U.K. bombing claim

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33675, 26 October 1974, Page 17

U.K. bombing claim

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) j LONDON, j October 25. j A new guerrilla group j which claims that it has “begun bombing Britain « towards the Left” : emerged last night,J shortly after an abortive explosives attack in < Birmingham. J A spokesman for the ! group, calling itself Red j Flag ’74, telephoned the Press Association, claiming responsibility for the five bombings in and around - London over the last two weeks. The caller said that Red Flag ’74 had killed six people in two blasts at Guildford on October 5, and was responsible for three i London club bombings; but he denied responsibility for the bomb explosion at the famous public school, Harrow. ( The attack in Birmingham ( — when a woman magis- ,

trate’s car was found boobytrapped with gelignite, is believed by the city police to have been the work of a splinter-group of the Irish Republican Army. The magistrate’s husband, a retired army colonel, spotted the booby-trap, and it was rendered safe by bomb-disposal experts. Police sources say that the existence of the purported Red Flag ’74 movement is being treated with some scepticism at present. They say that the Guildford bombings, aimed at bars frequented by troops stationed nearby, seem to have been the work of Irish guerrillas.

In his call to the news agency last night, the Red Flag '74 spokesman said that his group had connections with the International Marxist Group, which immediately issued a denial of involvement in any bomb attacks. The Red Flag spokesman said: “We are militant Leftwingers, and we intend to push the country by force to the Left. We have been formed a matter of only a few weeks. We are more or less a student body, an amateur body, and are getting better. We have done training with some of the I.R.A. people, and some of the explosives came from them. But we go our way, and they go theirs. “We telephoned the police a few weeks ago, 8.8. C. television and I.T.N. at various times, and we have given them warnings about the bombings at Guildford, the Army and Navy Club, the Victory Club, and Brooks’s, and that is all — not the Harrow thing.”