Bloody Friday is the name given to the bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 21 July 1972, during the Troubles. At least twenty bombs exploded in the space of eighty minutes, most within a half-hour period. Most of them were car bombs and most targeted infrastructure, especially the transport network. Nine people were killed: five civilians, two British soldiers, a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) reservist, and an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, while 130 were injured. The IRA said it sent telephoned warnings at least thirty minutes before each explosion and said that the security forces wilfully ignored some of the warnings for their own ends. The security forces said that was not the case and said they were overstretched by the sheer number of bombs and bomb warnings, some of which were hoaxes.

The bombings were partly a response to the breakdown of talks between the IRA and the UK government. Since the beginning of its campaign in 1970, the IRA had carried out a bombing campaign against civilian, economic, military and political targets in Northern Ireland and less often elsewhere. It carried out 1,300 bombings in 1972. However, Bloody Friday was a major setback for the IRA as there was a backlash against the organisation. Immediately after the bombings, the security forces carried out raids on the homes of republicans. Ten days later, the British Army launched Operation Motorman, in which it re-took the no-go areas controlled by Republicans. Loyalist paramilitaries also reacted to the bombings by carrying out revenge attacks on Catholic civilians.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the bombings, the IRA formally apologised to the families of all the civilians it had killed and injured.

Background

In late June and early July 1972, a British government delegation led by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw held secret talks with the Provisional IRA leadership. As part of the talks, the IRA agreed to a temporary ceasefire beginning on 26 June. The IRA leaders sought a peace settlement that included a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland by 1975 and the release of republican prisoners. However, the British refused and the talks broke down. The ceasefire came to an end on 9 July.

"Bloody Friday" was the IRA's response to the breakdown of the talks. According to the IRA's Chief of Staff, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the main goal of the bombing operation was to wreak financial harm. It was a "message to the British government that the IRA could and would make a commercial desert of the city unless its demands were met". The attack was carried out by the IRA's Belfast Brigade and the main organiser was Brendan Hughes, the brigade's Officer Commanding. According to The Guardian: "for much of the afternoon, Belfast was reduced to near total chaos and panic. Thousands streamed out of the stricken city […] and huge traffic jams built up. All bus services were cancelled, and on some roads, hitchhikers frantically trying to get away lined the pavements".

Nine people were killed and a further 130 injured, All of the deaths were caused by two of the bombs: at Oxford Street bus depot, and at Cavehill Road. The Oxford Street bomb killed two British soldiers and four Ulsterbus employees. One of these employees was a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) reservist; one was an Ulster loyalist paramilitary; and the other two were civilians. The Cavehill Road bomb killed three civilians.

Timeline

The accounts of the events that appeared in the first editions of local and national newspapers were, naturally enough, somewhat confused about the details of the events of the day. The timetable is approximate and given in BST (GMT+1). The details are based on a number of accounts.

~2:10 pm (Smithfield bus station): A car bomb exploded in an enclosed yard at Smithfield bus station, destroying many buses and causing extensive damage to the surrounding area. The substation was badly damaged but there were no injuries. He had finished his bus route, the 2.20pm from Ballygowan, minutes before the blast. As he was paying in his cash takings from his bus journey, he was the only one of those killed who was inside the station when the bomb exploded. The other five fatalities were in close proximity to the bomb car. Billy Irvine was a member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a loyalist paramilitary group. Some of the victims' bodies were torn to pieces by the blast, which led authorities to give an initial estimate of eleven deaths. but those in the area had not received the warning and the area had not been evacuated. Two women and a boy died in this blast. Margaret O'Hare (37), a Catholic mother of seven children, died in her car. Her 11-year-old daughter was with her in the car and was badly injured. Catholic Brigid Murray (65) and Protestant teenager Stephen Parker (14) were also killed. Many others were seriously injured. Parker had spotted the bomb shortly before it exploded and was attempting to warn people when he was killed. His father, the Reverend Joseph Parker, was only able to identify his son's body at the mortuary by the box of trick matches in his pocket and the shirt and Scout belt he had been wearing. Some sources give the time of this bombing as 3:20 pm. Another IRA bomb derailed ten wagons of a goods train near Portadown. There were three other large car bombs that exploded in Derry, however unlike in Belfast the Derry bombings did not cause a single injury.

