Search Results - Jan Taylor

Jan Taylor

Jan Alexander Taylor (known as Jan Taylor, born 18 November 1943) is an English-born left-wing activist in London and later an IRA member who was convicted in 1994 of bombing Harrods. Having had a career as a young man in the British Army, during which time he won a United Nations Peace Medal, he joined the violent anti-fascist group Red Action, a group which also had links to the Irish republican movement. He was arrested and convicted on minor charges on several occasions, such as advocating support for proscribed organisations, but by 1993 the Security Service had lost sight of him.

Arrested with another man, Patrick Hayes, for the Harrods bomb and several other offences, Taylor was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment the following year. However, under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 he became eligible for early release, and in December the following year he was among the last IRA men to be so released. Neither the police nor MI5 ever discovered for certain what motivated Taylor to make the shift from English working-class politics to physical force Irish Republicanism, and the topic remains a subject of speculation. Provided by Wikipedia