Forty years have passed since the dark winter evening of 1st December, 1972, when the first ever car bomb exploded in the Republic of Ireland.
It occurred beside Liberty Hall, where the ITGWU (now SIPTU) has its headquarters. There were no fatalities but the explosion caused many injuries.
Several minutes later, a second blast at Sackville Place, off O’Connell Street, killed bus driver George Bradshaw, 29, and 23-year-old bus conductor Tommy Duffy.
Both were married. George and his wife Kathleen had two young children. Tommy and his wife Monica had a daughter. Monica was also pregnant with their second child.
Three minutes before the first bomb exploded, the Belfast Newsletter received an anonymous telephone warning that bombs planted at Liberty Hall and behind Clery’s would explode at 8.05 p.m. The person who received the warning said the caller had spoken with a “Belfast English-type accent”. However, the warnings came too late and the result was devastating, two men dead and 127 people injured. Damage to property was extensive.
Although it was a Friday evening the Dáil was in session at Leinster House. A bill to amend the Offences Against the State Act was being debated and a defeat for the Fianna Fáil Government seemed inevitable as Opposition parties and some members of the Government were opposing it on civil liberties’ grounds. The amendment would admit the opinion of a senior Garda officer as evidence of an accused person’s membership of the IRA.
However, the bomb explosions changed the course of Irish history. When the vote was taken after an adjournment Fine Gael abstained allowing the amendment to be passed.
Early investigations centred around four cars. One car containing the owner’s driving licence had been stolen four months before in Ballymoney, county Antrim.
The stolen licence of Englishman Joseph Fleming was used to hire three cars from different Belfast companies on 30th November by a man with an English accent. Two of the hired cars exploded at Liberty Hall and Sackville Place. Both these vehicles were already in Dublin on the evening of 30th November, according to a number of eyewitnesses.
The Gardaí were very pro-active in the early days of the investigation, travelling to Belfast and London to retrieve hire agreement documents and interviewing witnesses.
Although the RUC were relatively helpful, the Garda report comments that RUC officers would not permit them to interview some persons “for reasons best known to themselves”. Despite a promising start, the Garda enquiries led nowhere.
A fortnight after the bombings, two significant, but ostensibly unconnected, arrests were made in Dublin hotels on 18th and 19th December. British agent John Wyman was arrested at the West County Hotel, Chapelizod, on the 18th.
The following day Gardaí apprehended Detective Sergeant Patrick Crinnion, Crime and Security Branch, Garda Síochána, at the Burlington, where he was attempting to rendezvous with his handler.
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