TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/84/84.2

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 10.1 KB | 191 lines

                                                                                October 22, 1984

WORLD

The Target: Thatcher


I.R.A. terrorists try to wipe out the government in a savage
hotel bombing


Many of those still awake in Brighton in the early hours of last
Friday were looking forward to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's
address that day before delegates attending the ruling
Conservative Party's four-day annual conference. The Prime
Minister, 13 of her 20-member Cabinet and many of her senior
advisers were staying at Brighton's venerable Grand Hotel, a 120-
year-old neo-Regency-style building on the seafront. She had
just put the finishing touches on her speech when, at 2:54 a.m.,
the night's silence was shattered by a thundering explosion. A
powerful bomb had detonated four floors above the cluster of
suites occupied by the Prime Minister and some of her colleagues,
blowing out a 30-ft.-deep and 15-ft.-wide section of the nine-
story building's facade, spraying broken glass and chunks of
concrete through the halls and onto the street.

The gap extended from the roof to the fifth story. Tons of
plaster, flooring and furniture crashed from floor to floor,
finally destroying the Grand's elegant foyer, where Tory leaders
had gathered only hours earlier. Thatcher's suite, located only
30 ft. below the source of the blast, was badly damaged; its
bathroom was totally demolished. Miraculously, the Prime
Minister was unhurt. "This conference will go on as usual," she
declared firmly as she emerged from the wreckage, accompanied by
her husband, Denis. Thatcher was fully dressed and even wearing
earrings. "We were very lucky," she said. Not for nothing is
she known in Britain as the Iron Lady.

Others were not so fortunate. Four were killed, and at least 34
were injured. Among the dead were Sir Anthony Berry, a former
Tory deputy chief whip; Eric Taylor, chairman of the Northwest
Area Conservative Association; and Mrs. John Wakeham, wife of the
chief whip. Wakeham himself was injured, as were Alfred Parsons,
the Australian High Commissioner to Britain, and Norman Tebbit,
Thatcher's Trade and Industry Secretary. Wakeham lay buried for
nearly seven hours before being rescued. Tebbit, who
subsequently underwent exploratory surgery to determine the
extent of his severe chest injuries, spent four hours under the
rubble.

About nine hours after the blast, the Irish Republican Army
claimed responsibility. In a telephone call to the Irish state
radio in Dublin, the group asserted that it had set off a
gelignite bomb in an attempt to kill "the British Cabinet and the
Tory warmongers."  The I.R.A. promised more violence in the
future. "Thatcher will now realize," it said, "that Britain
cannot occupy our country, torture our prisoners and shoot our
people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were
unlucky. But remember, we have only to be lucky once. You will
have to be lucky always."

It was the boldest and most outrageous strike ever against public
officials in Britain. The I.R.A. had in effect tried to destroy
the entire British government. The attack, moreover, was but the
latest in a twelve-year wave that has killed more than 80 people
and injured about 1,000 others. Until last week, the most
prominent target had been Lord Louis Mountbatten, one of the
nation's most distinguished elder citizens and a cousin of the
Queen, who died when an I.R.A. bomb blew up the boat on which he
was fishing near his summer home on Ireland's northwest coast in
1979. A dual attack in the heart of London on July 20, 1982,
killed four troopers of the Queen's Household Cavalry in Hyde
Park together with seven horses, and seven members of the Royal
Green Jackets Band in Regent's Park. Exactly one week before
Christmas last year, a car bomb went off outside Harrods
department store in London, killing six people and wounding 94.

The scene in the hours immediately following the Brighton blast
was one of devastation. As Thatcher and her husband were taken
to the safety of a police station, the residents of a nearby
hotel, including Charles H. Price II, the U.S. Ambassador to
Britain, were evacuated for fear of a second attack. Working
with the help of television lights and from time to time calling
for quiet so they could hear cries for help, rescue workers used
axes to chop through the debris and brought in a crane to reach
those trapped on high floors. Shocked delegates wandered along
Brighton's seafront promenade in their nightclothes, while
disheveled Cabinet ministers worried about losing government
papers. Lord Gowrie, Minister for the Arts, dragged canvas deck
chairs from the beach for use as makeshift stretchers. Education
Secretary Sir Keith Joseph, in pajamas and silk robe, sat on his
dispatch case by the shore.

