On This Day PIRA

Going Home for Christmas George Arthur’s   wife was packing suitcases on the night of 17th December 1974. The couple were due to fly to Ghana where they were to spend three weeks visiting relatives over Christmas. As she was doing so news came through that her husband, a 34 year old telephonist, had been killed in a bomb attack on Bloomsbury telephone exchange on Tottenham Court Road. Other bombs exploded the same night at telephone exchanges in Chelsea and the West End. Mr Arthur worked night shifts. His inquest in April 1975 heard that staff had been evacuated when a duffle bag with a battery and wires was found. Seven minutes later it exploded. It was believed that Mr Arthur was on his way to the toilet at the time. Belfast Telegraph report on the London bombings (click to enlarge) Rodney Fenton   also had thoughts of getting home for Christmas when his life was suddenly cut short on 20th December 1973. The 22 year old bank clerk rented a room in...

It may surprise many readers of this blog but Republicans have been successful to a degree in maintaining the fiction that they weren’t sectarian. Look up sectarian / sectarianism in the index of a book about the PIRA and you will often find yourselves directed to pages dealing with Loyalist murderers.  Sectarianism within the PIRA campaign is surprisingly frequently overlooked or minimised. The PIRA liked to present an image to the world that it was better than the loyalist murder gangs which often went out to “ shoot a taig ”. Loyalists murderers simply couldn’t - as the PIRA did - target off duty members of the security forces. Hence the pool of “legitimate targets” for Republicans was much wider. They claimed they shot the shopkeeper, the milkman, lorry driver, the farmer, the bin man, etc   not because they were Protestants but because they were off duty members of the security forces. Nonetheless, there are plenty of examples when the PIRA terror campaig...