[2] It targeted the city's infrastructure and economy and caused significant damage, estimated by insurers at £700 million (equivalent to £1.3 billion in 2023), a sum surpassed only by the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing, also by the IRA.

[3] At the time, England was hosting the Euro '96 football championships and a Russia vs. Germany match was scheduled to take place in Manchester the following day.

More than 200 people were injured, but there were no fatalities[5] despite the strength of the bomb, which has been largely credited to the rapid response of emergency services in evacuating the city centre.

The perpetrators have not been caught, and although Greater Manchester Police (GMP) had suggested it was unlikely that anyone will be charged in connection with the bombing,[10] a suspect was arrested on 8 September 2022.

In 1975, IRA bomb factories were found in Greater Manchester, and five men were imprisoned for planning attacks in North West England.

[15] On 3 December 1992, the IRA detonated two small bombs in Manchester city centre, forcing police to evacuate thousands of shoppers.

John Major's government, dependent on Ulster Unionist Party votes, then began insisting that the IRA must fully disarm before there could be any all-party negotiations.

[1] After setting the bomb's timer, two men—wearing hooded jackets, baseball caps and sunglasses—left the vehicle and walked to Cathedral Street, where a third man picked them up in a Ford Granada car,[26] which was later abandoned in Preston.

[1][35] One group worked to move people away from the bomb while another, assisted by firefighters and security guards, established a continuously expanding cordon around the area to prevent entry.

[1] It was the largest peacetime bomb ever detonated in Great Britain,[15] and the blast created a mushroom cloud which rose 300 metres (1,000 feet) from the ground.

[41] The bombing was condemned by British Prime Minister John Major and his government, by the opposition, and by individual members of parliament (MPs) as a "sickening", "callous" and "barbaric" terrorist attack.

Bruton described the bombing as "a slap in the face to people who've been trying, against perhaps their better instincts, to give Sinn Féin a chance to show that they could persuade the IRA to reinstate the ceasefire".

He insisted that his party was committed to achieving a peace settlement and argued "it is sheer folly to return to the old agenda of excluding Sinn Féin and seeking to isolate republicans".

There were ultimately only a few incidents, the most serious of which occurred on the evening of the bombing, when a gang of ten men rampaged through an Irish-themed bar in the centre of Middleton, shouting the Ulster loyalist slogan "No surrender" and smashing furniture and windows.

[52] In an effort to trace the route of the Ford van, police examined CCTV footage from every major road and motorway taken in England within two days of the bombing.

On 15 July, Metropolitan police arrested six men suspected of IRA membership: Donal Gannon, John Crawley, Gerard Hanratty, Robert Morrow, Patrick Martin, and Francis Rafferty.

After the purchase price was delivered in cash by a taxi driver, the dealer was instructed to take the van to a nearby lorry park, and leave it there with the keys and documents hidden inside.

On 27 June, the phone's registered owner reported that it had been stolen 17 days earlier, but the police felt they had gathered enough evidence to bring a prosecution against the six IRA men held in London.

[57] At a meeting attended by the commander of Special Branch in Manchester, a GMP assistant chief constable and a "senior officer" from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), it was decided, for reasons never made public, not to present the findings of the investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the body responsible for undertaking criminal prosecutions in England.

[59][60] Early in 1999, Steve Panter, chief crime reporter for the Manchester Evening News, leaked classified Special Branch documents naming those suspected of the bombing.

The documents also revealed that the man suspected of organising the attack had visited Manchester shortly after the bombing and been under covert police surveillance as he toured the devastated city centre before returning to his home in South Armagh.

[61] Suspicion fell on Mutch as the source of the leaked documents after an analysis of mobile phone records placed both him and Panter at the same hotel in Skipton, North Yorkshire, about 40 miles (64 km) from Manchester on the same evening.

During the trial, Panter was found in contempt of court for refusing to reveal his source,[70] an offence punishable by a term of imprisonment without the right of appeal.

Marks & Spencer took the opportunity to acquire and demolish the adjacent Longridge House, using the enlarged site for the world's biggest branch of the store.

[73] The company's fortunes changed during construction, and Selfridges subsequently co-occupied the building;[78] Marks & Spencer leased part of the Lewis's store in the interim.

The landlord of the Corn Exchange invoked a force majeure condition in the lease to evict all tenants, and the building was converted into a shopping centre.

"[86] Thatcher's victory effectively put paid to Manchester's "socialist experiment", and Stringer shortly afterwards wrote a letter of capitulation to Nicholas Ridley, then Secretary of State for the Environment, saying, "in a nutshell; OK, you win, we'd like to work together with you".

[88] Many locals therefore considered that "the bomb was the best thing that ever happened to Manchester",[89] as it cleared the way for redevelopment of the dysfunctional city centre, a view also expressed in 2007 by Terry Rooney, MP for Bradford North.

The leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition on Manchester City Council, Simon Ashley, responded that "I take exception to his [Rooney's] comments about the IRA bomb.

Tom Bloxham, chairman of property development group Urban Splash and of the Arts Council England (North West), agreed with Bernstein that the bomb attack was not the trigger for the large-scale redevelopment that has taken place in Manchester since the early 1990s: For me the turning point for Manchester came before the bomb ... it was the second Olympic Games bid [in 1992] when we lost but the city suddenly had a realisation.