Birmingham pub bombings

Birmingham pub bombings
Part of the Troubles
Aftermath of the explosion in the Mulberry Bush public house, which killed ten people.
Location	Birmingham, England
Date	21 November 1974 20:17 (Mulberry Bush) 20:27 (Tavern in the Town) (GMT)
Target	The Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town public houses, Birmingham City Centre; and Barclays Bank, Edgbaston
Attack type	Time bombs
Deaths	21
Non-fatal injuries	182
Perpetrator	Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Birmingham pub bombings (also known as the Birmingham bombings) occurred on 21 November 1974, when bombs exploded in two public houses in central Birmingham, England. The explosions killed 21 people and injured 182 others.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army have never officially admitted responsibility for the Birmingham pub bombings, but a former senior officer of the organisation confessed to their involvement in 2014, with an admission the Birmingham pub bombings "went against everything we [the Provisional Irish Republican Army] claimed to stand for".

Six Irishmen were arrested within hours of the blasts, and in 1975 sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombings. The men—who became known as the Birmingham Six—maintained their innocence and insisted police had coerced them into signing false confessions through severe physical and psychological abuse. After 16 years in prison and a lengthy campaign, their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory, and quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1991. The episode is seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

The Birmingham pub bombings are seen as one of the deadliest acts of the Troubles and the deadliest act of terrorism to occur in Great Britain between the Second World War and the 2005 London bombings.

In 1973, the Provisional IRA extended its campaign to mainland Britain, attacking military and symbolically important targets to both increase pressure on the British government, via popular British opinion, to withdraw from Northern Ireland, and to maintain morale amongst their supporters. By 1974, mainland Britain saw an average of one attack—successful or otherwise—every three days. These attacks included five explosions which had occurred in Birmingham on 14 July, one of which had occurred at the Rotunda.