Talk:1993 Bishopsgate bombing

GA Review

Hello there, its a very good article with some very nice points and clear presentation. There are a couple of very small tweaks I think the article needs before promotion, but nothing which should take too long.

• Please rearrange the references so that the footnotes appear under a Notes section and all major sources in a References section as per the MoS.
• The background section needs a copyedit. If they had bombed financial targets a number of times before then please give more examples than just the Baltic Exchange and the full stop between these sentances should be a colon or semi-colon instead. The rest of the paragraph then has no clear relation to the introductory sentance. In fact, the remainder of that paragraph (or even just the section from "In early 1992 . . . campaign in England") might work better as a second paragraph of the introduction. Either way, the prose needs to flow better in this section.
• Name the journalist killed and the Lord Mayor at the time and link to them if they have their own articles.

Otherwise a fine article interestingly presented. Once the above are addressed I'd be happy to make this a GA. Good Work--Jackyd101 (talk) 17:27, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

• Oh, as an afterthought: The article doesn't mention any arrests, charges, convictions or accusations against anybody for committing the bombing - presumably therefore none were made, but if so the article should state this explicitly somewhere.--Jackyd101 (talk) 17:36, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not aware of any part of the MoS that says that needs to be done. In fact Wikipedia:Guide to layout#Standard appendices and descriptions specifically says they should be combined.

• Done, I wasn't entirely happy with the flow of the background section before but I think it works much better now.

• Done, the mayor wasn't named in the main sources, but I found his name tucked away in another source.

• Annoyingly, none of the sources actually say this. I generally don't like putting anything I can't source in an article I've written, as you're guaranteed to get someone come along later and tag it with {{cn}}. So it's up to you what you want me to do with that?

Thanks. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 17:57, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Here is the MoS thing I was referring to Wikipedia:Guide to layout#Notes. I was once made to reorganise an FA candidate to comply with this, so I think its pretty legit. Either way, I won't let it stand in the way of this becoming GA, its clear you've properly sourced the piece however it is laid out. All the other issues seem fine, so this is now a GA, well done on the nice article and speedy response.--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I've just understood whats happening with the Notes/References thing. Basically, all footnotes go into a notes section and the titles, authors and publication details of the books used shoudl be laid out in References like a standard bibliography. You have notes, but your book references are not presented in the fashion described--Jackyd101 (talk) 18:35, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I can see the benefit in a Bibliography section when say you've got several books that you're citing extensively. But that isn't the case with this article, as there's only a couple of books that are being cited more than once and they aren't being cited extensively, so there's not really that much point doing it. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 19:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Balls, I'm afraid

The article as written includes this statement: The subsequent payouts by insurance companies resulted in them suffering heavy losses causing a crisis in the industry, including the near-collapse of Lloyd's of London..

In 1993, Lloyd's actually made a nett profit of £225m.

If anyone wants to follow the trail:

• Go to the Lloyd's of London website: here
• Download the third result, entitled: 'Global Results 2000'
• Go to page 28 of the download (marked as page 25 in the original document) and look at the first table ('Summary of results by year of account').

It's idle journalism and although the citation is correct the source is not and should be removed.--Major Bonkers (talk) 13:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No original research thanks. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 13:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Precisely. The primary source (the Lloyd's accounts) contradicts the secondary source (the sidebar to the BBC article). Per WP:PSTS.--Major Bonkers (talk) 13:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Your interpretation of events is just that, an interpretation). The figures show profits were £750m less for that year, which the BBC (who are a reliable secondary source) say was a "near-collapse". Most companies making a quarter of expected profit would hardly regard it as a successful year, neither would those who milk the cash cow. Nowhere in the BBC article does it say Lloyd's made a loss, therefore there is no contradiction. As BBC > you, there's not really much more to discuss is there? One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 13:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you are getting your figures from. The relevant figures are either the 'pure year' figures (ie. simply the profit or loss for that accounting year) or the 'result after personal expenses figure', which is literally the bottom line of that chart (which figures include an accounting adjustment in respect of previous years and, obviously enough, expenses including profit commission - for this reason the 'pure year' figures are to be preferred). The results quoted are:

1992 (ie. year prior) Pure year: (£1.64bn.); Bottom line: (£1.19bn.)

