The 1970s was a decade in which the IRA carried out numerous bombing attacks in and around central London. A full list appears in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_London. While living in Soho’s Horse and Dolphin Yard we heard numerous explosions from the safety of our flat.
On 30 March 1979, Airey Neave, British Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army with a bomb fixed under his car. The bomb detonated in the car park of the Palace of Westminster in London and mortally wounded Neave, who died shortly after being admitted to hospital.[1] (Wikipedia – extract from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Airey_Neave)
When younger, our King Charles III was very close to his Great Uncle Louis Mountbatten whose home, Broadlands is in Romsey, not far from us in The New Forest.
On 27th August 1979, their relationship was ended by an IRA bomb. Details of the event can be found in:
https://www.history.com/news/mountbatten-assassination-ira-thatcher
‘The gruesome 1979 IRA assassination of a beloved British royal—which took place the same day as a deadly coordinated attack on British troops—led to outrage, heartbreak and a heightening of “The Troubles,” the decades-long Northern Ireland conflict.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the August 27, 1979 murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten, 79, Earl of Burma, great-grandson of Queen Victoria, second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II and great-uncle of King Charles III. The World War II hero and last viceroy of India was aboard his 29-foot Shadow Vfishing boat with six others near his summer home in northwest Ireland the morning of the attack.
A Sunny Day Turns Grim
August 27, 1979, a Bank holiday, had dawned sunny, following days of rain. “Dickie” Mountbatten and some of his family who had been staying at their holiday home, Classibawn Castle near the Village of Cliffoney, County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland, decided to take an outing on their boat to take in the good weather.
Fifteen minutes after setting sail, a planted bomb was activated by two members of the Provisional IRA, a paramilitary group of Irish nationalists who waged a terror campaign to drive British forces from Northern Ireland to create a united, independent nation. Known as “the Troubles,” the conflict raged for 25 years before IRA and loyalist ceasefires were initiated. By 1998, the year the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement settled the conflict, more than 3,600 people had died.’