The bomb was not meant for Green Park station. On the evening of 9 October 1975, a member of the Provisional IRA's Balcombe Street Gang was assembling an explosive device in a toilet at the Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly when a noise startled him. He fled the hotel, ran across the road, and threw the half-assembled bomb at a bus stop outside Green Park Underground station. The improvised attack killed one person and injured twenty others, a moment of chaotic violence in a city already gripped by fear.
The bombing came during a period of sustained IRA violence in England. In March 1973, the Provisional IRA had bombed the Old Bailey courthouse in central London, killing one person and injuring over 200. Through 1974, the campaign escalated with letter bombs and attacks on pubs and public buildings. An IRA Active Service Unit, later known as the Balcombe Street Gang, carried out the most concentrated wave of attacks. In February 1975, the IRA agreed to a ceasefire with the British government, but the truce was fragile. On 27 August 1975, the IRA broke it by bombing a pub in Caterham, Surrey, injuring over 30 people. A month later, they bombed the London Hilton Hotel, killing two and injuring more than 60. London's streets felt dangerous in a way they had not since the Blitz.
At around nine o'clock in the evening, the bomb exploded at the bus stop. The blast killed Graham Ronald Tuck, a 23-year-old homeless man who suffered severe head and chest injuries and died of a heart attack. Twenty other people were hurt, including two children. Most injuries came from flying glass as the explosion shattered shop windows across the road and blew cars onto the pavement. Inside the Ritz Hotel, the blast threw cutlery and glassware from the dining tables. Guests escaped injury only because the main restaurant had been emptied earlier that day to prepare for a wedding reception. The randomness of the attack, a bomb thrown on the run at a bus stop, was itself a source of terror. Anyone could have been standing there.
The IRA's London campaign continued after the Piccadilly bombing. In November 1975, a bomb at Walton's restaurant killed two people and injured more than twenty. But in December, the Active Service Unit responsible for these attacks was cornered in a flat on Balcombe Street in Marylebone after a car chase. The four men inside took a couple hostage during a six-day siege before surrendering to police. Their capture effectively ended the Provisional IRA's bombing campaign in London for a period. The men were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Piccadilly bombing remains a stark reminder of a time when political violence turned ordinary London streets, bus stops, restaurants, and hotel lobbies into targets, and when the people caught in the blast were not soldiers or politicians but commuters and bystanders whose only offence was being in the wrong place.
The bombing occurred at 51.5067N, 0.1427W, outside Green Park Underground station at the junction of Piccadilly and the park. The Ritz Hotel is directly across the road. Nearest airports: London Heathrow (EGLL) 13 nm west, London City (EGLC) 7 nm east. Best viewed at 1,500-2,500 ft AGL. Green Park is visible to the south, with Buckingham Palace beyond.