1993 (ie. year of the bomb) Pure year: £1.63bn.; Bottom line: £0.23m.

If one turns up the figures for the insurance companies - from the Association of British Insurers website: here; download the second result entitled 'Statistical Overview of UK Insurance in 2006', and looking at the two charts on page 2 - one can see that far from suffering 'heavy losses' that year, British insurers were making money and, on their property book of business, enjoyed a return of almost 10%.

In fact, you could make a false correlation and say that the bombing caused a profit for both Lloyd's and the Companies that year.

The actual wording of the BBC citation is: The huge payouts by insurance companies contributed to a crisis in the industry, including the near-collapse of the world's leading insurance market, Lloyd's of London. (Which is very similar to the wording of the article: The subsequent payouts by insurance companies resulted in them suffering heavy losses causing a crisis in the industry, including the near-collapse of Lloyd's of London.). While it is true to say, 'Nowhere in the BBC article does it say Lloyd's made a loss', both use the hyperbolic terms 'crisis' and 'near-collapse' which are simply unsupported by the facts - the accounts of the insurers concerned.--Major Bonkers (talk) 14:57, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you actually read policies you link to? I quote from WP:OR:

• Where interpretive claims, analysis, or synthetic claims about primary sources are included in Wikipedia articles, use secondary sources rather than original analysis by Wikipedia editors.

So please stop adding your own irrelevant interpretation of statistics to this talk page. Secondary sources are being used, and if you don't like what they say I suggest you produce some secondary sources that contradict them instead of your own opinions. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 15:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

To answer your question, yes I do read the policies. And you linked to WP:OR, not me. I'm afraid that the contention that 'huge payments' (or 'heavy losses') arising out of this bombing caused 'crisis' and 'near collapse' is demonstrably false. (A bit of common sense would also demonstrate that: Lloyd's came through the Napoleonic Wars, First and Second World Wars, etc., so a relatively minor property loss, spread across companies and well reinsured was always unlikely to cause the havoc described. After all, no such similar extravagant claims have been made about Osama bin Laden's demolition work. Subsequent to both events, not a single insurance company went bust as a result of these losses.) If you want to keep this reference in the article, that's fine by me - I haven't touched the article, and nor do I intend to. If people want to believe this happy fiction, good luck to them.--Major Bonkers (talk) 17:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh come on now, we all know why this is going on. This article doesn't report your particular happy fiction (that only rabid right wing extremists seem to believe), namely the IRA bombings in London "never really rose above the nuisance value". Shall we have a look at a contemporary news story from the time that prove all wasn't quite well in the insurance market? No direct link sadly due to the lack of online archives, but I'm sure this proves what rot your interpretation of the crisis is:

• THE Lloyd's of London insurance market is set to report a further £2bn worth of losses next year, far worse than forecasts from the market's authorities eight months ago...The deterioration will undermine the prospect of an out-of-court settlement designed to help 17,000 underwriting members meet £2bn worth of losses that have brought them to the brink of financial ruin.

Seems like the secondary sources don't really agree with your massaging of the figures to push your own POV do they? One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 17:30, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh and one more thing, it was you that linked to WP:PSTS right here, so as before please try and read what you link to. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 17:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid the mistake is yours. If you read the link that you posted carefully, you will see that although it was published in 1993 (I assume that the reference to '1983' on the web-page is a typo) it refers to the 1990 year of account. This is because Lloyd's accounts three years in arrears (triennial accounting). Thus you have to be careful to distinguish between the 'pure year' or 'underwriting year of account' and the 'calendar year'. This is all explained, after a fashion here.

