'Rose Dugdale fighting for the working class? She was killing the working class!' Brother of 15-year-old Essex girl blown up by IRA speaks out

Robert Carter, a cockney builder whose sister Danielle was blown up in 1992, said that those heaping praise on the now-dead upper-class IRA fanatic are “scumbags”.

Rose Dugdale was born into the elite of English society, was schooled in Kensington, and studied philosophy at Oxford.

But she turned on her rich family and ran off to join the IRA, first working as a hands-on hijacker, thief, and bomber, then later as a weapons designer and Sinn Fein activist, on the hardline Marxist wing of the party.

She died last week and her funeral was at Glasnevin, Dublin, on Wednesday, where Sinn Fein figures like Martina Anderson and Aengus O Snodaigh praised her contribution to “human rights” and “the workers”.

Full story on that here:

• Woman who helped the IRA to murder dozens of people praised by Sinn Fein as a champion of human rights and the oppressed

One of Dugdale’s main innovations was a new type of explosive known as “Ballycroy 3-4”, which she concocted and tested on a Co Mayo beach in the 1980s.

It went into, among many other devices, the Baltic Exchange bomb in London which killed three civilians, including Danielle.

Speaking to the News Letter from the construction site he was working on in London (alongside about 30 Irishmen, under an Irish-owned company), Mr Carter said he bears no ill-will towards the Irish public over the murder of his sister.

But he finds Sinn Fein "disgusting" and wonders "how can Sinn Fein be in government"

He had never heard of Dugdale's role in the Baltic Exchange bomb before – which is not surprising since much of the details of her IRA weapons work only became apparent through the investigations of Sean O'Driscoll, an Irish journalist, whose biography of Dugdale (‘Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber’) was published in 2022.

He said those heaping praise on Dugdale are just "a bunch of scumbags".

"She was just a murderer," he said.

"She killed my sister, 15 years old. She's meant to be for the working class and everything like that? She's been killing the working class!

"People like this really get me going 'cause they ain't got a f**king clue what they're fighting for.

"She did nine years in prison? My sister's been dead for 32. If she made this bomb that killed my sister, she should've been accountable for it.

"They're just scumbags. She's getting praise for killing kids. It's disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

"I wish they'd stuck her in an electric chair. But that's just being bitter and twisted about something I can't control."

He marvelled at the fact the IRA "destroyed families" by killing people who were "just going about their daily business", and yet “now they [Sinn Fein] are in charge”.

His family suffered a number of major problems in the wake of the murder, with his parents struggling to cope.

"That's what people forget,” said Mr Carter.

"It wasn't just my older sister got killed. I could've lost my dad, my sister, do you know what I mean? Half my family could've gone. But luckily enough, it didn't happen.”

Details of how the bombing affected the family here:

• Baltic Exchange bomb: Portrait of a family devastated by IRA bloodbath that claimed three lives – and caused untold misery to many more

He also said that the Carter family "is still fighting for a bit of compensation from the British government – we've had nothing, not a penny" since the blast over three decades ago.

Sinn Fein was invited to comment, and a response is awaited.

Here is the vivid description of the Baltic Exchange blast from Dugdale biographer Mr O’Driscoll.

The van bomb was parked up at its London target at 9.30pm on April 10, 1992, and the IRA phoned in a warning.

“Before the bomb-disposal units got to the van, it exploded,” he wrote.

"A thousand kilograms of Ballycroy 3-4 turned into white-hot gas under tremendous pressure. The gas shot outwards in all directions.

"The resulting blast was funnelled down the streets between the high buildings. The shock wave in the ground spread through the foundations of the buildings and the underground infrastructure of water, gas, electricity, communications cables and sewage pipes, destroying them all.

"A second later, the vast ball of hot gases cooled and contracted, leaving a vacuum in the streets above, sucking thousands of windows outwards. A cascade of 500 tons of broken glass fell into the deserted streets.”

The three dead were Danielle, bystander Paul Butt (29) and doorman Thomas Casey (49), whilst 91 people were injured.