Monday, December 17, 2007

BURNED OUT GETAWAY CAR FOUND—used in IRA kidnap plot




PICTURED: Detectives examine the damaged car outside Mr. Denis Howell’s house in Moor Green Lane.



October 1974
The wife of Sports Minister Denis Howell miraculously escaped injury on Monday night (28-10-74) when a bomb blasted their family car. Windows in houses nearby were shattered by the explosion as Mrs. Howell backed the car out of their drive. But she and her ten-year-old son David, who was with her in the car, escaped with only a bad shaking-up. Their escape was a miracle. For as Mrs. Brenda Howell backed the car into Moor Green Lane in Briminghan’s, Warwickshire, smart Moseley suburb, a thin cotton thread was all that stood between them and sudden death. It broke – and saved their lives. The cotton had been holding a 2-pound gelignite bomb to the exhaust pipe of the Howell’s with Ford Cortina. When the cotton broke, the bomb fell away from the car and exploded in the drive, the bomb fell away from the car and exploded in the drive as the car began to pull away. Instead of blasting the car’s occupants to almost certain death, the bomb ripped a hole in the drive and scorched paving slabs.

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