The IRA tried to kill the queen in 1981

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IRA plot to kill the Queen
Nigel Nelson,
The People
Jan 8 2011

An astonishing IRA plot to kill the Queen is revealed by The People today. Bombers triggered a device just 500 yards from the monarch. And they would have used an even larger bomb but key parts got delayed in the post. Yet details of the bungled bid were covered up by Whitehall for nearly 30 years and only came to light when historian Christopher Andrew trawled MI5’s archives.

The IRA set off the bomb as the Queen arrived in the Shetland Islands to open Europe’s largest oil terminal in May 1981 in front of the King of Norway and dozens of other VIPs. A terrorist had spent two years with the team who built BP’s Sullum Voe complex and was able to hide his bomb in the terminal’s power station.

MI5 later blamed BP chiefs for refusing to spend enough on ­precautions they had demanded to stop any assassination attempt. Prof Andrew said: "Due to a lapse in protective security by BP, the Provisional IRA came close to achieving one of its most ­spectacular coups."

The Sullum Voe bomb was so small it was at first mistaken for an electrical fault. But shocked MI5 officers soon discovered the truth – and a later investigation revealed plans to detonate a larger bomb. Details were covered up at the time and stayed secret until Cambridge University’s Prof Andrew was researching a 1,032-page authorised history of MI5.

The attack happened four days after the death of Bobby Sands, the first of 10 IRA hunger-strikers to die in Belfast’s Maze prison. And the probe into the Shetland blast – the only time the Provos struck in Scotland – found many of the large number of Irish ­labourers working at the BP site had Republican sympathies. Incredibly, one had arranged for gelignite needed for the bomb to be posted to him at the site. Two parcels were sent – but when the second did not turn up the terrorist panicked because he thought it had been intercepted and his identity exposed. He did a runner – but only after he had planted the first bomb.

The second parcel containing a 6lb bomb with a 12-day timer arrived after he had fled – and remained uncollected at the post office serving the complex. And in farcical scenes, postal staff sent it back to the bomber’s return ­address in Ulster – though it did not reach there either.

The Queen sailed to Sullum Voe on the Royal Yacht Britannia. But dense fog meant a large police security team sent from the Scottish mainland were delayed and could only mount a brief search before the ceremony. Just as the Queen appeared, the bomb went off – but the blast went unnoticed and there were no casualties and little damage. IRA chiefs were amazed not to hear any news of the bomb and British journalists got calls from men with Irish accents asking if there had been reports of an ­incident at Sullum Voe.

Shadow Northern Ireland ­minister Stephen Pound said: "People today will find it hard to believe how tense things were in 1981. If the IRA had been ­successful it would have changed the course of history, which is why it’s vitally important to maintain the peace process." And St Andrew’s University terrorism expert Prof Paul Wilkinson was surprised the IRA had targeted Scotland. He said: "They always liked to present themselves as friendly to other nations they thought were under the heel of English imperialism."

At the time, MI5’s C Branch was ­responsible for protecting hundreds of UK sites designated Economic Key Points. C Branch officers even toured North Sea oil-rigs by helicopter and held exercises with Royal Marines to practise recapturing platforms in case one was ever seized by the IRA. But MI5 were irked at how Whitehall treated the agency. An internal report said: "The Departments of Transport and Energy seem to find particular difficulty in making decisions quickly. This is frustrating."

Yet the Provos failed to grasp just how vulnerable these poorly protected targets really were. By 1982 the Cabinet Office decided the IRA had no proper strategy for damaging the economy. And ministers ­concluded the Sullum Voe attack had been intended to demonstrate the Provo’s ability to penetrate royal security rather than cripple the UK’s North Sea oil industry.

Last night a BP spokesman said of the Sullum Voe attack: "Events surrounding a possible bomb in the power station were ­investigated by ­police at the time. BP co-operated fully with the investigation but as these events happened nearly 30 years ago, there is little more we can add." The attack on the Queen came two years after an IRA bomb killed her cousin Earl Mountbatten on his boat in Ireland.

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