On 13th December 1867, in an attempt to free imprisoned members, the Irish Republican Brotherhood exploded a bomb against a wall of Clerkenwell Prison in London. The blast brought down 60 feet of the wall. No one escaped, but 12 people were killed and 120 others injured in nearby houses. The deaths enraged the public. Karl Marx observed:
“The London masses, who have shown great sympathy towards Ireland, will be made wild and driven into the arms of a reactionary government. One cannot expect the proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries.”
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner declared there were 10,000 armed terrorists at large in London. Over 50,000 special constables were sworn in and the sewers searched for explosives. Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister from February 1868, considered suspending habeas corpus. Six Irishmen were brought to trial. Only one was found guilty: Michael Barratt became the last man to be publically executed in England. Queen Victoria wrote to the Home Secretary deploring “the failure of the evidence against all but one of the Clerkenwell criminals. It seems dreadful for these people to escape… one begins to wish they would be lynch-lawed on the spot.”
On 22nd July 1946, the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organisation, operating in British-controlled Palestine, exploded a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed the Government Secretariat and the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The attack was ordered by Irgun’s leader, Menachem Begin (later Prime Minister of Israel). Begin was seen by many Jews as a freedom fighter fighting an alien tyranny. In his autobiography, Israeli author Amos Oz recalled his childhood idol:
“In my mind, I saw his form swathed in clouds of biblical glory. I imagined him in his secret headquarters in the wild ravines of the Judaean Desert, barefoot, with a leather girdle, flashing sparks like the prophet Elijah among the rocks of Mount Carmel.”
The blast killed 91 people, mostly civilians and 17 of them Jewish, and injured 45. The British military commander in Palestine ordered that “all Jewish places of entertainment, cafés, restaurants, shops and private dwellings be out of bounds to all ranks... I appreciate that these measures will inflict some hardship on the troops, but I am certain that they will understand their propriety and they will be punishing the Jews in the way the race dislikes as much as any by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt for them.”
The Prime Minister Clement Attlee wrote to President Truman: “I am sure you will agree that the inhuman crime committed in Jerusalem calls for the strongest action against terrorism but having regard to the sufferings of the innocent Jewish victims of Nazism this should not deter us from introducing a policy designed to bring peace to Palestine with the least possible delay.”
Shortly after the attack the Labour MP Richard Crossman visited Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organisation (who in 1949 became Israel’s first president). When the King David Hotel bombing was mentioned, Weizmann started crying heavily. He said: “I can’t help feeling proud of our boys. If only it had been a German headquarters, they would have gotten the Victoria Cross.”
On 5th September, a play, A Flag Is Born, opened in New York with Marlon Brando in the cast. Its author was Ben Hecht, a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. The play was intended to raise funds for the Irgun and compared its campaign in Palestine to the American Revolution. Its sponsors included the composer Leonard Bernstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. The following year Hecht took out a full-page newspaper advertisement: “Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad train sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.”
On 21st November 1974, the Provisional IRA murdered 21 people and injured 182 others when it exploded bombs in two pubs in Birmingham. Tony Benn, wrote in his diary the following day:
“The bombing story is absolutely dominant with anger rising, a petrol bomb thrown into a Catholic church, some factories in Birmingham refusing to work with Irish workers. The damage done to Irish people here, even though they may be Protestants, is terrible, every one a victim of the same awful process of escalating violence.”
The Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974 was introduced and passed in just three days. It gave the police powers to hold terrorist suspects for 48 hours without charge on their own authority, and for a further five days with ministerial consent.
The Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, warned: “The powers are Draconian. In combination they are unprecedented in peacetime. I believe these are fully justified to meet the clear and present danger.” Intended as a temporary measure it was renewed annually until 2000 when its powers were permanently included in a new Terrorism Act. In his memoirs Jenkins wrote: “Was it justified? I think it helped to steady opinion and to provide some additional protection. I do not regret having introduced it. But I would have been horrified to have been told that it would still be law nearly two decades later.”
“The London masses, who have shown great sympathy towards Ireland, will be made wild and driven into the arms of a reactionary government. One cannot expect the proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries.”
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner declared there were 10,000 armed terrorists at large in London. Over 50,000 special constables were sworn in and the sewers searched for explosives. Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister from February 1868, considered suspending habeas corpus. Six Irishmen were brought to trial. Only one was found guilty: Michael Barratt became the last man to be publically executed in England. Queen Victoria wrote to the Home Secretary deploring “the failure of the evidence against all but one of the Clerkenwell criminals. It seems dreadful for these people to escape… one begins to wish they would be lynch-lawed on the spot.”
On 22nd July 1946, the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organisation, operating in British-controlled Palestine, exploded a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed the Government Secretariat and the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The attack was ordered by Irgun’s leader, Menachem Begin (later Prime Minister of Israel). Begin was seen by many Jews as a freedom fighter fighting an alien tyranny. In his autobiography, Israeli author Amos Oz recalled his childhood idol:
“In my mind, I saw his form swathed in clouds of biblical glory. I imagined him in his secret headquarters in the wild ravines of the Judaean Desert, barefoot, with a leather girdle, flashing sparks like the prophet Elijah among the rocks of Mount Carmel.”
The blast killed 91 people, mostly civilians and 17 of them Jewish, and injured 45. The British military commander in Palestine ordered that “all Jewish places of entertainment, cafés, restaurants, shops and private dwellings be out of bounds to all ranks... I appreciate that these measures will inflict some hardship on the troops, but I am certain that they will understand their propriety and they will be punishing the Jews in the way the race dislikes as much as any by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt for them.”
The Prime Minister Clement Attlee wrote to President Truman: “I am sure you will agree that the inhuman crime committed in Jerusalem calls for the strongest action against terrorism but having regard to the sufferings of the innocent Jewish victims of Nazism this should not deter us from introducing a policy designed to bring peace to Palestine with the least possible delay.”
Shortly after the attack the Labour MP Richard Crossman visited Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organisation (who in 1949 became Israel’s first president). When the King David Hotel bombing was mentioned, Weizmann started crying heavily. He said: “I can’t help feeling proud of our boys. If only it had been a German headquarters, they would have gotten the Victoria Cross.”
On 5th September, a play, A Flag Is Born, opened in New York with Marlon Brando in the cast. Its author was Ben Hecht, a highly paid Hollywood screenwriter. The play was intended to raise funds for the Irgun and compared its campaign in Palestine to the American Revolution. Its sponsors included the composer Leonard Bernstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. The following year Hecht took out a full-page newspaper advertisement: “Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad train sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.”
On 21st November 1974, the Provisional IRA murdered 21 people and injured 182 others when it exploded bombs in two pubs in Birmingham. Tony Benn, wrote in his diary the following day:
“The bombing story is absolutely dominant with anger rising, a petrol bomb thrown into a Catholic church, some factories in Birmingham refusing to work with Irish workers. The damage done to Irish people here, even though they may be Protestants, is terrible, every one a victim of the same awful process of escalating violence.”
The Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974 was introduced and passed in just three days. It gave the police powers to hold terrorist suspects for 48 hours without charge on their own authority, and for a further five days with ministerial consent.
The Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, warned: “The powers are Draconian. In combination they are unprecedented in peacetime. I believe these are fully justified to meet the clear and present danger.” Intended as a temporary measure it was renewed annually until 2000 when its powers were permanently included in a new Terrorism Act. In his memoirs Jenkins wrote: “Was it justified? I think it helped to steady opinion and to provide some additional protection. I do not regret having introduced it. But I would have been horrified to have been told that it would still be law nearly two decades later.”
