2024-10-12 07:37:00
40 years have passed since that day, but for many of its protagonists the wounds are still open. Early in the morning of October 12, 1984 A bomb exploded at the Grand Hotel in Brighton (England), in the south of England, where Conservative Party held its annual conference. The aim of the IRA terrorists was clear: to end the life of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. An attack that cost lives five people and injured 34 others and which marked one of the tensest phases between the British government and the terrorist group in three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Thatcher left unharmedbut his fate could have been very different if not for luck.
He was an IRA militant Patrick Magee who hid the explosive in the room 629 of the Grand Hotel, located on the sixth floor, a few weeks earlier. With the advice of an engineer and with the aim of causing greater destruction, Magee placed the bomb so that one of the two chimneys would fall onto the floors below. The fireplace leaned slightly to one side and fell onto rooms with numbers ending in 8, while those ending in 9, including the Thatcher –located on the first floor–, were not affected in the slightest by its trajectory. A stroke of luck to which was added the fact that the prime minister had abandoned the bathroom of his suite, which had suffered extensive damage, just a few minutes before the explosion.
IRA target
Thatcher had been in the IRA’s sights since 1981, when around twenty of the terrorist group’s prisoners pleaded guilty. hunger strike request the status of political prisoners and improved conditions at Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. Some requests that the prime minister rejected. “This is a problem for those on hunger strike and those who encourage them to do so. “I will not give political status to people who are criminals and enemies of society,” he declared at the time. The death of Bobby Sands –the leader of the IRA prisoners– after 66 days without food it was a hard blow for the organisation’s militants and sympathizers, who held Thatcher directly responsible for what happened.
After planting the explosive, Magee hid in the Irish city of Cork until the early morning hours of October 12, when he learned from the media that the bomb had exploded. “For many people It was revengeas if we were collecting an outstanding debt,” says Magee in the documentary ‘Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher’, broadcast this week by the BBC. The attacker claims to have felt relief when he learned he had achieved his goal, even though the Iron Lady had escaped unscathed. After acknowledging responsibility for the attack, the ANGER And he issues a new warning: “Today we had bad luck, but remember that you only need to be lucky once. You always have to have it.”
“Life must go on as always”
Despite the death of five people, including that of the Conservative Party MP Anthony BerryThatcher decided to carry forward the program of her annual training conference. “You hear about these atrocities, these bombs, and you don’t expect them to happen to you. But life must go on as always,” he said that same night. Hours later, he took the stage to give his speech. “The fact that we are gathered here, shocked but serene and determined, is a sign not only of this the attack failedbut all attempts to destroy democracy through terrorism will also fail,” he said in front of his audience. Magee was arrested months later in Glasgow and sentenced to minimum sentence of 35 years’ imprisonment, although the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 allowed for its release 14 years after the attack.
The condemnation of the perpetrator of the attack did not stop then, at least in the less literal sense of the term. Shortly after his release he was contacted by Joanne Berrydaughter of the murdered Tory politician in Brighton, who wanted to meet in person the man who ended her father’s life. “He was simply explaining things to me about his loss. And then something changed in my head and I realized it he had killed that man”explains Magee in the documentary.
Since that first meeting, the two they continued to be found periodicallysometimes in front of the cameras. In one of them, the perpetrator of the attack recognized that he had to bear the burden of his conscience. “I knew what I was doing and I would have also defended the actions I had taken. But I think it’s very important face the consequencesto deal with your pain as a consequence that I suppose I deserve, because there is always a price to pay in terms of humanity.” Berry was one of the few victims who had contact with Magee. Many others have refused to do so and continue to suffer in silence, as Thatcher herself did, the consequences of what happened in the early hours of 12 October 1984.
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