To give you some idea of a major loss, Piper Alpha, five years before this bomb, is generally reckoned to have cost Lloyd's, alone, directly £1.4bn. Two events occurred to increase the impact of this loss: (1) a negligent accounting system, accentuated by fraud, which led to that loss having to be reserved for upto 10 times its expected loss, and (2) failure of reinsurance. Other large losses over the 20h. century included the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Hurricane Betsy, asbestos litigation, and Hurricane Andrew in 1992. At the beginning of this century, we had 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (the results of which Lloyd's will declare next year). These are the major losses which affect Lloyd's and London insurers and, frankly, a £350m. loss was then and would be today a pretty piddling loss. Yes, it would be annoying, yes it would cost money (until rates were raised to repay the loss), but actually that's what insurers are there for. As a rule of thumb, inflation over the period means that in real terms the present value of the Bishopsgate bomb loss would be around £700m. - or approximately a 1/3d. of the cost of this summer's floods. If the IRA had wanted to increase the size of loss, they should have set it off during the week, with no warning, to kill a whole load of lawyers and merchant bankers. I imagine that would have doubled or tripled the size of the loss.--Major Bonkers (talk) 18:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No, the mistake was yours in thinking that could you come to this page to push your discredited (and frankly laughable) POV. I'm still waiting for those secondary sources, perhaps you'd like to actually provide them instead of waffling? The BBC say one thing, but Major Bonkers says it was wrong so we'd better remove it quick sharpish. Well tough, it ain't happening. This talk page is for improvements to the article, so either provides sources or don't waste time and server space with any more of your irrelevance, this isn't a soapbox for your waffle. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 18:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Both of you stop squabbling, you are both coming very close to breaching WP:CIVIL. Major Bonkers, WP:OR is quite clear that reliable sources are to be used unless another reliable source directly contradicts it, in which case the contradiction should be discussed (in a footnote if not in the article itself). No one here would, I am sure, suggest that the BBC is not a reliable source. Yes, there are clearly questions raised by the primary sources you have uncovered but they cannot be inserted into the article unless supported by reliable secondary sources which you have so far not provided. Should you provide these sources then your concerns can be represented in the article, but until you do then the talk page is the only page you can represent them. One Night in Hackney, do not be uncivil. Major Bonkers is free to raise problems like this on talk page without the risk of being verbally attacked as you have done above. Your response above was out of proportion and unpleasant. Both of you must calm down, step back and observe Wikipedia rules before continuing this debate. --Jackyd101 (talk) 20:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Ed Henty

The Greenslade reference is the only one that states that Henty ignored warnings (I have checked), so the edit of 19 January 2011 wasn't totally wrong. The text is “[NOTW editor Patsy Chapman] was devastated by the death of a photographer, Ed Henty, who was killed in April 1993 by an IRA bomb planted at Bishopsgate in the City of London. He was a freelance on assignmnent for the NoW and video film showed that he had ignored police warnings to enter a cordoned off area. Despite that, Chapman took his death personally.” Bowyer Bell doesn’t mention Henty at all so I’ve moved that one away from him. Ewx (talk) 09:21, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Kindly stop disrupting this article by moving references you have never read. I say read, as you have clearly relied on a simple Google Books search. Bowyer Bell mentions Henty's actions, he just doesn't mention his name. Your edits have the effect of implying certain sources only source particular parts of the sentence, when most of them source more than one part. The sentence does not need footnote clutter in violation of the relevant guideline, particularly when the supposedly contentious part is as the very end of the sentence anyway. 2 lines of K₃₀₃ 13:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Your tone leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, I did use Google books; not spotting an entry in Bowyer-Bell was an honest mistake.Ewx (talk) 13:53, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.caj.ca/mediamag/fall2001/opinion.html
  • In 1993 Bishopsgate bombing on 2011-05-25 06:03:39, 404 Not Found
  • In 1993 Bishopsgate bombing on 2011-06-08 02:00:28, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 02:00, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

The explosion was equivalent to 1,200 kg of TNT (one kiloton)

Surely 1,200 kg is around one ton, not one kiloton? I am sure similar-sized explosions have occurred in Britain numerous times, in WWII and otherwise. I'll delete this section unless anyone objects. Dave w74 (talk) 02:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

This is the best prove that not all published sources undergo the 'strict scruntiny' of Wikipedia ;) Oppenheimer crass confusion (1,200 kg TNT = 1 kiloton) was inadvertently transcribed by me to the article from the title of the book's sub-chapter: Bishopsgate - A 1-kiloton bomb. Despite his surname, Oppenheimer was obviously badly wrong :). We could speculate about the yield as opposed to the weight of the explosive, but apparently the ammonium-nitrate power is almost identical to the TNT's, depending of the mixture.