Warnings

The IRA's Belfast Brigade claimed responsibility for the bombings and said that it had given warnings to the security forces before the bombs exploded. It said that the Public Protection Agency, the Samaritans and the press "were informed of bomb positions at least 30 minutes to one hour before each explosion". Mac Stíofáin said that "It required only one man with a loudhailer to clear each target area in no time" and alleged that the warnings for the two bombs that claimed lives were deliberately ignored by the British for "strategic policy reasons". The RUC and British Army only effectively cleared a small number of areas before the bombs went off. Furthermore, because of the large number of bomb threats in the confined area of Belfast city centre, people evacuated from the site of one bomb were mistakenly moved into the vicinity of other bombs.

Immediate aftermath

After the bombings there was a two-hour emergency meeting at Stormont Castle. It was attended by William Whitelaw, the British government's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; Peter Carrington, Secretary of State for Defence; Harry Tuzo, the British Army's commander in Northern Ireland; David Corbett, the acting chief of the RUC; and other advisers. and five other people were wounded. The British Army claim to have hit at least three gunmen. The raids continued over the next three days. More than 100 people were arrested, weapons were seized in Belfast and Portadown, and barricades were demolished in Belfast and Armagh.

Loyalist paramilitaries also reacted to the bombings. On the Friday night, members of the UDA took to the streets in Protestant areas and began carrying out patrols and setting up checkpoints.

Speaking in the House of Commons on 24 July, William Whitelaw called the bombings "appallingly bloodthirsty". He also drew attention to the Catholic victims, and mentioned the revulsion in the United States, Republic of Ireland, and elsewhere. Leader of the Opposition Harold Wilson described the events as "a shocking crime against an already innocent population". The Irish Times wrote, "The chief injury is not to the British Army, to the Establishment or to big business but to the plain people of Belfast and Ireland. Anyone who supports violence from any side after yesterday's events is sick with the same affliction as those who did the deed". Television images of firefighters shovelling body parts into plastic bags at the Oxford Street bus station were the most shocking of the day.

Twenty-five years later, a police officer who had been at Oxford Street bus station described to journalist Peter Taylor the scene he came upon in the wake of the bombing:

<blockquote>The first thing that caught my eye was a torso of a human being lying in the middle of the street. It was recognisable as a torso because the clothes had been blown off and you could actually see parts of the human anatomy. One of the victims was a soldier I knew personally. He'd had his arms and legs blown off and some of his body had been blown through the railings. One of the most horrendous memories for me was seeing a head stuck to the wall. A couple of days later, we found vertebrae and a rib cage on the roof of a nearby building. The reason we found it was because the seagulls were diving onto it. I've tried to put it at the back of my mind for twenty-five years.</blockquote>

In The Longest War, author Kevin Kelley wrote that the IRA "had done irreparable damage to their cause – in Britain, abroad, and in their own communities. They had handed Britain a perfect propaganda opportunity – Bloody Friday could not be equated with Bloody Sunday. Nearly everyone was sickened by the slaughter".</blockquote>

The attack alienated many Irish Americans who were previously sympathetic to the IRA following the Bloody Sunday massacre by British troops six months earlier. Donations to NORAID (an Irish American organization dedicated to donating money to families of IRA prisoners, but was routinely accused by opponents of using it to purchase weapons for the IRA) dropped sharply as a result. Jim Williard wrote an article for The Christian Science Monitor on 13 July 1973, stating:

<blockquote>[T]he battle cry of "Unite Ireland" once rallied Irish Americans throughout New England – but not anymore. Irrational murders in Northern Ireland have confused and repulsed Irish Americans. . . . In Boston, tattered "Free Ireland" posters weather in the changed Irish-American climate. Political spirit rarely stirs in Cambridge, once boiling over with anti-British outrage. Extremist fund raisers lack an audience. IRA Chief of Staff, Seán Mac Stíofáin, said the civilian casualties "compromised the intended effect" of the bombings.</blockquote>

In July 2002, the Provisional IRA issued a statement of apology to An Phoblacht, which read: