Britain: Terror on a Summer's Day

In a grim week, the I.R.A. strikes in cold blood and new scandals erupt

The bright morning sun sparkled off the plumed metal helmets of the Blues and Royals troopers of the Queen's Household Cavalry as they left their barracks for the daily mounting of the guard at Whitehall. Resplendent in blue tunics, white buckskin breeches and silver-colored breastplates, the tips of their unsheathed swords jauntily resting on their right shoulders, the colorful 16-man troop trotted along Hyde Park's South Carriage Drive while admiring tourists lolled in the grass and snapped pictures. The cavalrymen never reached their destination. At 10:43, just as the regiment's scarlet-and-gold standard came alongside a parked blue Morris Marina sedan, a deafening explosion ripped through the detachment, filling the air with 4-and 6-in. nails and blowing the flesh of both men and horses yards around.

In Regent's Park, less than two miles away, the 30-man Royal Green Jackets Band was in the midst of playing a medley from the musical Oliver! when an equally powerful bomb pulverized the bandstand. It was 12:55. Said one of the 150 or so people who were attending the lunchtime concert: "Everything seemed to come up from the bottom of the bandstand and blow right into the air—bodies, instruments, everything. There were mangled bodies all over the deck chairs." The toll of the two grisly incidents: ten soldiers killed; 32 soldiers, two policemen and 21 civilians injured.*

Three hours after the Hyde Park blast, a terse and chilling telex message arrived in the offices of several newspapers in the Northern Ireland capital of Belfast. Said the cable: "The Irish Republican Army claims responsibility for today's bomb attack on members of the Household Cavalry. The Irish people have sovereign and national rights which no occupation force can put down." The I.R.A. action was the most dramatic on British soil since last October, when two persons were killed and 38 wounded in a similar bombing outside Chelsea Barracks. It was the most stunning incident of terrorism since the assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Queen's cousin, when I.R.A. terrorists blew up his fishing boat in August 1979. Said Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: "These callous and cowardly crimes have been committed by evil, brutal men who know nothing of democracy. We shall not rest until they are brought to justice."

The bombings occurred as Britons expressed mounting concern about the effectiveness of their country's police and intelligence services. Details of how Intruder Michael Fagan had found his way to the Queen's bedroom two weeks ago stirred a heated debate about protection for the royal family. In a separate incident, the Queen's chief bodyguard, Michael Trestrail, resigned after admitting that he had had frequent sexual relations with a male prostitute. The scandal came to light when Trestrail's lover, noting the publicity swirling around the palace intrusion, tried to sell his story to a British newspaper.

Worse, revelations that a mole allegedly had penetrated the supersecret British intelligence system promised to cause new problems for the Thatcher government (see following stories). As if all that were not enough, unemployment last week reached a new record of 3,190,621, or 13.4% of the work force.