Making Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict

by David McKittrick

February 1978 brought another of those events which recurred periodically during the republican campaign, in which the IRA both inflicted great human tragedy and damaged its own interests. This was the bombing of La Mon House, a small hotel on the outskirts of east Belfast. IRA members attached a bomb to a grille on a window, as they had done at several other business premises, and made off. But unlike other occasions the warning given was inadequate and the premises had not been evacuated when the device went off. The result was devastating. The device produced an effect similar to napalm, sending a fireball rushing through the window and through a room containing dozens of people attending the annual dinner-dance of the Irish Collie Club. A waitress said later: ‘People were on fire, actually burning alive. I watched men pulling long curtains off the rails and wrapping people up in them to try to put out the flames. I could smell the burning flesh. I didn’t realise at the time what I was smelling but I realised later what that dreadful stench was.’ The explosion killed twelve people, seven of them women, and injured more than thirty others.