Brighton hotel bombing

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Brighton bomb
Part of the Troubles
The Grand Hotel on the morning after the bombing
Location	Grand Hotel, Brighton, East Sussex, England
Date	12 October 1984; 39 years ago (1984-10-12) 2:54 am (BST)
Target	Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet[1]
Attack type	Bombing
Weapons	Time bomb
Deaths	5
Injured	31–34[a]
Perpetrator	Provisional Irish Republican Army

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 and Deputy Chief Whip Sir Anthony Berry; over thirty people were injured.

The IRA took the decision to assassinate Thatcher during the 1981 Irish hunger strike. Her stance against their demands for political status, rather than being detained as criminals, meant the strike was not quickly settled, and ten prisoners died. After two years of planning, including reconnoitring the 1982 and 1983 Conservative Party Conferences in Brighton and Blackpool, a long-delay time bomb was planted in the hotel by the IRA member Patrick Magee over three weeks before the 1984 Conservative Party conference. The IRA knew the hotel would be occupied by Thatcher and many of her cabinet.

The bomb exploded at 2:54 am when most guests were in bed. The force of the explosion was upwards and broke through the roof, dislodging one of the hotel's chimney stacks, which weighed five long tons (5.1 t). This crashed through several floors, killing or injuring the occupants. Thatcher decided to continue the conference as normal, and was given a standing ovation by delegates as she entered the stage just six and a half hours after the explosion.

The investigation to find and arrest the culprit took eight months. A partial palm print was found on the room registration card from when Magee checked in. He was found guilty and sentenced to eight life sentences, to be run concurrently with the recommendation that he serve at least thirty-five years before being considered for parole, but was released under licence in June 1999 as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Negotiations between the British and Irish governments that had begun in 1980 continued, despite the bombing, although the pace of the talks was slowed to ensure it did not appear that the British government was conceding to pressure because of the bomb. They resulted in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government.

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