Qualla: 1993 Harrods Bombing

1993 Harrods Bombing: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two minutes before the store was due to open on the morning of 28 January 1993, a bomb exploded in a litter bin near the side entrance of Harrods. The warnings had been telephoned in at 9.14 am, claiming there were two devices. The blast was small by the standards of the Provisional IRA's London campaign — four people injured, around a million pounds in damage and lost sales — but it was the kind of bomb that took a long time to investigate, because the men who planted it did not look like any IRA suspects the Metropolitan Police had seen before.

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1993 Harrods Bombing: A Familiar Target

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By 1993, Harrods had become unhappily accustomed to its place on the IRA target list. Two fire bombs in August 1973 had caused minor damage. The Balcombe Street unit set off an incendiary in 1974 that gutted a clothes department inside the store. The car bomb of December 1983 had...

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1993 Harrods Bombing: The Men in the Photograph

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When detectives finally identified the bombers, the puzzle deepened. Jan Taylor was 51, a former corporal who had served in the British Army Royal Signals Corps. Patrick Hayes was 41, a computer programmer of Irish descent with a business studies degree from the Polytechnic of Ce...

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1993 Harrods Bombing: The Trial

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hayes and Taylor were each sentenced to thirty years for the Harrods bombing and for a separate attack on a train a month later which caused extensive damage but no casualties. Hayes received additional convictions for conspiracy to cause three further explosions during 1992. Fro...

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1993 Harrods Bombing: The Knock at the Door

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hayes and Taylor served six years before being released in 1999 under the early release provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, the same provisions that freed hundreds of other paramilitary prisoners on both sides. For their victims, that was its own difficult news to absorb. Pe...

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