Editorial: It is 30 years since the IRA again used a tactic it knew would work - bombing the UK in its economic heart

On Monday it will be 30 years since the Docklands bomb in London (see page 14 of the print edition).

The IRA atrocity on February 9 2026 killed two people and caused hundreds of millions of pounds of economic damage in the capital of the UK.

It was a very calculated act of violence by the republican movement, bringing to an end its ceasefire of August 1994, because they were not making the talks progress that they instantly wanted, after suddenly swapping a quarter of a century of terrorism for the ballot box.

Northern Ireland is still suffering the political consequences of that terrible blast.

Our thoughts are, foremost, with the relatives of the men who died, Inam Bashir, 29, and John Jeffries, 31, as well as the injured. They were the then latest in a long line of victims of terrorism.

The political consequences were long-lasting. The Provisional IRA had tried everything: bombing Belfast, attacking businesses, killing policemen, then soldiers, then when they got better at protecting themselves, more vulnerable military abroad. When that failed they killed lawyers and judges and politicians.

They then tried killing civil servants and people who merely supplied the security services. It was a policy of pure terror – scaring one group after another to try to get them to change their behaviour so that republicans would get their political goalds.

But it all failed. Until the IRA found a tactic that worked: bombing the economic centre of the UK, the City of London – one of the financial centres of the world in 1992 and 93. This jolted the UK government (after both Labour and Tory administrations had been admirably strong-willed against the IRA).

There is a long story as to the appeasement that happened thereafter – suffice to say we tell parts of it on these pages every day.