London occupies two roles in the account: it is both the vast, busy city chosen as the stage for a coordinated bombing operation and the seat of authority the operation meant to confront. On 8 March 1973, ordinary features of the capital—parked cars, crowded streets and a disrupted commute—became part of the operation’s conditions. The later damage to the Old Bailey also reshaped the legal proceedings that followed. Together, these episodes make London more than a backdrop: its infrastructure, institutions and symbolic weight helped determine the course and meaning of the events.

A city made vulnerable by its ordinary rhythms

The morning of 8 March brought early spring to London. Crocuses were blooming around parks and monuments; after a wet winter, the sun drew people outside. The Queen left Buckingham Palace to inspect the first flowers in her garden. At the same time, a rail strike suspended train services and sent commuters into cars. With central London overwhelmed by traffic, parking restrictions were suspended for the day. Vehicles filled loading zones and other places normally off-limits, as well as meters whose allotted time had expired.

That congestion was not merely incidental scenery. The operation relied on cars being commonplace enough to escape notice. The bomb hidden in a vehicle could carry far more explosive material than a person could transport, and a car could be driven to its destination and left behind. In streets where unattended vehicles were already everywhere, the delivery method exploited the very normality that made the city function. A suspicious, empty car could prompt fear and an official response even when no bomb was found; the possibility of an explosive device itself altered how people experienced the streets.

The bombing operation in central London

The cars used in the operation had been hijacked at gunpoint in Belfast in February and taken to the Republic. Repainted and fitted with false number plates, four eventually reached England: a Ford Corsair, a Hillman Hunter, a Vauxhall Viva and a green Ford Cortina. Each carried more than a hundred pounds of powder explosives concealed beneath the rear seat, together with gelignite. A detonating cord connected the payload to a timer made from a household alarm clock beneath the front passenger seat.

Dolours Price had travelled to London with Martin Brady about a month earlier to reconnoitre possible targets. The Unknowns selected locations intended to raise political questions and presented them to the leadership in Belfast for approval. The chosen day coincided with a referendum in Northern Ireland on whether the territory should remain part of the United Kingdom. The intended route brought the cars to four sites: a British Army recruiting centre in Whitehall, the British Forces Broadcasting Service on Dean Stanley Street, New Scotland Yard and the Old Bailey. The team planned to issue telephone warnings shortly before 2 p.m., with the timers set to detonate an hour later. In view of the civilian deaths on Bloody Friday, the bombers had orders to avoid casualties; their plan also depended on leaving London for Dublin before the explosions.

On the day, shortly after lunchtime, a man with a thick Irish accent telephoned The Times and rapidly read out descriptions and locations of cars. Elizabeth Curtis, newly working on the paper’s news desk, struggled at first to understand him but transcribed what she could. He warned that the bombs would go off in an hour. Journalist Martin Huckerby overheard the information and ran out to search near the Old Bailey for the green Cortina, using its reported number plate as a guide. The warning thus reached a newsroom within walking distance of one of the intended targets, connecting the city’s press to the unfolding emergency.

The Old Bailey and the displaced trial

The Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, had been one of the operation’s targets. Its monumental stone building, crowned by a dome and a bronze figure of Justice, was still being repaired after the bombing when the captured participants came to trial. The damage had a direct institutional consequence: proceedings could not simply take place at the courthouse associated with the charges. The government also wanted a fast trial, and using the damaged target as the venue risked appearing prejudicial.

Beginning in the autumn of 1973, the case against Dolours and Marian Price and eight other captured defendants was therefore heard in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle, not in London. The defendants faced charges of conspiring to cause an explosion likely to endanger life. The change of venue carried its own historical resonance: the medieval hall had been the setting for Sir Walter Raleigh’s treason conviction in 1603, and an enormous oak replica of King Arthur’s round table hung on its wall. The bombing had reached beyond the sites where devices were placed; damage to the Old Bailey redirected the trial into a room already marked by an earlier prosecution for treason.

London as target and political image

The operation’s planners sought more than damage to buildings. They chose central London to bring the reality of the conflict to a British public that, in their view, had grown accustomed to disastrous reports from Northern Ireland. The capital’s concentration of government, military and police institutions made the target list legible as a political challenge, while the referendum linked the timing to Northern Ireland’s constitutional future. In this sense, the city was both a practical environment—dense with traffic and parked cars—and a symbol of the power the operation aimed to confront.

The account also sets London against the places Price inhabited at other points in her life. After spending more than eight years in prison, she sought to make a new life in Dublin, where she found freelance newspaper work and hoped to become a writer. That later ambition lay far from the paramilitary front lines, in contrast to her earlier role in planning an operation in London. The city therefore marks a decisive public phase in her trajectory: a place she entered under an assumed name, helped prepare for attack, and left as part of a plan whose effects endured in the damaged courthouse and the trial held elsewhere.