page_title: 1971 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: 1971 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Loyalist Mural [1] Loyalist mural on Shankill Road depicting Irish Republican terrorist atrocities.
context_page_description: The Balmoral Furniture Company bombing was a paramilitary attack that took place on 11 December 1971 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A bomb exploded without warning outside a furniture showroom on the Shankill Road in a predominantly unionist area, killing four civilians, two of them babies. It is widely believed that the bombing was carried out by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in retaliation for the Ulster Volunteer Force bombing of McGurk's pub a week earlier, which killed 15 Catholic civilians.
  The bombing happened on a Saturday when the Shankill was crowded with shoppers, creating bedlam in the area. Hundreds of people rushed to help British Army troops and the Royal Ulster Constabulary rescue survivors trapped under the rubble of the devastated building. According to journalist Peter Taylor, the bomb site was "reminiscent of the London Blitz" during World War II. The attack provoked much anger in the tight-knit Ulster Protestant community and many men later cited the bombing as their reason for joining one of the two main Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisations: the illegal UVF or the then-legal Ulster Defence Association.
context_section_description: Although nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, the Provisional IRA was immediately and widely blamed. In his book Loyalists, Peter Taylor explained that the Provisional IRA bombed Balmoral in retaliation for the McGurk's Bar bombing one week earlier, which had killed 15 Catholic civilians. This theory is supported by author Susan McKay. Billy McQuiston, along with many other Protestant men who had been on the Shankill at the time of the explosion, immediately joined the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Others included Sammy Duddy, Michael Stone, and Tommy Lyttle. Lyttle, who became brigadier of the UDA West Belfast Brigade, was not there but his wife and two daughters were near the bomb when it went off. They received no injuries, but his daughter Linda said that Lyttle "took it personally". Jackie McDonald, the incumbent South Belfast UDA brigadier, worked as dispatches manager for the Balmoral Furniture Company. The leader of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF, the name the UDA used to claim attacks), John White,  who was convicted of the double murder of Senator Paddy Wilson and Irene Andrews in 1973, used the Balmoral bombing as justification for these killings and others.
  Within a month of the bombing, the UDA had restructured, adopting a more military structure and establishing a thirteen-member Security Council under Charles Harding Smith to co-ordinate activity. 
  Michael Stone would go on to perpetrate the Milltown Cemetery attack in 1988, which was caught on camera. Another Protestant man, Eddie Kinner, had been at the scene following the explosion. He lived around the corner from Balmoral. He sought revenge against the IRA and later joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). He later spoke about his reactions to the Balmoral bombing in an interview with Peter Taylor: "On that occasion, if somebody had handed me a bomb to plant it anywhere you want in the Falls, I would have done it", adding that he had no qualms about taking somebody else's life. Within a week of the attack, the UVF retaliated by planting a bomb at Murtagh's Bar on the Irish nationalist Springfield Road in west Belfast. A 16-year-old Catholic barman, James McCallum, was killed.
  The building which housed Balmoral's Furniture Company was formerly "Wee Joe's Picture House", dating from the 1930s. Taking its name from "Wee" Joe McKibben, one of three owners of the cinema (which was nicknamed the "Wee Shank"), it was said locally that it cost a jam jar to get in on account of the fact that patrons could go to McKibben's other place of business, a grocery shop, and swap an empty jam jar for a ticket to the cinema. The edifice was demolished after the bombing. Although a youth on the Shankill had seen the green car and person who planted the device, the bombers were never apprehended nor was anyone ever charged in connection with the attack. The McGurk's Bar bombing was the catalyst that sparked a series of tit-for-tat bombings and shootings by loyalist and republican paramilitaries that would help make the 1970s the bloodiest decade in the 30-year history of the Troubles.
  The Balmoral bombing was not the first paramilitary attack in the Shankill Road area. On 29 September 1971, the Four Steps Inn pub had been bombed by the Provisional IRA, resulting in the deaths of two men. It would not be the last either. In August 1975, the Provisional IRA carried out a shooting and bombing attack against the Bayardo Bar on Aberdeen Street, which killed three men and two women - one aged 17. A deadlier attack took place on 23 October 1993 when a two-man IRA unit from Ardoyne carried a bomb into Frizzell's Fish Shop on the Shankill. The device detonated prematurely, killing one of the bombers and ten of the customers (see Shankill Road bombing).
  Balmoral as a company was also established as a target by this attack and in October 1976 its premises in Dunmurry were blown up in another bomb attack. There were no casualties. Three IRA volunteers were arrested not far from the scene of this attack with one, Bobby Sands, imprisoned for possessing a gun as a result. 
caption: A mural showing the Balmoral bombing and other IRA attacks carried out on the Shankill Road
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