Thatcher had a narrow escape. A Special Branch officer on the
security detail in her hotel said she had left her bathroom two
minutes before it was destroyed by the blast. Tory Party
Chairman John Selwyn Gummer also had a close call. "I was just
outside [Thatcher's] suite when I was thrown backward by the
force of the explosion," he recalled. "The Prime Minister came
through the door and the first thing she said was 'Is there
anything I can do to help?'  She was totally calm and looked very
angry."

Police immediately began an investigation into the bombing and
the apparent failure of security measures. Antiterrorist-squad
experts announced that the bomb had probably weighed 20 lbs., not
100 lbs. as claimed by the I.R.A., and that it was triggered by a
timing device. "A very small amount of explosive," said Sussex
Chief Constable Roger Birch, "can do a great deal of damage."

As the inquiry got under way, immediate questions arose as to how
tight security had been at the hotel. Journalists reported they
were able to enter without having their briefcases examined.
Some government officials believe the bombers walked into the
hotel openly, with stolen passes, blending in with delegates and
party officials. At week's end, however, a Scotland Yard expert
disclosed that the bomb was a highly sophisticated device that
could have been planted weeks ago in the floorboards of the
sixth-floor room.

The attack triggered a wave of anger and revulsion. Queen
Elizabeth II, in Kentucky on a private tour of U.S. horse-
breeding farms, was "shocked and horrified."  President Reagan
telephoned Thatcher his condolences, and French President
Francois Mitterrand also sent a message of sympathy. In Dublin,
Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald declared, "When something
like this happens, the Irish people set aside all feelings of
ideology or political conviction or inherited resentment and
share unreservedly in trauma of our British neighbors ... The
will of the people, not that of the evil bombers, will prevail
and endure."  Another strong condemnation came from Thatcher's
opponent in the House of Commons. "Horrified and outraged," said
Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock in a message to the Tory
conference. "I hear that you are carrying on with your normal
engagements. That is good. It is the way that we must respond
to such vile acts in this democracy."

The attack gave Thatcher a measure of relief from grumbling
within her own party. All week she had been subjected to a
barrage of criticism over Britain's record 13.6% unemployment as
well as her handling of the violence-ridden coal miners' strike,
which has caused deep divisions within the country. Arriving at
the Friday session, she was greeted with enthusiasm by the 4,000
delegates, who waved Union Jacks and homemade signs declaring
LONG LIVE MAGGIE and MAGGIE, WE LOVE YOU.

Thatcher's speech was blunt. She denounced the bombing as "the
work of evil men."  The attack, she continued, "was an attempt
not only to disrupt and terminate our conference, it was an
attempt to cripple Her Majesty's democratically elected
government. All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will
fail. It must be business as usual."

With that Thatcher launched into one of her most forceful talks
ever. Obviously fighting a cold, her eyes red with fatigue, the
Prime Minister slammed into the Labor opposition's antinuclear
defense policies and defended her own support for the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and the deployment of U.S. missiles
in Western Europe. She declared, "This party is pro-American."

Underlining her continued opposition to the miners' strike, she
warned of the "emergence of an organized revolutionary minority."
She called unemployment "the scourge of our times" and expressed
sympathy for those caught in "this tragic problem."  Indirectly,
Thatcher was responding to some harsh criticism voiced four days
earlier by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Robert Runcie. In
an interview with the London Times, he warned of "a movement from
consensus to confrontation."  The Archbishop had spoken of "an
awful cancer of violence" in a society where "things matter more
than people."  He demanded "leadership that will unite and not
divide the nation."

At the end of her 40-min. address, Thatcher received eight
minutes of thunderous applause and the traditional three cheers,
a testament to her coolness in the aftermath of the terrorist
assault. Apparently the magic of what pundits quickly dubbed the
"Brighton factor" had already begun to boost her fortunes. Even
before Britons rallied around the Prime Minister following the
hotel blast, there seemed to be little reason for her to change
course. Thatcher does not have to call an election until 1988,
and, despite the sharp criticism of the style and substance of
her policies at Brighton, she remains firmly in control of her
party.

In a matter of hours, the attack seemed to lift Thatcher from a
Prime Minister on the defensive to one suddenly triumphant, an
embattled leader with whom the public could easily identify.
"The battle is between the extremists and the rest of us," she
declared. "The government will not weaken. This nation will
meet the challenge. Democracy will prevail."

By Jay D. Palmer. Reported by Bonnie Angelo and rank
Melville/Brighton