The bomb, however, apparently had "the explosive power of a small tactical nuclear weapon ('mini nuke') - but without the radiation." The main source cited by Oppenheimer for this (in spite of his poor grasp of physics :) is a Home Office pamphlet,Bussiness as Usual: Maximising Business Resilience to Terrorist Bombings, case study Bishopsgate. He also mentions the Los Alamos National Laboratory as one of his "scientific sources". The smallest nuclear devices, at least the American ones, are however ten times more powerful (10 tons of TNT). In Oppenheimer defence we must note that he suggests that what matches a mini-nuke is the material destruction caused by the bomb, not its yield (p. 132).

I think that Oppenheimer statement that "Bishopsgate was at the time the most powerful device ever exploded in Britain" is basically true, since the biggest German bombs and tactical rockets that fell upon Britan in WWII had warheads of less than 900 kg., a midget when compared with something like the British blockbuster or Grand Slam bombs.

Conclusion: we have three main points from Oppenheimer; the yield of the IRA device (definitively wrong), the comparision with 'mini-nukes' (dubious or vaguely true) and the fact that Bishopsgate's was the biggest single bomb (true, since we have a source and no evidence contradicting it). Thus I will restore: 1) the TNT equivalent (not one kiloton, obviously) and 2) that the device was the biggest single terrorist bomb to explode in England at that time (1993). Let me know if you disagree. Regards, and thanks for exposing Oppenheimer's error.--Darius (talk) 01:12, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

P/S: I found a quite reliable source which confirms Oppenheimer mistake, but at the same time ratifies the "small tactical weapon effect" See Jane's intelligence digest: the global early-warning service.--Darius (talk) 02:29, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the addition entirely, since in one sentence you're completely misquoting Oppenheimer. It is unclear whether Oppenheimer is talking about Britain or Britain. The latter is definitely incorrect as the bomb that blew up the forensics lab in Northern Ireland (September 1992) was larger. If the former I've got a kind of "so what?" feeling. The IRA only started using the huge AN/ANFO car/truck bombs in England in 1992 with that Baltic Exchange bomb, and other than Bishopsgate the others were Docklands and Manchester in 1996, the latter being bigger than Bishopsgate. So the "second largest out of a total of four" doesn't really seem to be that relevant, especially not as an isolated sentence. 2 lines of K₃₀₃ 13:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, Oppenheimer is talking about Britain, thus I didn't misquote him, I've just cited something that could be open to interpretation. I agree, however, that the 'record' set by this explosion is not relevant at all. Nevertheless, the explosive power of the AN/ANFO device is well sourced and quite relevant, thus I will restore that part of the sentence.--Darius (talk) 16:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

There's a substantial and very important difference between "The explosion produced the effect of a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon" and "The truck-bomb had the explosive power of 1,200 kg of TNT, the equivalent of a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon" ;) 2 lines of K₃₀₃ 09:51, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

No matter how much I try, I still don't find any references about the fallout ;). Best regards.--Darius (talk) 13:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The comparison to a tactical nuclear weapon is wrong. It only came about because of the confusion between 1,200kg and 1 kiloton. A 1,200kg bomb is an order of magnitude smaller than the smallest nuclear weapon ever produced, and ten thousand times smaller than a more typical tactical nuke. The fact this error has been repeated by Jane's is immaterial, it's still plainly wrong and very misleading. A more honest comparison would be with a WW2 block buster conventional bomb Tom k&e (talk) 17:00, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

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Adams/Hume quote

John Hume and Gerry Adams issued their first joint statement on the same day as the bombing, stating, "We accept that the Irish people as a whole have a right to national self-determination. This is a view shared by a majority of the people of this island, though not by all its people", and that, "The exercise of self-determination is a matter for agreement between the people of Ireland".

Looking at the statement it seems to be about talks that took place earlier in the month, and doesn't refer directly or indirectly to events in London. Contemporary news reports don't seem to link the two - for example this report in the (Irish) Sunday Tribune puts it in the context of an interview given by a British politician the previous week, but doesn't mention the bombing at all. I was able to find one report that vaguely suggested the statement was issued a little earlier than the bombing (Scotland on Sunday: "...struck as it was revealed that..."), but haven't been able to confirm this either way. Regardless, I think it seems fairly clear this statement wasn't intended to be taken as a response to the bombing, and nor was it interpreted as one at the time. I'll remove it from the article. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:05, 24 April 2024 (UTC)