On 12 October 1984 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempted to assassinate members of the British government, including the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England. Five people were killed, including the Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry; more than thirty people were injured. Thatcher was uninjured. The bombing was a key moment in the Troubles, the conflict in Northern Ireland between unionists and republicans over the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, which took place between the late 1960s and 1998.
The IRA decided to assassinate Thatcher during the 1981 Irish hunger strike. Her stance against the return of Special Category Status to republican prisoners—the status that meant they were treated as political prisoners, rather than as criminals—meant the strike was not quickly settled, and ten prisoners died. After two years of planning, including reconnoitering the 1982 and 1983 Conservative Party Conferences, a long-delay time bomb was planted in the hotel by the IRA member Patrick Magee more than three weeks before the 1984 conference. The IRA knew the hotel would be occupied by Thatcher and many of her cabinet.
The bomb exploded at 2:54 am when most guests were in bed. The force of the explosion was upwards and broke through the roof, dislodging one of the hotel's chimney stacks, which weighed five long tons (5.1 t). This crashed through several floors, killing or injuring many of the occupants. Thatcher decided to continue the conference as normal, and was given a standing ovation by delegates as she entered the stage just six and a half hours after the explosion.
The investigation took eight months. A partial palm print was found on the room registration card from when Magee checked in and police surveillance on IRA members led them to him. In 1986 he was tried, found guilty and sent to prison for eight concurrent life sentences, with the recommendation that he serve at least thirty-five years before being considered for parole. He was released under licence in June 1999 as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Negotiations between the British and Irish governments that had begun in 1980 continued despite the bombing, although the pace of the talks was slowed to ensure it did not appear that the British government was conceding to pressure because of the bomb. They resulted in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government.
Background
The Troubles in the late 1970s and 1980s
The Troubles were the conflict in Northern Ireland that began in the late 1960s between the majority population of unionists and the republican minority. The unionists—also known as loyalists—wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the UK; Irish republicans wanted Northern Ireland to leave the UK and join a united Ireland. According to the political scientist Stephen Kelly, four events impacted the approach and policies towards Northern Ireland of Margaret Thatcher, the leader of the Opposition and then prime minister: the assassination of Airey Neave; the assassination of Lord Mountbatten and the Warrenpoint ambush, which took place on the same day; and the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
In March 1979 Neave, the shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland, was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army in a car bomb attack in the Palace of Westminster. Neave was a friend and political mentor to Thatcher, who was described by her biographer Jonathan Aitken as being "numb with shock" at the news of his death.
On 27 August 1979—less than four months after Thatcher became prime minister—Mountbatten was killed by a bomb on his fishing boat, off the coast of Mullaghmore, County Sligo, in the Irish Republic. The device had been planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). On the same day, the IRA also killed eighteen British soldiers near Warrenpoint, with two bombs—the most deaths suffered in a single incident by the British Army during the Troubles.
In March 1981 Bobby Sands, an IRA member who was imprisoned at the Maze prison, Northern Ireland, went on hunger strike for the return of Special Category Status (SCS) to prisoners. SCS involved treating those prisoners under different, more favourable, conditions with the status of political prisoners rather than as criminals. It included not having to wear prison uniform and being able to freely associate with other prisoners. While on hunger strike, Sands stood in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election and won. Thatcher remained unmoved on the point of allowing Special Category Status and said "There can be no question of political status for someone who is serving a sentence for crime. Crime is crime is crime: it is not political, it is crime, and there can be no question of granting political status". Ten men died of starvation before the strike came to an end. Sands was the first to die, which he did on 5 May 1981, after 66 days of starvation; his death led to rioting in republican areas of Northern Ireland.
Because of the hunger strikes and the deaths of those involved, Thatcher was reviled by Irish republicans. According to the political scientist Richard English, Thatcher was "a republican hate-figure of Cromwellian proportions". English highlights as examples comments about Thatcher from the IRA member Danny Morrison: "that unctuous, self-righteous fucker" and "the biggest bastard we have ever known". Because of her staunch unionist position and because they considered her responsible for the deaths of the hunger strikers, the IRA leadership decided to try to assassinate her before the hunger strikes ended.
Thatcher's approach to Northern Ireland, 1979–1984
Thatcher's outlook on Northern Ireland came from an inherently unionist position; she wanted a military victory over the IRA and "integration", that is, treating Northern Ireland like the rest of the UK, rather than having separate laws and political processes. Her support for integration, however, was abandoned after Neave's death and after she came to power. According to Eamonn Kennedy, the Irish ambassador to the UK between 1978 and 1983, the murder of Neave and the deaths of British soldiers "left deep psychological scars" on her Irish outlook.
Thatcher's unionist stance was intuitive; in her autobiography she wrote "My own instincts are profoundly Unionist. ... But, then, any Conservative should in his bones be a Unionist too. Our party has always, throughout its history, been committed to the defence of the Union." Kelly considers that "Thatcher's attitude to Northern Ireland was a powerful blend of reactionary policies and personal indifference." She admitted ignorance of the nuances of Northern Irish politics, and said in her memoirs "But what British politician will ever fully understand Northern Ireland?"
According to Kelly, the focal point of Thatcher's hardline approach to Northern Ireland was security and the need to defeat paramilitary—specifically republican—violence. There was flexibility in her approach, however. During the hunger strikes, she personally gave the go-ahead for secret talks with the IRA to bring about a negotiated end to the strike. In 1980, despite saying publicly that the Irish Republic had no right to interfere with the UK's governing of Northern Ireland, she met Charles Haughey, the taoiseach (the Irish prime minister), to discuss the relationship.
