TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0630> <title> 1984: The Target -- Thatcher </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1984 Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> October 22, 1984 WORLD The Target: Thatcher </hdr> <body> 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 </body> </article> </text>