The Carlton Club with its broken windows in the aftermath of the blast in 1990 (left), and pictured today in its restored form (right).
As prominent buildings that have played host to prominent individuals, clubs have long been targets for violence and terrorism, with the 19th century seeing intermittent ventings of public anger against clubs, as protesters hurled rocks and bombs at club buildings on Pall Mall and along St. James’s Street. And the clubhouses of London would suffer as badly as their London neighbours in the Blitz, with the Carlton Club on Pall Mall suffering two direct hits from Luftwaffe bombs.
But fifty years later, as the official club of the Conservative Party, the Carlton Club - which had long since vacated to St. James’s Street - suffered a high-profile bombing at the hands of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), in 1990.
Background
From 1969 until 1997, the IRA and its offshoots mounted an intermittent campaign of terrorist violence and bombing, in protest at British rule of Northern Ireland, and aimed at pressuring the UK government into withdrawal, and paving the way to Irish unification. Acts of violence were carried out all over the UK, often aimed at military targets; but they also occurred in major population centres like London and Birmingham, incurring civilian casualties. 1979 had seen the murder of Tory MP Airey Neave by an INLA car bomb in Parliament, while the 1984 Conservative Party conference saw the IRA’s Brighton bomb, which killed five people, including Tory MP Sir Anthony Berry, and which narrowly avoided killing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
London clubs - particularly those with military or political links - found themselves being targeted by bombings and shootings as part of wider campaigns of violence in the early 1970s and early 1990s.
Against this backdrop, the weeks leading up to June 1990 had seen a burst of IRA violence across the UK. This included a time-bomb in an Eltham flower garden next to an army centre on 14th May; a car bomb which murdered an army recruitment sergeant on 16th May; the shooting of three soliders in Lichfield station on 1st June; the injuring of students at a 21st birthday party by a roof bomb at the Honourable Artillery Company on 9th June; a bomb which damaged the Hampshire home of former Tory Treasurer Lord McAlpine on 12th June; and a rucksack bomb in RAF Stanmore Park on 21st June.
At the time of the Carlton Club bomb, Chancellor of the Exchequeur John Major had been due to give a speech at the Club the next day, and so there was some speculation that he may have been the target of the bomb.
A plan of the ground floor of the Carlton Club, showing where the bomb exploded.
Bombing
At 8:39pm on Monday 25th June 1990, a time-bomb containing between 10ib and 15ib of explosive detonated, having been left in the entrance corridor of the Club, several feet past the front door. Unlike some other IRA bombs planted at the time, no advance warning had been given. The parliamentary session was still underway, so several parliamentarians were in the building; but as it was dinner-time, many were in the main coffee room (dining room) at the rear of the first floor of the building, rather than in the ground-floor morning room at the front.
The bomb destroyed the entrance corridor and neighbouring morning room, as well as damaging part of the inner hall containing the main staircase, knocking down the connecting walls; and it also collapsed part of the ceiling over the ground floor, damaging the front part of the first floor with the drawing room (now the Thatcher room) overhead; and it blasted a hole in the floor below, with damage to the basement. Outside, the bomb had shattered all the ground floor windows, and its shockwaves shattered many windows on other floors (and on neighbouring buildings). Lampshades were blown off some streetlamps in St. James’s Street, and they rolled down the street in the direction of St. James’s Palace.
20 people who were in the Club were injured - mainly those who had been enjoying a pre-prandial drink in the ground floor morning room - and one Conservative peer later died as a result of his injuries. The IRA promptly claimed responsibility for the blast.
When the bomb exploded, those at the rear of the building rapidly came to the help of those at the front, particularly as several had been trapped under rubble from the collapsed ceiling. At least one member of the kitchen staff was later decorated with a bravery award, for his help in extracting survivors from the rubble. Emergency services were promptly called, with the street filling up with ambulances, and the Club was later cordoned off for a forensic investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorism squad. The bombers were never publicly identified, though it was widely reported that four men in their twenties were seen running away from the explosion, jumping into a light blue car which rapidly sped away.
The bombed-out interior of the Carlton Club’s ground floor (left), from the morning room looking towards the entry hall via the collapsed wall; and the view from the morning room looking in the same direction today (right), with the wall restored.