Patrick Magee
Patrick Magee was born in Belfast in 1951 and moved to Norwich, Norfolk, when he was two. In 1971 he returned to Belfast, and joined the IRA in 1972 after attending a shebeen—an illicit drinking den—in the Unity Flats area of Belfast, raided by British soldiers. He was beaten and detained for thirty-six hours without charge; in 2001 he said the incident left him with "a sense of anger. Real anger. I felt I just couldn't walk away from this". He was soon assigned to be one of the IRA's "engineering officers", the organisation's term for a bomb maker. He was interned (detained without trial) at Long Kesh prison from June 1973 to November 1975. In the mid-1970s the IRA changed its structure from a battalion to a cell-based system. Each cell—also called an active service unit (ASU)—normally comprised four volunteers, of which only the leader was in contact with the level above. At this time Magee joined the England Department, the IRA's ASU that operated in England. He was periodically active there between 1978 and 1979, and in 1983.
In 1983 Magee was part of the ASU that planned to bomb the Eagle and Child pub in Lancashire, popular with soldiers as it was situated next to Weeton Barracks. His IRA handler in England was Raymond O'Connor, who rented a flat for Magee and a comrade, and drove the pair to the location to view the target. O'Connor had been arrested by Lancashire Special Branch the previous year and been identified as a member of the IRA; he had been recruited by police as an informer and was passing details of Magee's mission to them. Magee and his comrade became suspicious of O'Connor and realised they were under surveillance; they returned to Dublin. When the pair told their IRA superiors that they had been followed, they were not believed. Magee later wrote that "There was a suspicion at home that we had panicked. No one could credit that we had narrowly escaped a trap. ... It appeared my operational days were over. I remember saying as much to a comrade, who agreed."
Build-up
Having decided to assassinate Thatcher, IRA intelligence officers began to monitor her movements and security arrangements. In 1982 two IRA volunteers went to the Conservative Party conference in Brighton, on Britain's south coast. Magee and another IRA member visited Blackpool on the north-west coast, where the 1983 conference was scheduled to take place. It was decided to make the attempt in 1984 when the conference would be back in Brighton. After police arrested two members of the England Department—Thomas Quigley and Paul Kavannagh—Magee was selected as the bomb maker.
On 15 September 1984—some four weeks before the Conservative Party Conference—Magee registered at the Grand Hotel in Brighton under the pseudonym "Roy Walsh". He used the name of the IRA bomber who had been convicted for his role in the IRA's 1973 Old Bailey bombing. After completing the hotel's registration card, Magee gave a false address (27 Braxfield Road, London, SE4), stated he was English, omitted his passport details and paid £180 for three nights' stay. He asked for, and was given, room 629, on the sixth floor; he asked for an upper floor as he thought that would be where Thatcher would stay. The higher level was because the IRA planners thought Thatcher would want additional security in case striking miners took over areas of the hotel.
On the day he arrived Magee had lunch at the hotel's restaurant with a man named "The Pope". The man visited Magee over the following three days but did not stay overnight. Two female IRA couriers delivered bomb materials to the room; neither of the women nor the other man have been identified. The journalist Rory Carroll, who wrote a history of the bombing, considers that "It is unlikely that more than four people were involved". According to Magee, the bomb comprised 105 pounds (48 kg) of gelignite; security forces later erroneously said it was 30 pounds (14 kg) of Semtex. The device was fitted with a long-delay timer, such as the type used in videocassette recorders. The timing unit was battery powered and a Memo Park timer was also incorporated into the device; Carroll considers the timer was probably part of an anti-handling device, designed to counter any interference by a bomb disposal team if the device was found before detonation.
To mask the smell of the explosives—a distinctive aroma similar to almonds—the device was wrapped in several layers of plastic. Once the bomb was set, Magee removed the side panel of the bath and placed the device within the space. He and his colleagues finished around 10:00 pm on 17 September, and ordered a bottle of vodka and three bottles of Coca-Cola to be delivered to the room. He spent the third night in the room and checked out at around 9:00 am the following day.
Conference and explosion, 9–12 October 1984
The conference began on 9 October 1984 and was scheduled to last four days; Thatcher's speech was scheduled for the final day. Thatcher was staying in the hotel's Napoleon Suite, three rooms with a sea view on the first floor. Her staff set up an office in rooms across the corridor. Before her arrival, a police dog and handler searched the suite and other rooms on the first floor, but none of the rooms on the other floors. The search was cursory; the officer spent only thirty minutes in her rooms. The officer later recalled that the suite had staff and aides walking in and out while he worked. Uniformed and plainclothes police were posted in and outside the hotel.
On the evening of 11 October Norman Tebbit—secretary of state for trade and industry—and his wife Margaret attended a reception hosted by Alistair McAlpine, the treasurer of the Conservative Party; they left at around midnight and returned to their room. A ball was being held in nearby Top Rank ballroom, which Thatcher visited for 45 minutes, returning to the hotel at about 11:45 pm. In her suite, she continued to work on her conference speech. She finished at around 2:45 am and decided to work on some government business with Robin Butler, her principal private secretary, before going to bed. She went to the toilet and returned to her desk at 2:52 am.
The bomb exploded at 2:54 am on 12 October 1984. The occupants of room 629 were Sir Donald Maclean—the president of the Scottish Conservatives—and his wife Muriel; they were in bed at the time. She was blown sideways by the blast; he was blown upwards. In the neighbouring room, 628, Lady Shattock, the wife of Sir Gordon Shattock, the Western Area chairman of the Conservative Party, was bending over the bath; the wall between the bathroom of 629 and 628 disintegrated, and fragments of the ceramic tiles were "driven into her body like bullets", according to an army explosives expert. She was decapitated and her body was blown across the corridor into room 638. Her husband fell through the collapsing floors down to the basement but survived.