MOST of the War Cabinet, including John Major, ducked when they heard the first mortar bomb explode in the Downing Street garden just 50 yards away. ╥It seemed a good thing to do,╙ said one official.
The War Cabinet had been in session for 10 minutes. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Mellor, sitting with his back to the windows, was in the middle of reporting on his trip to the Gulf states.
His report was interrupted by an explosion, the sound of cracking glass and a blast of cold air. ╥We were all sitting there and there was a hell of a bang,╙ one minister said. Most instinctively ducked down by the side of their chairs. The first explosion was followed by what one person present called ╥two muted plops╙.
The window nearest the Attorney General, 6ft away, took most of the blast, with the window behind Douglas Hurd also damaged.
The toughened glass in both shattered but then sagged as it took the force of the blast, which was absorbed by the billowing ╥bomb blast╙ net curtains, anchored with lead weights. The silence was broken by Mr Major. ╥I think we had better start again somewhere else.╙ Tom King, with his experience as a former Northern Ireland Secretary, warned the 15 men in the room not to look out of the windows. Instead they quickly left. ╥You don╒t go and look. You get out,╙ one official said.
They filed out: the Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Chancellor, Norman Lamont, Energy Secretary, John Wakeham, Trade and Industry Secretary, Peter Lilley, Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, Defence Secretary, Tom King, and Air Marshall Sir David Craig, Chief of the Defence Staff. Alongside Mr Major were his officials Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary, the Foreign Affairs Adviser, Sir Percy Cradock, his private secretaries, Andrew Turnbull and Sir Charles Powell, his press secretary, Gus O╒Donnell, and notetaker, Len Appleyard.
Even before the police had finished putting up shutters on the Cabinet Room windows, Mr Hurd was already starting to outline plans for his weekend visit to the Gulf, as the war committee resumed its work within 10 minutes in a secure room in the neighbouring Cabinet Office complex.
All that was recorded in the Cabinet minutes was: ╥A brief interruption to the war committee of the Cabinet took place.╙The last occupant of No 10, Margaret Thatcher, who is in Los Angeles for Ronald Reagan╒s 80th birthday, expressed stronger emotion than her successor. She said she telephoned Mr Major as soon as she heard. ╥I╒m glad to hear he and all members of 10 Downing Street are safe. Nothing is totally safe today from a terrorist attack. We must just take all the precautions we can.╙
