IIt’s only a short walk from a deserted Monument to Tower 42 and our last stop on the tour of the deserted City. Despite now being right in the middle of the towering cityscape and the real heart of the financial district, the roads are still clear. There are no longer queues for SushiSamba or Duck and Waffle just a few odd people looking slightly lost. It is here that I pause outside 99 Bishopsgate for reflection on one of the darker episodes in the City’s recent history.

Our views on terrorism are now overshadowed by the complex world created post September 11th and the July 2007 bombings, the recent London Bridge attacks forming the latest in a string of assaults against the general populace. Many of these seem to strengthen our sense of identity rather than undermine it (is there anything more stereotypically London than a man taking on an armed terrorist with a decorative narwhal tusk?). However, terrorism has had a long history within the City, much of which is now thankfully forgotten.

In 1867, a group of Fenians (a group that were seeking the establishment of an independent Ireland) bombed Clerkenwell prison to rescue prisoners. A series of dynamite explosions followed in 1883 -1884 when Scotland Yard, Whitehall and the Times were all targeted. At the beginning of the 20th Century (and in common with many countries) there rose an increasingly violent anarchist movement in the UK. It culminated in the infamous Sidney Street siege where Winston Churchill (aided by the army) set about attacking a group of anarchists who shot three policemen and retreated to a hideout. 

By the early 90s, the main threat of terrorism in the UK was the mainland bombing campaign undertaken by the IRA. The peace brought by the Good Friday Agreement makes it hard to remember (or imagine if you happen to be young enough) the scale of the damage caused by the bombing campaign that was being carried out across the UK. But it was enormous and warnings were regularly dialled in by the IRA causing mass evacuations and disruptions.

These disruptions reached the City in 1992 on the site of the Gherkin. At the time, this was dominated by the Grade II listed Baltic Exchange. Built between 1900 and 1903 it housed an exchange where most of the world’s cargo and freight was arranged. It is estimated that half of the world’s ships were sold in the building. 

On 10 April 1992, an IRA bomb exploded outside killing three people and damaging significant sections of the building. Despite a good deal of controversy, it was decided that London’s last Edwardian trading floor would need to be dismantled and sold. Its following history is bizarre: much of the building ending up in barns around Cheshire and Kent. Finally, it was bought by an Estonian businessman who shipped it to Tallinn for reconstruction. Financial delays have slowed the project to create a new building in that city and the remnants have sat in shipping containers for over 10 years. The irony of the exchange where shipping cargo space was traded ending up as cargo space should not be lost on anyone.

The financial impact on the City was significant, as was the architectural. Without the IRA bombing of the Baltic Exchange, there would have been no Gherkin. Seeing the effect, the IRA campaign continued to focus on the City and a second bomb was set off on 24 April 1993 outside 99 Bishopsgate.

Despite a phoned warning and the fact that the bomb was planted on a Sunday, one person was killed (a News of the World photographer who rushed to the scene) and 44 people were injured. 

The IRA warning “there’s a massive bomb clear a wide area” turned out to be a massive understatement. The one tonne bomb (held in a stolen truck) blasted a 15 foot crater in the street and blew out many of the windows of Tower 42. Opposite number 99, St Ethelburga church was destroyed (now rebuilt in the original style). The total cost of the damage was £350 million. Some historians have suggested that the financial damage to the string of bombings that targeted England’s financial centres was downplayed for political reasons. 

As an aside, it’s worth remembering that, as big as the bomb was it was tiny compared to World War Two standards. The typical area bombing load of a single Lancaster bomber was one 4,000lb high explosive bomb (a “cookie”) followed by 2,832 4lb incendiary bombs. The cookie alone was almost twice the size of the IRA bomb at Billingsgate and literally hundreds of these fell on German cities every night.

The reaction in the City was pretty immediate as was the desire to secure the area from future damage. Incredibly the City of London’s Chief Planning Officer called for the demolition of Tower 42 (no more Champagne bar!) and the removal of a host of 1970s building and their replacement with something better. He was not listened to and the buildings around 99 Billingsgate have remained very similar to what they were previously (unlike Manchester that won many plaudits for redesigning its city centre following the destruction of the Arndale Centre and surrounding streets by the biggest bomb exploded by the IRA on the mainland).

The City of London police set up the “Ring of Steel”.  Routes into the City were closed and checkpoints set up. You can still see them today, small police boxes followed by a kink in the road. They look less like a Ring of Steel and more like a set of lonely and forgotten sentries from a forgotten period of our history.

You might also not realise that some of your working practices are directly influenced by the bombing. The introduction of clear desk policies were a direct result of Bishopsgate as the blown out windows scattered thousands of pages of confidential client information across the City. I remember being told, while on secondment at Barclays, that it was crucial we locked all our papers at the end of every evening for this very reason. 

The bombing was also largely responsible for the introduction of disaster recovery systems across the City. While you’re logging on via Citrix, it’s worth spending a minute contemplating how we have been able to continue to do work and connect with one another so fluently.

Despite the cost of the damage almost causing the collapse of Lloyds of London, City life returned to normal and the IRA ceased their bombing operations in England shortly after (until the Canary Wharf bombing in 1996). Yet another example of huge damage in the Square Mile having little affect on people going to work.

Having written these articles over the past five weeks (where has the time gone?) it seems like things are slowly returning to normal. Pubs are open, people are slowly meeting up again and the working world is beginning to awake. But, having visited the City last week, it is still quiet and empty – it’s difficult to imagine that people are going to be in any hurry to get back to the rush hour and the Tube remains largely off limits. The world has changed during lockdown. But I query whether all these changes are negative. The City has proved that it can work remotely, people have spent more time with their families and perhaps claimed back an element of work/life balance and the joy that goes with working flexibly. 

The City has endured rebellion, fire, financial collapse and an awful lot of bombs. It has changed and adapted just as we all have done over the past few weeks. It will continue to do so. If there is anything that we can learn from the incredible events that have dominated the financial centre over the last 800 years, it’s that nothing is really new and that, however bad things appear now, someone else has probably had it worse. More importantly, despite the massive adversity individuals in the City have faced, they helped rebuild the district into one of the major financial centres of the world. We should do the same.