Balmoral Furniture Company bombing

Balmoral Furniture Company bombing
Part of the Troubles
Leading Ambulanceman Bob Scott removes the body of the youngest victim, Colin Nichol, from under the rubble
Location	Balmoral Furniture Company showroom, Lower Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Date	11 December 1971 12.25 p.m.
Attack type	Bombing
Deaths	4 civilians
Non-fatal injuries	19
Suspected perpetrator	Provisional IRA

The Balmoral Furniture Company bombing was a paramilitary attack that took place on 11 December 1971 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A bomb exploded without warning outside a furniture showroom on the Shankill Road in a predominantly unionist area, killing four civilians, two of them babies. It is widely believed that the bombing was carried out by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in retaliation for the bombing of McGurk's pub a week earlier, which killed 15 Catholic civilians. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) had carried out that bombing.

The bombing happened on a Saturday when the Shankill was crowded with shoppers, creating bedlam in the area. Hundreds of people rushed to help British Army troops and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) rescue survivors trapped under the rubble of the devastated building. According to journalist Peter Taylor, the bomb site was "reminiscent of the London Blitz" during World War II. The attack provoked much anger in the tight-knit Ulster Protestant community and many men later cited the bombing as their reason for joining one of the two main Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisations: the illegal UVF or the then-legal Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Four such men were Tommy Lyttle, Michael Stone, Sammy Duddy, and Billy McQuiston.

The bombing was one of the catalysts that sparked the series of tit-for-tat bombings and shootings by loyalists, republicans and the security forces that made the 1970s the bloodiest decade in the 30-year history of the Troubles.