When the IRA tried to wipe out Maggie Thatcher

[Vanhalen 0]

Just a reminder that there are more than one type of hate group in the world, and we should never forget out problems at home to focus abroad.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pict...s_on/html/1.stm

 

"On the way down, we said 'some idiot has got drunk and let the alarm off'," remembers firefighter Fred Bishop.

They arrived on Brighton sea front to find thick dust "like fog", and a gaping hole in the Grand Hotel.

 

The night of 12 October 1984 saw the IRA come within a whisker of wiping out Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government, in town for their annual conference.

 

Here, 20 years on, a handful of those caught up in the bomb and its aftermath, recall the dramatic events.

 

"It never really occurred to me that it was going to be such a big deal," says Fred Bishop. "You just want to rescue people and do your job".

He famously helped save senior Tories Norman Tebbit and Donald Maclean, but says the bombing was not the most traumatic emergency of his career.

 

"If there had not been such important people inside, or so much media coverage, we would have moved on like we have from so many other incidents," says Mr Bishop, who retired in 1990.

 

"I was aware of flying through the air and then falling down," says conference organiser Harvey Thomas.

He was buried under 10 tons of rubble, with water pouring down on him from smashed storage tanks.

 

"I had no doubt at all that I was going to die for the first few moments," Mr Thomas says. With his wife heavily pregnant he thought he would never see his first child.

 

As it became more difficult to breathe, firemen heard his cries and he was pulled free with minor injuries.

 

Inside the Grand dust was everywhere, creating a strange light. "It reminded me of Sleeping Beauty," says Mrs Banks.

The switchboard was unaffected, all the wake-up calls booked by delegates went off as normal – even for those rooms which no longer existed.

 

Calls came in from concerned relatives and emergency crews needed to be put in touch with one another.

 

She is proud of her role. "At the end of the day I did that job, whereas others may have said 'I’m not going in there'."

 

Margaret Thatcher was still awake, working on her speech for the next morning, when the bomb went off at 0254. She narrowly escaped injury.

As news of deaths and casualties came through, she began the conference on time at 0930am - against the advice of some.

 

"All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail," she told delegates.

 

Five were killed in the blast - Anthony Berry MP, Roberta Wakeham, Eric Taylor, Jean Shattock and Muriel Maclean - and 32 injured.

 

Muriel Maclean's husband, Sir Donald, was seriously injured in the explosion, spending 10 weeks in hospital. The couple had been staying in room 629, where the bomb was planted.

He is not angry at security failings that have since come to light.

 

He says that with hindsight it's easy to say the Grand should have been searched more thoroughly when it was known the IRA had long-delay timers.

 

"We take current security for granted because of what happened then," he says.

 

The bomber, Patrick Magee, was trapped by fingerprints left during his stay at the Grand.

Sentenced to eight life sentences in 1986, but released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement 14 years later, he recently said: "I stand by my actions."

 

Sir Donald is among those who remain appalled by his stance.

 

"Would you forgive them?" he asks. "My family lost a wife and the grandchildren never knew their grandmother."

 

Harvey Thomas, a committed Christian, is now friends with the bomber. "I wrote to Magee and said I wanted to forgive him, but I was not speaking for everyone else."

It took Mr Thomas 14 years to reach that stage and the pair first met two years later.

 

"It was awkward for him I think, but not for me because once you decide to forgive you no longer have the anger."

 

Jo Tuffnell, whose father was Sir Anthony Berry, has met Magee many times, to try and understand his motives.

 

The Tebbits are still friends with fireman Fred Bishop and his family.

Harvey Thomas often invites Magee to his house and considers him a friend of the family.

 

But he remembers one comment made to Magee by his younger daughter, born two years after the bomb.

 

"(She) sat across a table from him, eating a plate of baked beans, and said 'you do realise, Pat, that if Daddy had died I would not be here'?"

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Today's not October 12th...

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Today's not October 12th...

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