A new book is set to explore the untold story of the IRA’s attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher in the 1984 Brighton Bombing.
Written by former Irish News journalist Rory Carroll, now the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, ‘Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown’ has been billed as “an extraordinary assassination attempt” linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and “the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot.”
Speaking to the Irish News, Mr Carroll described the challenge of profiling controversial key players like IRA bomber Patrick Magee while showing empathy to victims.
“What I wanted to do was focus on a handful of characters, real people, and tell their story as much as possible through their perspective,” he said.
“Those are Provisional IRA members plus some Tories, notably Thatcher herself, as well as the police who ended up pursuing and catching Patrick Magee.
“It’s a real window on the Troubles.”
The book begins with Lord Mountbatten’s assassination by the IRA in 1979, an event which first drew the newly elected Thatcher into the Northern Ireland conflict.
Later, the 1981 hunger strikes are described as the “animating force” that led to the Provisional IRA actively seeking revenge against the Prime Minister.
“Until then, they had rarely gone for high profile and difficult assassinations,” Mr Carroll said.
“Lord Mountbatten was obviously high profile but was also a very soft target. There was some suspicion that the IRA felt somewhat upstaged by the INLA who assassinated (Conservative MP) Airey Neave at Westminster in 1979.”
After three years of planning, a time-bomb planted by Magee was detonated during the Conservative Party conference at the Grand Hotel on October 12, 1984, killing five people and injuring many more.
“The fact that they came so close (to killing the Prime Minister) is remarkable,” Mr Carroll said.
With high emotions and competing narratives on all sides, he said his goal was to be fair, accurate and empathetic.
“I tried to show the reader what these people were experiencing and how things looked to them,” he said.
“Patrick Magee is a key person. So you have his childhood and what brought him into the IRA,” he said.
“I very much want the reader to understand that, so they can see things as he saw them.
“Of course, they don’t need to agree with his actions, but they can see why he did it.
“He’s a highly intelligent and thoughtful guy. I wanted the readers to feel that.”
He continued: “Likewise, with Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit (whose wife Margaret was left permanently disabled by the blast), and Scotland Yard’s Terrorist detectives, I wanted the reader to get into their worlds and heads as much as possible.
“I wanted you to imagine you were Margaret Thatcher at Chequers or the cabinet table taking decisions, she was doing her best as she saw it.
“I want the reader to see her as a human figure, she’s not just some icon with a halo of hair and a stern voice. She was also a human being and a politician.”
Among the surprising elements of the story, he said, was the dynamic behind the IRA’s secretive England unit.
Based in Dublin, he said members were carefully selected and lived “a lonely existence”.
“They had to avoid the Irish community in England because they were so infiltrated by special branch,” he said.
“When Patrick Magee went over, he left behind a young baby and wife and didn’t even take a picture of them in case he was caught.
“It sounds strange to say, but these were the sacrifices they made.
“Likewise, by the police pursuing them. It was another world before DNA evidence and often pre-computers.
“The last third of the book is actually like a police procedural and the methods the police used to catch the bombers.
“That was fascinating to see how they did it, and the blunders they made.”
Killing Thatcher is released through Harper Collins on April 4.
