Patrick Magee | |
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 Magee in 2014 | |
| Born | Patrick Joseph Magee 1951 (age 72–73) Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Known for | Brighton hotel bombing |
Patrick Joseph Magee (born 1951) [1] is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer who is best known for planting a bomb in the Brighton Grand Hotel targeting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet, which killed five people. He is often referred to as 'the Brighton bomber'. [2]
Patrick Magee was born in Belfast and moved with his family to Norwich when he was two years old. [3] He returned to Belfast at the age of 18 in 1969 [3] and in 1972 joined the Provisional IRA. [3] [4] He was interned without trial at Long Kesh between June 1973 and November 1975. [5]
The plot to bomb the Grand Hotel had started as an act of revenge for the stance the British government had taken over the 1981 Irish hunger strike. [6]
Magee had stayed in the hotel under the false name of Roy Walsh four weeks previously, during the weekend of 14–17 September 1984. He planted the bomb, with a long-delay timer, in the bathroom wall of his room, number 629. [7] The bomb exploded at 2:54 a.m. on 12 October 1984, killing five people and injuring 34. [8] He was arrested in the Queen's Park area of Glasgow on 22 June 1985 with four other IRA members, including Martina Anderson, while planning other bombings in England. [3] In April 2023 the Scottish Special Branch officer in charge was interviewed and gave an account of the operation and arrests. [9]
At his trial in September 1986, he received eight life sentences, with the judge branding him "a man of exceptional cruelty and inhumanity". [3] [10] In August 1997, he married for a second time. [11] In August 2000, Magee admitted to The Guardian that he carried out the bombing, but told them he did not accept he left a fingerprint on the registration card, saying "If that was my fingerprint I did not put it there". [12] While in prison, he completed a PhD examining the representation of Irish republicans in Troubles fiction. [13]
Magee was released from prison in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, having served 14 years. Originally he was sentenced to eight life sentences and a minimum tariff of 35 years. [14] Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, attempted to block Magee's release, but the High Court overturned this attempt. [15]
He continues to defend his role in the blast, but he has expressed remorse for the loss of innocent lives. [16] One of the victims of the bombing was Anthony Berry, whose daughter Jo Berry publicly met Magee in November 2000 in an effort at achieving reconciliation. They have met several dozen times since that date. [17]
Harvey Thomas, a senior adviser to Thatcher who survived the bombing, forgave Magee in 1998. Thomas has since developed a friendship with Magee, including hosting him in his home. Thomas cited his Christian faith as the reason why he felt compelled to forgive. [18] [19] Norman Tebbit, whose wife was paralysed in the Brighton bombing, has asserted that he could only forgive Magee if he went to the police and provided them with the names of anyone else who was responsible for the bombing. Tebbit argued that Magee giving up violence was insufficient, stating: "If Dr Shipman had announced he was not going to murder any more of his patients, I don't think we would have felt that was a case for going 'good old Shipman' and giving him a slap on the back and a special award from the BMA." [20]
The Real Irish Republican Army, or Real IRA (RIRA), was a dissident Irish republican paramilitary group that aimed to bring about a United Ireland. It was formed in 1997 following a split in the Provisional IRA by dissident members, who rejected the IRA's ceasefire that year. Like the Provisional IRA before it, the Real IRA saw itself as the only rightful successor to the original Irish Republican Army and styled itself as simply "the Irish Republican Army" in English or Óglaigh na hÉireann in Irish. It was an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland and designated a proscribed terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit, is a retired British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1987 as Secretary of State for Employment (1981–1983), Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1983–1985), and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–1987). He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1992, representing the constituencies of Epping (1970–1974) and Chingford (1974–1992).
The Omagh bombing was a car bombing on 15 August 1998 in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It was carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, signed earlier in the year. The bombing killed 29 people and injured about 220 others, making it the deadliest incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Telephoned warnings which did not specify the location had been sent almost forty minutes beforehand, and police inadvertently moved people toward the bomb.
