Admiral Duncan Pub - Bombing

Bombing

On the evening of 30 April 1999, the Admiral Duncan was the scene of a bomb blast that killed three people and wounded around 70. The bomb was the third that had been planted by Neo-Nazi David Copeland, who was attempting to stir up ethnic and homophobic tensions by carrying out a series of bombings.

Copeland's previous bomb attacks, on 17 April and 24 April, had made Londoners wary. Although they had been described as race-hate attacks, police had issued a warning that a gay bar could be the bomber's next target, and The Yard – another pub in the area – had displayed a poster warning customers to be alert. The unattended bag containing the bomb was noticed by patrons of the Admiral Duncan; however the bomb exploded at 6:37 p.m., just as the bag was being investigated by the pub manager, Mark Taylor.

The dead were identified as Andrea Dykes, 27, four months pregnant; her friend, Nik Moore, 31; and John Light, 32, the best man at the wedding of Andrea and her husband, who was himself seriously injured. Copeland was arrested by the police on the same evening as the bombing.

A large open air meeting was spontaneously organised in Soho Square on the Sunday following the attack, attended by thousands. Among the speeches was one from the Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner who undertook to maintain a crime scene van outside the pub to take witness statements and gather evidence until the perpetrator was found; the van would be staffed entirely with openly gay and lesbian police officers. This was a turning point for the often tempestuous relationship between the LGBT community and the Metropolitan Police.

Copeland was convicted of three murders and three offences of planting bombs on the 30 June 2000 and given six life sentences, one for each of these offences. His minimum sentence was 30 years, though the trial judge spoke of his doubt that it would ever be safe to release him. He was sentenced to be confined at Broadmoor Hospital. On 2 March 2007, at a hearing at the High Court, Mr Justice Burton increased Copeland's minimum sentence to 50 years, stating this was "necessary for the protection of the public". Copeland's release will not occur until 2049 at the earliest, when he will be 73 years old.

There is a memorial chandelier with an inscription and a plaque in the bar to memorialise those killed in the blast and the many more who were injured, several very seriously; a number of people lost eyes or limbs.

The playwright Jonathan Cash, then working for Gay Times, was among the injured. He later used the experience as the basis for his play, The First Domino, about a fictional terrorist being interviewed by a psychiatrist in a top-security prison.

Bar manager David Morley, who was also injured in the bombing, was murdered in London on 30 October 2004.