Bomb-maker and victim's daughter unite for anniversary of plot to kill Tory Cabinet

Death came in the middle of the night. As Tory conference partygoers thronged the bars of The Grand Hotel, Brighton, was working quietly on government papers in the Napoleon Suite.

Then came a deafening explosion. At 2.54am on October 12, 1984, a bomb detonated in room 629, bringing down the five-ton chimney above. It tore through six floors, cascading rubble on to sleeping politicians and their wives. A gaping hole in the front of the hotel exposed the full horror of the Provisional IRA’s bid to assassinate the entire .

Thatcher and her husband Denis were uninjured but in room 228 above, her Trade Secretary and wife Margaret caught the full force of the blast. Both badly injured (she was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life), they lay trapped in the smoking debris for four hours before their rescue.

Pictures of Mr Tebbit being stretchered out of the hotel ruins became a defining image of the atrocity. Others were not so fortunate. Sir Anthony Berry, 59, MP for Enfield-­Southgate; Lady Jeanne Shattock, 54, wife of the western chairman of the party; Roberta Wakeham, 45, wife of deputy chief whip John Wakeham; and Eric Taylor, 54, chairman of the north-western party, all died that night.

Muriel Maclean, 54, wife of the Scottish party president, died of her wounds four weeks later. This was the first time since Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder plot in 1605 that mass murder of the nation’s political elite had been attempted on British soil, and it very nearly succeeded.

Within hours, a defiant Thatcher, having spent the remainder of the night at Lewes police station with husband Denis, was back at the scene of the tragedy, insisting: “Life must go on as usual. Conference will go on as usual.” By doing so “all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail”.

Condemnation was swift. leader Neil Kinnock congratulated staunch rival Thatcher for her steely words, saying: “There can be no concessions to the murdering madness of those who commit crimes like this vile bombing.” But there was jubilation among republicans in Ulster, and singer Morrissey commented: “The only sorrow of the Brighton bombing is that Thatcher escaped unscathed.”

The IRA determined to kill the PM during the infamous Hunger Strikes of 1981. Provo scouts reconnoitred the annual party conferences in 1981 and 1982, and bomb-maker Patrick Magee was assigned to the operation. He had joined the IRA in 1972, after being detained by the security forces who raided a republican drinking den in the city. The incident, in which he claimed to have been severely beaten, left him with “a real sense of anger” at the British government.

He booked into The Grand on September 15, insisting on room 629 in the misguided belief that Thatcher would be staying there for the upcoming conference. Magee set the long-delay timer to go off almost four weeks later, and then ordered room service – a bottle of vodka and four cokes – with his fellow-plotters: two women who had delivered the explosives and one man known as “the Pope”, none of whom were ever identified by police.

With uncanny precision, the bomb went off and pandemonium ensued, with the Sussex fire and ambulance services overwhelmed by demand. But on the run over in Cork, Magee felt only relief that his bomb had ­detonated. “I slept,” he said later.

The IRA famously declared: “Today we were unlucky. But remember we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.” That peace did not come until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

At his trial on five murder charges, Magee refused to stand for his sentence after being found guilty, and was dragged to his feet. He was given eight “lifes” to run concurrently, with a recommendation that he serve 35 years minimum. This sentence was changed to a whole-life order in 1997 but this was quashed and he was released under the Good Friday pact.

Astoundingly, a year later, and at her request, he met the daughter of one of his victims, Jo Berry, a cousin of Princess Diana, whose father Sir Anthony died in the rubble. Magee had an epiphany. In their long talk, “the goodness and intelligence and value I perceived in this young woman must have come from her father. And I had killed him. I had killed a fine human being”.

Magee’s confession filled in some intelligence gaps about the atrocity. But his mea culpa also exposed the strange, double-edged upshot of his campaign. It failed the key objective of IRA terrorists: the murder of the Prime Minister and her Cabinet. They survived, and diplomatic back-channels opened up between Thatcher and the Provos.

The story does not end there, however. Magee and Ms Berry set up Building Bridges for Peace to bring together divided communities through dialogue, not violence. Their story has become a profound example of reconciliation and the power of compassion.

The two will appear together at an event at St James’s Church in Central London on Wednesday evening to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing, with a discussion on the courage and compassion of a healing journey. Is there a conclusion? In the new documentary, Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher, Jo Berry asks: “Is there such a place to go to? If there is, it would be him saying nothing is worth killing someone for. He says he will never forgive himself.”