Sir Anthony George Berry was a British Conservative politician. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Enfield Southgate and a whip in Margaret Thatcher's government.
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 Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were two groups of people, mostly Northern Irish, who were wrongly convicted in English courts in 1975 and 1976 of the Guildford pub bombings of 5 October 1974 and the Woolwich pub bombing of 7 November 1974. All the convictions were eventually overturned in 1989 and 1991 after long campaigns for justice, and the cases, along with those of the Birmingham Six, diminished public confidence in the English criminal justice system.
The Remembrance Day bombing took place on 8 November 1987 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded near the town's war memorial (cenotaph) during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony, which was being held to commemorate British military war dead. Eleven people were initially killed, many of them elderly. A twelfth man was fatally wounded, entering a coma from which he would later die, and 63 were injured. The IRA said it had made a mistake and that its target had been the British soldiers parading to the memorial.
From 1969 until 1997, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) conducted an armed paramilitary campaign primarily in Northern Ireland and England, aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland in order to create a united Ireland.
The Grand Brighton Hotel is a Victorian sea-front hotel in Brighton on the south coast of England. Designed by John Whichcord Jr. and built in 1864, it was intended for members of the upper classes visiting the town and remains one of Brighton's most expensive hotels.
The Warrenpoint ambush, also known as the Narrow Water ambush, the Warrenpoint massacre or the Narrow Water massacre, was a guerrilla attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 27 August 1979. The IRA's South Armagh Brigade ambushed a British Army convoy with two large roadside bombs at Narrow Water Castle outside Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. The first bomb was aimed at the convoy itself, and the second targeted the incoming reinforcements and the incident command point (ICP) set up to deal with the incident. IRA volunteers hidden in nearby woodland also allegedly fired on the troops, who returned fire. The castle is on the banks of the Newry River, which marks the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Martina Anderson is an Irish former politician from Northern Ireland who served as Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Foyle from 2020 to 2021, and previously from 2007 to 2012. A member of Sinn Féin, she served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) representing Northern Ireland from 2012 to 2020.
Patrick Ryan is a defrocked Irish Catholic priest and admitted Provisional IRA arms supplier. He was laicised by the Pallottine Order in 1973.
Paul "Dingus" Magee is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980. After serving a prison sentence in the Republic of Ireland, Magee fled to England where he was imprisoned after killing a policeman in 1992. He was repatriated to the Republic of Ireland as part of the Northern Ireland peace process before being released from prison in 1999, and subsequently avoided extradition back to Northern Ireland to serve his sentence for killing the member of the SAS.
Joanna Cynthia Berry is a British peace activist and public speaker. She is the daughter of Anthony Berry, who was killed by the IRA in the Brighton hotel bombing on 12 October 1984. The bomb was planted by Patrick Magee, whom Berry publicly met in November 2000 in an effort at achieving reconciliation as envisioned in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement.
Events from 1999 in England
The Chelsea Barracks bombing was an attack carried out by a London-based Active Service Unit (ASU) of the Provisional IRA on 10 October 1981, using a remote-controlled nail bomb. The bomb targeted a bus carrying British Army soldiers just outside Chelsea Barracks. The blast killed two civilians and injured 40 people, among them 23 soldiers.
This is a timeline of the events and actions during the Troubles that were carried out in Great Britain, the vast majority of which were carried out by Irish Republican paramilitaries mainly the Provisional IRA were by far the most active but both the Official IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, also carried out a number of attacks, which included bombings and shootings. Ulster Loyalist paramilitary groups also carried out a small number of violent actions.
Special Branch was a unit in the Metropolitan Police in London, formed as a counter-terrorism unit in 1883 and merged with another unit to form Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) in 2006. It maintained contact with the Security Service (MI5) and had responsibility for, among other things, personal protection of (non-royal) VIPs and performing the role of examining officer at designated ports and airports, as prescribed by the Terrorism Act 2000.
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