1971 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing

1971 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing, Shankill
Part of the Troubles
Leading Ambulanceman Bob Scott removes the body of the youngest victim, Colin Nicholl, from under the rubble
Location	Balmoral Furniture Company showroom, Lower Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Date	11 December 1971 12.25 p.m.
Attack type	Bombing
Deaths	4 civilians
Injured	19

The Balmoral Furniture Company bombing was a paramilitary attack that took place on 11 December 1971 on Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, resulting in four deaths.

On the 11 December 1971, the 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 (IRA) in retaliation for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) bombing of McGurk's Bar 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 (RUC) 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 (UDA). Four such men were Tommy Lyttle, Michael Stone, Sammy Duddy, and Billy McQuiston.

Along with the earlier bombing of McGurk's bar by loyalists, the Balmoral Furniture Company bombing was one of the catalysts which sparked a series of tit-for-tat bombings and shootings by loyalists and republicans that made the 1970s the bloodiest decade in the 30-year history of the Troubles.^[1]