The Brighton Bomb

 

My failure to kill former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made it possible for future peace talks to take place.

Patrick Magee

 

The bombing of the Conservative Party Conference at Brighton in 1984 sent shock waves through Britain. This was the first time a terrorist attack aimed at assassinating the entire British government cabinet had taken place on the mainland. On October 12, in the early hours of the morning, a huge explosion ripped through the Grand Hotel, where senior party members were staying. Such was the force of the blast that a huge section of façade of the building was blown off, several interior floors collapsed, and a fog of thick dust hung in the air for hours afterwards. Incredibly, all the members of the cabinet, including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, escaped with their lives. However, five people were killed, and 34 were injured, including Mary Tebbit, the wife of cabinet minister Norman Tebbit, who was left permanently disabled. After the attack, the Provisional Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility, issuing a chilling warning: ‘Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky always.’

 

Bomb in the Bathroom

 

That year, Conservative party members had gathered from all over the country for their annual conference in Brighton. Top MPs and officials stayed at the Grand Hotel, an impressive, old-fashioned Victorian hotel on Brighton’s promenade. There were also party members and media crews staying next door, at the Metropole Hotel and at other hotels in the area. As always, there was something of a festive air at the conference, with crowds gathering to cheer politicians’ speeches and celebrating afterwards, staying up drinking and talking until the small hours. The fact that the prime minister was celebrating her 59th birthday during the conference added to the general excitement that year.

The night before the bomb went off, Prime Minister Thatcher was working late at her desk, preparing her speech for the next day. She was well known for her ability to function on as little as four hours’ sleep a night, and it was this trait that saved her. Had she been in her bedroom, she would almost certainly have died, since a bomb had been secretly placed in a bathroom nearby. As it was, the part of the hotel where she was working escaped the worst of the blast.

 

A Smoking Ruin

 

After the bomb detonated, there was initial confusion. Firefighters at the local station received an emergency signal from the hotel, and at first thought the alarm had been accidentally set off by a drunk, which had often happened in the past. However, as they reached the hotel, it became clear that this was no false alarm: the hotel was a smoking ruin, its front blasted off and a pall of dust hanging in the air around it. As the emergency services began work on clearing the wreckage and leading the survivors to safety, camera crews arrived to film the event. Thus it was that viewers were able to see the prime minister’s immediate reaction to the event, as she walked out of the debris and calmly greeted the emergency workers with a polite, ‘Good morning. Thank you for coming.’

Thatcher’s ruthless determination as a political leader, and her right-wing social and economic policies, which many felt to be hardhearted and unsympathetic to all but the most able in society, had earned her the nickname ‘the Iron Lady’: in this instance, however, her stoicism in the face of disaster showed that the name had its positive aspect, too.

 

End of an Era

 

As the dust – literally – began to settle, the damage that the bomb had done began to emerge. Five people were dead: Sir Anthony Berry MP, Regional Chairman Eric Taylor, and three wives of Conservative politicians (Jeanne Shattock, Roberta Wakeman and Muriel Maclean). In addition, Mary Tebbit, the wife of Cabinet Minister Norman Tebbit, had been seriously injured. She survived, but she was left disabled for the rest of her life. Scores of people were taken to hospital with lesser injuries. Considering the force of the blast, there were remarkably few casualties: however, the damage to the morale of the Conservative Party, and to the way of life of the British nation, was immense.

Up until the Brighton bombing, political rallies in Britain took place in a relatively relaxed atmosphere; often, even high-profile figures were able to move freely among the public without a great deal of supervision. However, from the day of the Brighton bombing, that changed dramatically: security was stepped up to the maximum degree, and events such as party conferences became tense, tightly controlled affairs in which the general public were kept well away from politicians and officials. Sadly, this made the events less enjoyable for everyone, politicians and public alike; but with the threat of terror attacks hanging over any major political gathering, there seemed to be no alternative.

 

A Campaign of Terror

 

The immediate suspects for the bombing were the Provisional IRA, who had openly pledged a campaign of terror attacks against the British government unless it withdrew troops from Northern Ireland. Later, they released a statement claiming responsibility for the attack and issuing a warning that such attacks would continue indefinitely until their objective was met.

Despite this, Prime Minister Thatcher went on to give her speech as planned that day, much to the admiration of her followers. During her speech, she took the opportunity to reiterate her stand against terrorism, declaring, ‘This attack has failed. All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail’. She continued: ‘This government will not weaken; this nation will meet the challenge; democracy will prevail.’ The prime minister received a standing ovation for her address, and it became clear that the IRA’s action, far from undermining confidence in the government, had in fact increased the nation’s sympathy towards them.

 

Suspect Hunted Down

 

It was clear who the culprits behind the bomb attack were: but how had they managed to plant a large explosive device in the hotel and detonate it during the conference? Forensic investigation revealed that the bomb had been hidden in the bathroom of Room 629 of the hotel, a full three weeks before the explosion. A large amount of Semtex had been attached to a long-delay fuse and hidden behind a bath panel. When the hotel records were checked, it was found that a man had checked into the room at that time using a false name. A fingerprint on his hotel registration card was found, which was matched against a fingerprint found at the Rubens Hotel, London, where a similar bomb had been planted, but which had been defused before it could detonate. The two fingerprints were identical. Clearly, the same bomber was at work in both attacks.

The police also had in their possession the fingerprint of Patrick McGee, a leading member of the IRA who was known to have committed bombing offences. This imprint had been taken when McGee had been stopped as a teenager for a driving offence, decades before. The two sets of the hotel bomber’s fingerprints were now matched with this one, and they were found to be exactly the same.

 

The Aftermath

 

Now the police had a suspect: their next step was to find him. Since McGee was a known IRA bomber, police had conducted surveillance on him for some time, so it was not long before he was tracked down and arrested in Glasgow. Soon afterwards, he was brought to trial, convicted, and was sentenced to life imprisonment – eight times over. However, in 1999, he was freed, after serving only 14 years of his sentence. His reprieve came as part of the Good Friday Agreement, a political initiative that aimed to address issues of conflict and national identity in Ireland for the first time. As such, the agreement was an important step in negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland: however, there were many who felt that McGee did not deserve to be released as part of this process.

In prison, McGee followed an Open University course, gaining both a BA and a PhD. However, he remained unrepentant about the bombing. He then began to correspond and meet with victims of the bombing and their relatives, most notably Jo Berry, the daughter of murdered Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry.

In a further strange twist, 20 years later, the apartment that McGee had rented during the Brighton bombing was also occupied by Abu al-Hindi who was suspected of being a top operative for Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist group al-Qaeda, and it was subsequently raided by police.

So what is the legacy of the Brighton bombing? In hindsight, it remains debatable whether the British government did, in fact, as Thatcher claimed, stand firm on the issue of terrorism. A year after the attack, the Prime Minister signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, conceding for the first time that the Republic of Ireland had a role to play in the future of Northern Ireland, and setting in motion the negotiations that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement. Whether or not the Brighton bombing was a factor in prompting the process is difficult to say, but it is certainly the case that the IRA’s extended campaign of violence focussed attention on the need for both the British and the Irish to bring the situation to a peaceful conclusion as quickly as possible.