The Harrods Bombing

THE HARRODS BOMBING

Not content with a conventional war in the Falklands and an impending nuclear world war, Thatcher was now declaring war on trade unions; using the power of government and the courts to cripple them legally and financially and then using the police to crush them physically. And just to round things off there was still the matter of the war in Northern Ireland.

“It's all very simple while you keep the war vocal,” as Crass had declared a few years earlier “But the bombs in Belfast are coming down your local. I want to know how much you can take cos you've taken it all, and that's just great.”

Rather than gaining them the freedom for their country that they sought or at least a place at the negotiating table, the IRA's war against the British State was only leading to being responded to in kind. Not that this specific war was one that Thatcher was willing to name as such.

Conventional war, nuclear war, State violence, State control; the capacity for the government to continue inflicting problems and misery seemed to hold no bounds as did the capacity for people to carry on regardless under whatever circumstances. These were problems for the IRA that they were continuously trying to break.

On December 10^th 1983, a bomb planted by the IRA went off at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, London, injuring four soldiers and a passerby. Two weeks later another bomb went off outside Harrods, in London, killing three police officers, three members of the public and injuring many more. An apology was quickly issued by the IRA over the loss of innocent lives in the explosion; that is, for the deaths of the three members of the public, not the police officers though of course, the apology counted for nothing.

It begged the question, however: If the Angry Brigade had managed to plant bombs without causing any loss of life then why couldn't the supposedly more professional IRA?

On visiting the injured in hospital, the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Graham Leonard spoke of the “intensity of evil” of those responsible for the bomb, adding “The real agony is that there are actually human beings who can do this.”

Which also begged another question: What might the Bishop think of Thatcher and co, and their willingness to see millions upon millions of dead and injured from an even bigger bomb?