Canary Wharf Bombing

The 1996 bombing at Canary Wharf in East London marked the end of an 18-month Irish Republican Army (IRA) cease-fire and jeopardized the peace process for Northern Ireland.

Since the late 1960s, conflict has been ongoing between Northern Ireland's Protestants, who want the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland's Roman Catholics, who want it to become part of the Republic of Ireland. On August 31, 1994, after months of secret talks with the British and Irish governments, the IRA, the largest paramilitary group on the Catholic side (also called the nationalist, or republican, side), announced a cease-fire. In October, the major Protestant (also called loyalist or unionist) paramilitary groups followed suit. After 30 years of guerrilla warfare and several previous failed attempts at negotiations, these mutual cease-fires represented the best opportunity to achieve a lasting peace.

The major parties to the negotiations were all deeply suspicious of the motives of their counterparts, however. Furthermore, the government of Britain's Conservative prime minister John Major depended on his party's slim majority in Parliament; he could not afford to lose the support of the Unionist members of Parliament from Northern Ireland. To appease the Unionists and win some assurance of the IRA's commitment to peace, Major demanded that the IRA decommission some of its arms before commencing serious talks.

IRA leaders balked, seeing this request as a confirmation of their worst fear—the British government was merely employing the negotiations as a stalling tactic to diminish the IRA's military capabilities. Negotiations halted for 18 months while frustrations grew. Various envoys, including former U.S. senator George Mitchell, tried to achieve some form of compromise. On February 9, 1996, at around 5:40 P.M., a telephone call to Scotland Yard announced the end of the IRA cease-fire and the resumption of military operations.

At 7 P.M., a bomb exploded at the Canary Wharf economic development site in East London's Dock-lands, killing two workers. The 81-acre site is home to Britain's largest office tower and is filled with offices, shops, and apartment complexes. The fertilizer-based bomb weighed several tons and was hidden in a truck. Despite the bomb's great size, fewer than 50 people were injured because police had cleared the area; property damage, however, totaled an estimated £140 million (U.S. $215 million).

Peace negotiations ceased, not to resume until 1997, when a new prime minister, Tony Blair, took office. In a 1998 trial, James McCardle was convicted and sentenced to 25 years. He has since been released, as have almost all paramilitary prisoners, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.