A pub bombing or a public house bombing is an attack on a pub or public house using explosives and other bombing making material like nails, bolts, screws and similar objects which can cause horrific injuries when the bomb detonates. The Provisional IRA's Balcombe Street Gang used bolts and screws in many of their bomb attacks in the mid-1970s. Neo-nazi David Copeland used nails in his bombs.
There are several ways of delivering the bomb to its intended target. Some of these methods include, the bombers hide a time bomb in something like a bag or holdall, walk into a pub and blend in with the crowd and draw as little attention to themselves as possible and will place the bomb in an unnoticeable spot, the bombers will usually leave at least 10 minutes before the bomb detonates so they are safe away from the blast and can give themselves time to get away. If the intention was causing harm to people then the bomb is usually laden with shrapnel to cause maximum casualties, if the intention is just to cause destruction then the bombers will usually leave between 45 minutes–1 hour before the bomb detonates so they can give the police a warning so that the building has enough time to be evacuated.
Early Loyalist bombs were quite crude and usually they would involve just lighting a fuse on a bomb, and either opening the door of a pub and simply throwing the bomb in and running away, or leaving the bomb at the front door, or sometimes the side of the building, then light the fuse and run away. Or by building a fragmentation grenade which is small but heavy enough to throw through a public house window, this method was usually favoured by the Balcombe Street Gang who carried out several pub bombings in England in the mid-1970s.
The vast majority of pub bombings were carried out during Northern Ireland's "Troubles" conflict. The attacks were carried out by Irish republican and Ulster loyalist paramilitary groups, such as the Republican Provisional IRA (PIRA), Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and the Loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force UVF and Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). There were some pub bombings carried out by other European urban guerrilla movements around the same period.
One of the first pub bombings of the Troubles in Northern Ireland was the PIRA bombing of the Bluebell Bar in the Sandy Row area of Belfast a staunchly loyalist, Protestant area of Belfast. Almost 30 people were injured in this bombing which occurred on the 20 September 1971.[1] A few weeks later the Loyalists carried out their first pub bombing when the UVF bombed what they believed to be a Republican owned pub called the Fiddler's House Bar on the 9 October 1971, to were hoping to hurt Catholics but instead killed a middle aged Protestant women & injured several others.[2]
The worst pub bombing in Northern Ireland happened early on in the conflict. The McGurk's Bar bombing which was carried out by the UVF claimed the lives of 15 civilians and 17 others were badly injured.[3] At the time it was the highest death toll from any attack in the North, until the PIRA's Warrenpoint ambush which killed 18 people in August 1979.
The worst pub bombing in the UK was the Birmingham pub bombings of the 21 November 1974. 21 people were killed and 182 others were injured many of the seriously. It was the PIRA's worst attack of the conflict in terms of civilian deaths and it was the highest death toll from a pub bombing during the conflict.[4]
The worst pub bombing attack in the Republic of Ireland during the conflict was the bombing at Kay's Tavern which occurred in Dundalk in County Louth. Two people were killed in this attack and 20 more injured. The Red Hand Commando (RHC) a UVF link group claimed they carried out the attack, it is believed the UVF linked group carried out the attack.[5]
During the 1970s, loyalists stepped up their bombing campaign against pubs and it was said they were helped allegedly by the security forces, in an alliance of UVF, UDR, UDA, RUC, RUC Special Branch, RUC Special Patrol Group and a small number of British soldiers. Between 1973 and 1977 they bombed a long list of pubs and other places.
Journalist Anne Cadwallader described some of the attacks in the 1974–75 period as being "the height of their campaign" which also included not just bomb attacks but shootings as well, known as "spray jobs" in Northern Ireland. The group these people belonged to was the infamous Glenanne gang.
The reason pub bombings were so common during the Troubles was because pubs were a regular place for people to gather socially in Ireland and Britain and they were easy targets to injure or kill a large number of people in one go. In other European countries a cafe or nightclub would have been more of a target for guerrillas rather than a public house.
