A Provisional IRA bomb at the Grand Hotel, Brighton killed five and narrowly missed killing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the Conservative Party Conference.
Key Facts
- Date of bombing
- 12 October 1984, 2:54 am
- Deaths
- 5 people
- Injured
- More than 30 people
- Bomb planted by
- Patrick Magee, over three weeks before the conference
- Magee's sentence
- 8 concurrent life sentences, minimum 35 years
- Magee released
- June 1999, under the Good Friday Agreement
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
The IRA resolved to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1981 Irish hunger strike, angered by her refusal to restore Special Category Status to republican prisoners. Ten prisoners died as a result. After two years of planning and reconnaissance of the 1982 and 1983 Conservative Party Conferences, IRA member Patrick Magee planted a long-delay time bomb in the Grand Hotel more than three weeks before the 1984 conference.
On 12 October 1984, the bomb detonated at 2:54 am inside the Grand Hotel, Brighton, where Thatcher and much of her cabinet were staying during the Conservative Party Conference. The explosion drove upward, dislodging a five-long-ton chimney stack that crashed through several floors, killing five people including Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry and injuring more than thirty others. Thatcher escaped unharmed and addressed the conference just six and a half hours later.
Patrick Magee was identified via a partial palm print, convicted in 1986, and sentenced to eight concurrent life terms before being released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement. Despite the attack, British–Irish negotiations continued, culminating in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which granted the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's governance, though the pace of talks was deliberately slowed to avoid appearing as a concession to IRA pressure.
Belligerents & Mobilization Analysis
Side A
1 belligerent
Patrick Magee.
Side B
1 belligerent
Margaret Thatcher.