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

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Mr Purnell concedes it is possible Sir Ian Blair, then a young constable with one year's service, arrived on the periphery of the action in Rossmore Road during the four or five minutes that he estimates shots were being fired, but points out that he would not then have been able to see the IRA car, parked several hundred yards away from there. The IRA's Balcombe Street gang, who are being freed from jail, have been serving life sentences after carrying out a two-year bombing and murder campaign in Britain. Bowcott, Owen (20 October 1989). "Eyewitness - Justice blind becomes justice embarrassed". The Guardian.

The gang and their hostages were held in a single room, with no access to running water or a toilet. Although police initially refused requests for food, they did give them water and a chemical toilet. The Globe is a classic British pub located on Marylebone Road. The pub features a traditional interior with wooden furnishings and a cozy fireplace. In May 1998, four days after the Balcombe Street gang were being feted in Dublin, and twenty three years after they had murdered her father, Diana Hamilton-Fairley, now a doctor but at the time of his death a 19 year old medical student, spoke at a Belfast conference in favour of the Good Friday agreement. She said that she accepted the early release of the gang as part of the agreement and that she was aware that the peace process would be long and painful. She added:

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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. Officers have now sealed off the corner of Dorset Square and Balcombe Street, in Marylebone, after a car chase through the West End during which shots were fired. They swamped the centre of the West End with plain-clothes detectives, with two on each street corner. More than 1,000 policemen were deployed in Operation Comb, the biggest undertaking of its kind London had seen.

Modern view of Balcombe Street, Marylebone. No. 22b, the building involved in the siege, is to the left.Robert W. White - Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement p.117,118 The four were found guilty at their Old Bailey trial in 1977 of seven murders, conspiring to cause explosions, and falsely imprisoning John and Sheila Matthews during the siege. O’Connell, Butler and Duggan each received 12 life sentences, and Doherty received 11. Each of the men were later given a whole life tariff, the only IRA prisoners to receive this tariff. [2] [9] During the trial they instructed their lawyers to "draw attention to the fact that four totally innocent people were serving massive sentences" for a bombing in Woolwich and two in Guildford. [11] Despite telling the police that they were responsible, they were never charged with these offences and the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven remained in prison for 15 more years, until it was ruled that their convictions were unsafe. [11] [12] Release [ edit ]

For Scotland, 2011 data is shown (update coming soon, the Scottish census was delayed by a year unlike the rest of the UK). 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. Robert W. White - Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement p.108 The Cortina was pursued through the busy West End traffic to Gloucester Place in Marylebone. A number of shots were fired and the windscreen of the getaway car was shattered.The special branch report says that a plan of the area that includes New Scotland Yard was found, along with evidence of evening observations of the Met police headquarters. The Downing Street file does not include the actual list of names of those targeted. That is to remain secret for 70 years under exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( January 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Some 25 years later, residential Balcombe Street became famous within the UK for matters other than architecture and aristocratic land use. Born in Kent, Imbert was educated at the Harvey Grammar School in Folkestone, spent his National Service in the Royal Air Force Police and worked for a short time with Kent County Council, before joining the Metropolitan Police in 1953 at Bow Street Police Station.