| Year | Event | Location | Perpetrator(s) | Deaths | Injuries | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 | Red Lion Pub bombing | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Provisional IRA | 3 | 30 | Part of IRA campaign |
| 1971 | McGurk's Bar bombing | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 15 | 17 | Part of UVF campaign |
| 1972 | Benny's Bar bombing | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Ulster Freedom Fighters | 2 | 12 | Part of UFF/UDA campaign |
| 1972 | Capitol Bar in Belfast bombing | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Ulster Freedom Fighters | 1 | 12 | Part of UFF campaign.[7] |
| 1972 | Hole In The Wall pub attack | County Donegal, Republic of Ireland | Ulster Freedom Fighters | 0 | 0 | Part of UFF/UDA campaign. UDA members ordered everybody out of the pub & then badly damaged it with a grenade |
| 1973 | Stage Door public house bomb | London, England | Provisional IRA | 0 | 1 | Part of IRA England campaign |
| 1973 | North Star public house bomb | London, England | Provisional IRA | 0 | 6 | Part of IRA England campaign |
| 1973 | Cloughfin car bomb | County Donegal, Republic of Ireland | Ulster Freedom Fighters | 1 | 0 | Part of UFF/UDA campaign. A UFF member died when the bomb he was priming exploded prematurely outside Kirk's Bar in Cloughfin, Donegal.[8] |
| 1974 | Rose & Crown Bar bombing | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 6 | 18 | Part of UVF campaign |
| 1974 | Guildford pub bombings | Surrey, England | Provisional IRA | 5 | 65 | Part of IRA England campaign. First attack carried out by the IRA's Balcombe Street Gang between October 1974 - December 1975 |
| 1974 | Woolwich pub bombing | London, England | Provisional IRA | 2 | 40 | Part of IRA England campaign |
| 1974 | Talbot Arms pub bombing | London, England | Provisional IRA | 0 | 8 | Part of IRA England campaign |
| 1974 | Birmingham pub bombings | Birmingham, England | Provisional IRA | 21 | 182 | Part of IRA England campaign |
| 1975 | Mountainview Tavern bombing 1975 | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Provisional IRA | 5 | 50 - 60 | Part of IRA campaign |
| 1975 | 1975 Conway's Bar attack | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 2 | 15 | Part of UVF campaign |
| 1975 | Bayardo Bar attack | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Provisional IRA | 5 | 50 - 60 | Part of IRA campaign |
| 1975 | Strand Bar bombing | Belfast, Northern Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 6 | 50 | Part of UVF campaign |
| 1975 | Caterham Arms pub bombing | Surrey, England | Provisional IRA | 0 | 33 | Part of IRA England campaign |
| 1975 | Hare & Hounds pub bombing | Kent, England | Provisional IRA | 0 | 2 | Part of IRA England campaign[9] |
| 1975 | Biddy Mulligan's pub bombing | London, England | Ulster Freedom Fighters | 0 | 5 | Part of UDA/UFF campaign |
| 1975 | Donnelly's Bar and Kay's Tavern attacks | Dundalk, Republic of Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 2 | 21 | Part of UVF campaign (1st part of double attack) |
| 1975 | 1975 Central Bar bombing | County Down, Northern Ireland | Irish National Liberation Army INLA | 3 | 30 | Carried out by INLA members using the covername "People's Republican Army" |
| 1976 | 1976 Step Inn pub bombing | County Armagh, Northern Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 2 | 20 | Part of UVF campaign. One of a number attacks carried out by the Glenanne Gang around the Irish border between 1972 - 1977 |
| 1976 | Hillcrest Bar bombing | County Tyrone, Northern Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 4 | 50 | Part of UVF campaign |
| 1976 | Castleblayney bombing | County Monaghan, Ireland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 1 | 17 | A car bomb exploded outside the Three Star Inn pub, Part UVF campaign |
| 1979 | Glasgow pub bombings | Glasgow, Scotland | Ulster Volunteer Force | 0 | 8 | Part of UVF campaign |
| 1982 | Droppin Well bombing | Ballykelly, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland | Irish National Liberation Army INLA | 17 | 30 | Bombing against British soldiers |
| 1982 | Pub Saint-Germain bombing | Paris, France | The Orly Group | 0 | 2 | Campaign by ASALA to "compel the Turkish Government to acknowledge publicly its responsibility for the Armenian Genocide in 1915, pay reparations, and cede territory for an Armenian homeland"[10] |
| 1992 | Sussex Arms pub bombing | London, England | Provisional IRA | 1 | 7 | Part of IRA England campaign |
| 1999 | Admiral Duncan (pub) nail bombing | Soho, London, England | Neo-Nazi David Copeland | 3 | 70 | Neo-Nazi terrorist hate campaign, many people injured badly from shrapnel & nails, some lost limbs. |
| 2003 | Mike's Place suicide bombing | Tel Aviv, Israel | Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades affiliated British citizens | 3 | 50 | Part of Second Intifada |
Another attack unique to The Troubles in Ireland was paramilitaries shooting customers inside public houses. This tactic was mainly used by the Loyalist paramilitaries during the later stages of the conflict but sometimes Republicans carried them out as well. Usually the shooting would include a 3–4 member active service unit, one member acting as a getaway driver, one as a lookout and two as shooters, usually one of the shooters would use a machine gun or automatic rifle to spray the pub with gunfire, and the other shooter would use a smaller gun like a pistol or revolver to shoot any customer who tried to attack or stop the main shooter.Some instances of pub shootings include: