Why I Planted the Brighton Bomb for the IRA and What Came Next
As a member of the Irish Republican Army, I planted a time bomb at the Tory Party conference in 1984 and tried to kill Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Here’s what led me to that point — and why I believe in the peace process today.
Patrick Magee, former IRA activist, with Jo Berry, who lost her father in the Brighton bombing, on October 13, 2009, at an event to promote reconciliation twenty-five years later. (Frantzesco Kangaris / AFP via Getty Images)
Patrick Magee’s name will always be associated with the bombing of the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984. For many people in Britain today, he is still a hate figure. Yet Magee’s passage toward the IRA was an experience he shared with thousands of young men and women of his generation in the North of Ireland. In this extract from his new memoir, Where Grieving Begins: Building Bridges After the Brighton Bomb, Magee discusses how he came to join the IRA after spending his childhood years in Britain, his role in the Brighton bombing, and the unlikely friendship he developed after his release from prison with Joanna Berry, whose father was killed by the bomb he planted.
A British Childhood
Born in Belfast, Magee moved with his family to Norwich as a child. Here, he discusses a trip back to Belfast to visit relatives, his childhood and adolescence in England, and the impact on his thinking of the crisis in the North of Ireland.
Belfast was so different. This was the first time that I registered the politics of the place, noting with some amazement that policemen all carried holstered weapons and wore military-style kepis, like American cops on TV. Within days of my being back in England, Belfast was all over the news.
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