The Road to Balcombe Street: The IRA Reign of Terror in London

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They are in custody at Paddington Green Police Station after what has become known as the Balcombe Street siege. Not long after the press conference, on the 27th of November, Duggan and Doherty staked out McWhirter’s house in Enfield. When Mrs McWhirter arrived home they confronted her with two hand guns and demanded her keys. She ran past them and rang the house’s doorbell. When Ross opened the door, Duggan shot him in the abdomen and then at point-blank range in his head. Leaving him bleeding profusely on his doorstep they made their escape in Mrs McWhirter’s blue Ford Granada. Ross McWhirter died not long after he was admitted to hospital and Duggan later said:

Commentary No. 40: Irish Nationalist Terrorism Outside Ireland: Out-of-Theatre Operations 1972-1993". 28 October 2005. Archived from the original on 28 October 2005 . Retrieved 4 November 2021.They got their name after taking a couple hostage in Balcombe Street following a London street battle, and surrendering after a six-day siege. Cheers and applause broke out as relief replaced fear on the estate which police had evacuated and filled with officers.

Gordon Hamilton-Fairley DM FRCP, first professor of medical oncology, 1930-75. Killed by a terrorist bomb. It matters not how a man dies but how he lives. Imbert was created Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London in 1994, and Lord Lieutenant in 1998, an office he held until 2008. The Globe is a classic British pub located on Marylebone Road. The pub features a traditional interior with wooden furnishings and a cozy fireplace. The Balcombe Street gang, as they became known after the dramatic siege of a flat in Balcombe Street, London, in December 1975, was part of a specialist IRA unit which sometimes numbered as many as 20. It was described as "the most violent, ruthless and highly-trained unit ever sent to Britain by the Provisional IRA". Bob Fenton, one of the three flying squad officers who arrived in Rossmore Road in the Granada (known as the "yellow canary"), also has trouble reconciling the commissioner's recollections with his own. He remembers seeing Mr Purnell, an SPG vehicle and a private car stopped on the bridge, but no other vehicles.

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Police are also questioning them about a further 100 incidents which have taken place across the south east of Britain relating to the IRA. By now the IRA ASU were acting as if it was the Wild West. To many people it seemed that they were able to drive round bombing and brazenly shooting at ‘ruling class’ restaurants and hotels at will. The police, however, realised there were patterns to the bombing and the bombs were being activated in the same areas of London. Under the name Operation Combo it was decided that un-armed plain-clothes police should flood Chelsea and the West End looking out for anything unusual. Robert W. White - Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement p.108

Katz, Ian (30 March 2007). " 'Sir Ian Blair says they got out of the car and started firing at us ... They didn't fire at him!' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 25 July 2022. It was during the Balcombe Street siege that fingerprints from Ireland confirmed his identity. His father, who said he had not heard from his son for two years before the siege, described him as "a nice quiet boy at home who never gave us any trouble".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] See also [ edit ] The streets formed part of the Portman Estate. Their layout shows a social hierarchy of square, thoroughfares and side streets mirrored by a hierarchy in the design of houses, from the grand four storey buildings in Dorset Square to the rather less grand terraces and smaller houses in Balcombe Street and Gloucester Place and the significantly smaller scale of the three and two storey ‘third rate’ houses in the side streets and mews. Our memberships are contract-free which means you’ll only ever pay one month at a time giving you the freedom to start, pause and stop your fitness journey at any time. Top kit to keep you fit Wilson was asked by the Home Office to play down talk of it as a death list, saying it was a compilation of low-grade "intelligence" material found in the Milton Place flat. "We ask particularly that the contents of the list should not be divulged to any of those on it. The police will use their judgment whether any on the list need warning or protection. The list is supplied specifically in answer to the prime minister's request, and I would be glad if it could be treated as SECRET AND PERSONAL."

The members of the Balcombe Street Gang's ASU were Hugh Doherty, Joseph O'Connell, Eddie Butler and Harry Duggan (these four were captured at the Balcombe Street Siege). Liam Quinn (a US-born member) and Brendan Dowd were also active within the unit. Twenty three years earlier, on the 22nd October 1975, which incidentally (or perhaps not) was the very same day as the Guildford Four were wrongly convicted of an IRA pub-bombing, a man telephoned the large four-storey Holland Park home of the Conservative MP Hugh Fraser and his wife, the writer Antonia. Their maid answered the phone and was asked what time the MP usually left home in the morning. She answered, innocently, that it was usually around nine. Later that night someone planted a bomb underneath one of the wheels of Fraser’s Jaguar XJ6 which always parked outside his house on Campden Hill Square. The bombings were described as a "reign of terror" perpetrated by the IRA in the two years prior to 1975. About 50 cars arrived at my doorstep. We all rushed to the window and I have never seen so many guns in my life. We saw the policemen with a car which was riddled with bullets. The gunmen later broke off negotiations by throwing the phone out of the flat window and police had to resume talks with a loud hailer. The first sign of weakness was when the terrorists asked to restore the phone link.Two other police vehicles are known to have been involved in the shoot-out that ensued: one was a van carrying members of the special patrol group who exchanged fire with the terrorists after attempting to cut them off in Rossmore Road; the other was an unmarked yellow Ford Granada carrying a driver and three unarmed flying squad detectives led by Detective Inspector Henry Dowswell. Chancellor, Alexander (6 April 2007). "We all rewrite history to make our roles in it more interesting". The Guardian . Retrieved 19 July 2011. (Note: article title refers to another individual, not Purnell)