprus, for repeated acts of deliberate courage in the disarming of bombs and booby traps set by terrorists.
Martin Joseph O'Connell, better known as Joe, is an Irish republican and a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is most noted for having been a member of the Balcombe Street gang.
Ernest Radcliffe Bond, OBE, QPM,, also called Commander X, was a British soldier, and later policeman famous for his service in the Metropolitan Police Service.
Scott's is a seafood restaurant at 20 Mount Street, Mayfair, London. Originating as "Scott's oyster rooms" in Haymarket in the 1850s or earlier, it would become "Scott's Oyster and Supper Rooms" on Coventry Street in 1891, and moved to its present location in Mount Street in 1967. Scott's was a favourite of Ian Fleming. In 1975 it was attacked twice by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
On Tuesday evening 18 November 1975 an Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit nicknamed the Balcombe Street Gang, without warning, threw a bomb into Walton's Restaurant in Walton Street, Knightsbridge, London, killing two people and injuring almost two dozen others.
The Balcombe Street Gang was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) active service unit (ASU) who carried out a bombing campaign in southern England in the mid-1970s. The majority of their attacks and attempted attacks took place in London and the rest in Surrey, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Between October 1974 and December 1975 they carried out approximately 40 bomb and gun attacks in and around London, sometimes attacking the same targets twice. The unit would sometimes carry out two or more attacks in one day; on 27 January 1975 they placed seven time bombs in London.
On 19 January 1975 the Provisional IRA's Balcombe Street Gang opened fire with automatic weapons on two hotels in London, England. Twelve people were injured by broken glass. The IRA carried out a similar attack a month before, and attacked one of the hotels again a few months after.
The Talbot Arms pub bombing took place on 30 November 1974, and was carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Eight people were injured in the attack, which involved the IRA throwing homemade bombs through the pub's window. Only one of the devices exploded; the other was taken as evidence and used to discover how the unit assembled its devices.
Chief Superintendent Maxwell Stamp Vernon was a British police officer and hostage negotiator. Vernon joined the Metropolitan Police after serving as a military policeman during his National Service. He was involved in the successful negotiations to end the 1975 Balcombe Street siege and afterwards served with the Metropolitan Police's fraud squad. In 1980, as a chief inspector, Vernon led the six-man negotiating team during the Iranian Embassy siege. He thought he was close to resolving the siege peacefully when a hostage, who Vernon thought was intentionally provoking his captors, was shot dead. This led to a Special Air Service (SAS) assault on the building which killed or captured the gunmen and freed all bar one of the hostages. Vernon continued to negotiate until the last moment as a distraction technique and was later commended for this by a member of the SAS team.
Harry Duggan is a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a representative of Sinn Féin in County Clare. He was part of an IRA unit based in England, of which Duggan and three others were labelled the "Balcombe Street Gang" by news media after a five-day siege in the eponymous London Street. He and his co-accused were gaoled for seven murders plus other charges.
Edward Butler is a former member of both the Official Irish Republican Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He was part of different IRA units based in Ireland and then England. Butler and three others were called the "Balcombe Street Gang" or the "Balcombe Street Four" by news media during a five-day siege in the street of that name near Marylebone station, London. He and his co-accused were gaoled for seven murders plus other charges.