Victims
20 people were hospitalised from their injuries, with 8 needing further treatment. Although 3 were carried away in stretchers with sheets over their faces, none died on the day itself.
Charles Henry was a 76-year-old hall porter who had worked at the Club for 18 years, and was the most seriously injured in the short term. He was on duty in the porter’s lodge, standing some 30 feet from the bomb, when it went off in his face. Sitting up in his hospital bed five days later, he told journalists:
“I saw nothing. I saw no-one. The only thing that happened was it suddenly turned black. At first I thought the ceiling had simply collapsed on me. There was an awful feeling like I was being electrocuted - like someone had laid this electric wire across my head. It’s only afterwards I realised how bloody lucky I was - lucky to even be alive, let alone relatively undamaged. After a few minutes there was still small debris coming down - I waited, afraid more substantial debris might fall. Then I started to yell like mad - like blue murder - for help.”
Henry was dragged out of the wreckage by his colleagues, bleeding heavily from flying glass, sporting two black eyes and cuts to his face. He underwent immediate surgery on arrival at hospital. He was discharged from the hospital a week later, and returned to duty as a porter at the Carlton in September 1990, before passing away in 1993.
Lord Kaberry of Adel was a Conservative peer, and (as Sir Donald Kaberry) was the former MP for Leeds North West, from 1950-83. The Club’s portrait of Lord Home fell on his head during the explosion. He suffered from smoke inhalation in the aftermath, which led to a drastic worsening of his health. He was initially discharged from hospital in July, but then readmitted in September; and he died in Leeds General Infrimary nine months later, from complications arising from his injuries.
Luckier was Lady Betty Griffiths, the wife of Tory MP Sir Eldon Griffiths, who had just walked out of the Club’s exit seconds before the bomb exploded behind her. Due to the Club’s raised elevation while she was on the pavement below, she felt the blast above her head; and although she was pushed down by its force onto the pavement, she was otherwise unharmed.
Others who escaped with only light injuries included two policemen, and two passing American tourists who happened to be walking in front of the Club at the time of the explosion. Jane Kahan was a passer-by who had recently emerged from Christie’s when she was caught in the blast.
Left: Thatcher and Whitelaw in front of 66-67 St. James’s Street. Right: Margaret Thatcher on King Street, with the bombed-out Carlton Club visible in the background.
Aftermath
The following day, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited the bombsite of the Carlton alongside the Club’s Chairman Viscount Whitelaw; and they also visited the porter Charles Henry, recovering in hospital. The Club’s Committee held an emergency meeting in the nearby Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL), just off St. James’s Street on Park Place. ROSL agreed to keep accommodating Carlton members and administration in the following months, while the Club recovered, and repair work was undertaken.
The Carlton’s official historian Lord Lexden notes:
“Defying police orders, Shirley Breen, the Club’s much-loved Assistant Secretary for 18 years, entered the bombed building and carried to safety the detailed records of the Club;’s members, which were kept at that time on index cards in a wooden box. This enabled her to write at once to inform all members about arrangements during the Club’s enforced closure.”
In the aftermath of the bombing, Carlton member Ian Gow was the first Tory MP to publicly complain about the lack of security at the Club. The following month, Gow himself was murdered by the IRA.
The Daily Mirror reported, “Carlton Club security was so lax its video was switched off when IRA bombers struck.” When the Club reopened, it significantly tightened up its security, which remains to this day some of the tightest of any London club - an appropriate move for a club linked to the political power which has been in office for more than two-thirds of the last century.
The Club itself had a formal reopening in May 1991, with the Chairman Lord Whitelaw saying, “he would not have believed such splendid restoration work such a short time,” and crediting his Deputy Chairman Keith Carmichael, and the long-serving Club Secretary Robert Linsley, for their central roles in the work.
Further reading
Sir Charles Petrie and Alistair Cooke [Lord Lexden], The Carlton Club, 1832-2007 (London: Carlton Club, 2007).
Lord Lexden, ‘A Firm Stand Against the IRA’, Carlton Club newsletter, 25 June 2015.
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