West Ham bomb press cuttings (1976)

The IRA were prolific in the seventies. They tried to blow up a gasometer between West Ham and Bromley by Bow but only put a hole in it. I had an incendiary bomb go off in the booking hall at Sloane Square at midnight on Christmas eve. There was only me and an 18 year old station foreman on duty at that time, no night turns in those days.

Left luggage lockers disappeared from underground stations which were very lucrative as a source of commission for the booking clerks. Stations like Embankment every vagrant had his own locker and paid every day to keep it going.

It was stored in the bay at Plaistow for some time with tarpaulins over it.

Another press link news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/15/newsid_2543000/2543605.stm


I have found a link on Wikipedia to my bomb and it was Boxing Day not Christmas Eve. The reason nobody was hurt because the trains finished at weekday times and not Sunday times. I was in the passimeter ticket office about ten feet from the telephone boxes and I was standing to one side of the ticket window counting money. The blast came through the bottom of the window turned the account books over and the fluorescent tubes in the office where hanging by the wires and there was dust everywhere.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_London#1970.E2.80.931979