Author: Andy Oppenheimer
ISBN No: 978 0 7165 289
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 387
Publisher: Irish Academic Press
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
If you were ever on the receiving end of an IRA bomb, or feared that you might be, this new book by AR Oppenheimer can tell you what the bomb was, and why it was sent.
First, it is best to make plain that the ‘ingenuity’ part of the title does not mean that the author has sympathy or admiration for the IRA’s terror campaign. While in a preface Oppenheimer does call the IRA ‘the most experienced and skilled insurgency group the world has ever seen’, he adds that it was (unnamed) ordnance disposal officers who described the IRA’s devices as ingenious. Oppenheimer was also sensitive to the timing of publication; ‘the time was not right until the Good Friday Agreement had been signed’, in other words when the bombing was over.
The book stresses the number of bombs, the decades of development, and the innovations. “By the time the IRA were deploying 1000-plus bombs a yaer in Northern Ireland, and had run several campaigns on the mainland, they had developed a research and development (R&D) operation conducted by its engineering department that was, and remains, unrivalled by any other non-state group. There were in total 19,000 explosions and incendiary attacks using a vast array of devices.”
Booby traps, car and truck bombs, bombs through the post, bombs with time-delay detonators, the various explosives – all are covered. So too are the might-have beens, such as work towards a torpedo to be fired at a British patrol boat. And covered too is the organisation required – one of the ‘spectaculars’, the mortars fired on Downing Street in February 1991, were first used in 1979. As Oppenheimer notes, this could have been a work for ‘anoraks’. He is equally useful and at home with the context of the bombs. Targets and timings were for reasons. Propaganda, for instance. To take the Downing Street attack again, the IRA could boast of making the British Cabinet, literally, retreat.
Arguably most intriguing are Oppenheimer’s pages on the three ‘massive city bombs’ in London – Baltic Exchange (1992), Bishopsgate (1993) and Canary Wharf (1996). To take Bishopsgate, one tonne of ammonium nitrate bomb did one billion pounds’ of damage and prompted electronic security and other measures. Commerce and City insurers were struck at, as much as the British state or individuals. “Bishopsgate was at the time the most powerful device ever exploded in Britain. It went off with the power of 1200kg of TNT, the equivalent explosive power of a small tactical nuclear weapon but without the radiation.” The Manchester bomb of 1996 that knocked out the Arndale shopping centre in the city centre was even larger. A 1992 device against the Forensic Science Laboratory in south Belfast was larger still. Had attacks on London electricity sub-stations come off, the capital would have been in the dark for days.
So, you might ask, why did the peace process come soon after – while these bombs were exploding, in fact? As Oppenheimer shows, there are other factors than the mere materials; there are people. IRA people became weary of jail and what Oppenheimer termed ‘the world’s longest war’. The British had informers inside the terrorist organisation. There was surveillance. After 9-11, American support (financial and cultural) for the IRA faltered.
To repeat, readers may object with disgust that such a bloody topic is treated so matter of factly. In truth Oppenheimer has done an important and fine job of telling the story, hoping as he does that peace will continue to prevail. He does no more than hint at whether or how the Irish republican bombers compare with more recent, 7-7 and 21-7-style, Muslim-extremist bombers.
