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It was Angry Brigade that bombed tower
• THE letter (There was an IRA bomb at the tower, Dec 7) attributes the bombing of the Post Office Tower in Fitzrovia, on October 31, 1971, to the IRA.
A reader gives the exact date of this incident and where he was when it happened, in answer to the author of a book who gets several facts wrong about the closing of the Post Office Tower’s revolving restaurant.
The date is correct but the assailants were not the IRA but the anarchist Angry Brigade.
They were part of an European phenomena which included Bader-Meinhof’s Red Army Faction of Germany and the Red Brigades of Italy.
I remember the gap-toothed smile of the tower after the bombing, in which state it stayed for a number of years.
This restaurant, to date, has never reopened even though such a venture could be highly profitable with its aerial views of London. So why hasn’t it reopened when security alertness and know-how is at its best today. Maybe something secretive has being built where this restaurant once existed?
During a strike of French television personnel some years ago a military strike-breaking television station suddenly came on air. It was housed at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, to the utter surprise of the people of Paris.
WILSON JOHN HAIRE
Lulot Gardens, N19
• YOUR headline above Mr Richards’s letter (There was an IRA bomb at the tower, Dec 7) did not reflect what he actually wrote.
The IRA’s mainland bombing campaign did not begin until 1972.
Responsibility for the Post Office Tower bomb the previous year was claimed by the Angry Brigade, an anarchist group of the early 1970s.
Griff Rhys Jones’s comment that it was closed to the public “when it was feared it would be targeted by the IRA” – which prompted Mr Richards’s letter – is probably correct.
It’s been convenient for British Telecom, at least, who have kept the viewing platform firmly closed to the public ever since.
What other world city shuts the public out of its landmark buildings?
ROGER HUGHES
Courthope Road, NW3
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