The Provos launched a 1973 movement to bring the warfare to England rather than continue to shoulder the whole burden of fighting within Northern Ireland. After assembling just under a dozen volunteers that included the Price sisters, Adams orchestrated a plot to plant car bombs right in “the heart of the Empire” (117), meaning London. The spectacle, they thought, would force England to confront the implications of its imperial past and present.

Bomb makers in Northern Ireland converted sedans into drivable bombs with timers—a practice initiated the year prior in Belfast, where the unpredictable explosions terrorized anyone who might find themselves near parked cars. IRA drivers and passengers occupied the cars as they took the ferry to Liverpool, England.

They planned to park the cars at symbolic locations throughout the city: one at an Army recruiting center, one at the British Forces Broadcasting Service, one at New Scotland Yard (the headquarters for police in London), and one at the Old Baily, a criminal court building. The bombers could leave the cars behind, spend a night in the city, and fly out of London the next morning before the timers, and bombs, went off in the afternoon. They were also to issue a phone warning an hour in advance to the local media with the bomb locations to avoid a crisis involving casualties.