The Abercorn Restaurant bombing was a bomb attack that took place in a crowded city centre restaurant and bar in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

on 4 March 1972. The bomb explosion claimed the lives of two young women and injured over 130 people. Many of the injuries were severe and included the loss of limbs and eyes. The

Provisional IRA The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, fa ...

was blamed, although no organisation ever claimed responsibility and nobody was ever charged in connection with the bombing. According to Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist who has written extensively about the IRA, republican sources have unofficially confirmed the group's involvement.

The bombing

Telephone warning

The Abercorn was on 7-11 Castle Lane in central Belfast and housed a ground-floor restaurant and upstairs bar. It was owned by 45-year-old Bill O'Hara, a Catholic businessman."Troops hold 16 in terror hunt". ''The Age'', 7 March 1972. On Saturday 4 March 1972 it was packed with late afternoon shoppers when an anonymous caller issued a bomb warning to

999 999 or triple nine most often refers to: * 999 (emergency telephone number), a telephone number for the emergency services in several countries * 999 (number), an integer * AD 999, a year * 999 BC, a year Books * ''999'' (anthology) or ''999: T ...

at 4.28 pm. The caller did not give a precise location, but advised that a bomb would go off in Castle Lane in five minutes' time. The street, located in the busy Cornmarket area, milled with crowds of people shopping and browsing as was typical on a Saturday in Belfast.

Explosion

Two minutes later, at 4.30 PM, a handbag containing a five-pound

gelignite Gelignite (), also known as blasting gelatin or simply "jelly", is an explosive material consisting of collodion-cotton (a type of nitrocellulose or guncotton) dissolved in either nitroglycerine or nitroglycol and mixed with wood pulp and salt ...

bomb exploded under a table inside the ground-floor restaurant. Two young Catholic friends were killed outright: Anne Owens (22), who was employed at the Electricity Board, and Janet Bereen (21), a hospital radiographer. The young women had been out shopping together and had stopped at the Abercorn to have coffee; they were seated at the table nearest the bomb and took the full force of the blast."Innocents maimed and killed in city centre explosion". ''Irish News'' by Marie Louise McCrory
22 July 2005; retrieved 21 December 2011.Moloney, Ed (2010). ''Voices From the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland''. p. 102 Owens had survived a previous bombing at her workplace. More than 130 were injured in the explosion, which overturned tables and chairs, and had brought the ceiling crashing down onto the ground floor restaurant. Many people were severely maimed. Some had their limbs blown off; others suffered terrible head and facial injuries, burns, deep cuts and perforated eardrums. Three had eyes destroyed by shards of flying glass. Two sisters, Jennifer and Rosaleen McNern (one of whom was due to be married), were both horrifically mutilated; Jennifer lost both legs, and Rosaleen (the bride-to-be) lost her legs, her right arm and one of her eyes. Witnesses described a scene of panic and chaos as the bloodied survivors stumbled through the smoke, broken glass, blood, and rubble, crawling over one another to get away, whilst firemen attempted to bring out the injured, many of whom lay with their bodies mangled, unable to move. An RUC officer was one of the first people to arrive on the scene. He described the carnage that greeted him as something he would never forget. "All you could hear was the moaning and squealing and the people with limbs torn from their bodies"."Bulldozers move in on Abercorn". ''Belfast Telegraph''. Joe Oliver. 23 September 2007. A woman who had been inside the restaurant before the blast later told an inquest that she had seen two young teenaged girls walk out of the Abercorn leaving a handbag behind shortly before the explosion. This same woman had been waiting at a bus stop when the bomb went off. A detective-sergeant established that the explosion's epicentre was to the right of the table where the two girls had been sitting. The bomb had reportedly been left behind inside a handbag.

Responsibility

Nobody was ever charged in connection with the bombing and no paramilitary organisation ever claimed responsibility for it. Both wings of the IRA denied involvement and condemned the bombing. However, the RUC and British Military Intelligence blamed the

First Battalion Belfast BrigadeMitchell, Thomas G. (2000). ''Settler versus native:ethnic conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland and South Africa''. p. 56 and it is now widely accepted that it was responsible.CAIN: Glossary of Terms on Northern Ireland Conflict
Abercorn Restaurant There was a public backlash against the organisation in

Irish nationalist Irish nationalism is a nationalist political movement which, in its broadest sense, asserts that the people of Ireland should govern Ireland as a sovereign state. Since the mid-19th century, Irish nationalism has largely taken the form of c ...

and Catholic areas such as West Belfast. The two dead women had both been Catholic, along with many of the injured including the McNern sisters, and the Abercorn Bar was a popular venue with many young Catholics and nationalists. Provisional IRA Chief of Staff

Seán Mac Stíofáin Seán Mac Stíofáin (born John Edward Drayton Stephenson; 17 February 1928 – 18 May 2001) was an English-born chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, a position he held between 1969 and 1972. Childhood Although he used the Gaelicised ver ...

claimed the bombing was the work of loyalist paramilitaries.Taylor, Peter (1997). ''Provos: The IRA and Sein Fein''. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. p. 131 According to Mac Stíofáin, the Woodvale Defence Association (WDA) had made threats against the Abercorn in its weekly newsletter after the Abercorn management refused to play the British national anthem. The WDA denied the allegations, adding that one of its members had a friend who been badly injured in the blast.MacStíofáin, Seán (1975). ''Revolutionary in Ireland''. G. Cremonesi. p. 238 The day after the bombing, a leaflet allegedly circulated by the loyalist Ulster Vanguard declared: "We make no apologies for Abercorn. No apologies were made for

Aldershot Aldershot () is a town in Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme northeast corner of the county, southwest of London. The area is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Alder ...

..These premises were being used extensively by Southern Irish shoppers for the transmission of information vital to the terrorist campaign...". Vanguard leader Rev Martin Smyth dismissed the statement as fake. According to Ed Moloney in his book ''Voices from the Grave'', IRA sources have since confirmed, albeit unofficially, that the Provisional IRA was responsible. Moloney suggested that, based on eyewitness accounts, two teenaged IRA girls were probably the bombers. Unnamed republican sources suggested that the Abercorn was targeted because the upstairs bar was frequented by off-duty

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

soldiers."Police revisit Abercorn bomb outrage"
''The People'' (London, England). Joe Oliver. 19 June 2005; retrieved 21 December 2011.

Aftermath

The detonation of a bomb in a city centre restaurant on a Saturday afternoon packed with shoppers, and the severity of the injuries—inflicted on mostly women and children—ensured that the attack caused much revulsion and left a lasting impression on the people of Belfast. It was condemned by both unionist and Irish nationalist politicians and also by church leaders. Ian Paisley called on the government "to mobilise and arm every able-bodied volunteer to meet the enemy". The extent of the injuries the blast had inflicted resulted in the Royal Victoria Hospital implementing a 'disaster plan' for the first time. The sculptor F.E. McWilliam produced a series of bronzes (1972–73) known as ''Women of Belfast'' in response to the Abercorn bombing. Unrelated to the bombing, the Abercorn featured in a sectarian attack in July 1972, when Michael McGuigan, a Catholic working in the bar, was abducted by loyalist paramilitaries, shot and left for dead, but survived. He had been dating a Protestant waitress who also worked in the Abercorn, which is why the loyalist group targeted him.NORTHERN IRELAND: Indiscriminate Terror

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

, 28 August 1972 The Abercorn was demolished in 2007.

References