The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990

by Margaret Thatcher

  At 2.50 a.m. Robin Butler asked me to look at one last official paper… it was about the Liverpool Garden Festival. I gave Robin my view and he began to put away the papers. At 2.54 a.m. a loud thud shook the room. There was a few seconds’ silence and then there was a second slightly different noise, in fact created by falling masonry. I knew immediately that it was a bomb… perhaps two bombs, a large followed by a smaller device… but at this stage I did not know that the explosion had taken place inside the hotel. Glass from the windows of my sitting-room was strewn across the carpet. But I thought that it might be a car bomb outside. (I only realized that the bomb had exploded above us when Penny, John Gummer’s wife, appeared a little later from upstairs, still in her night clothes.) The adjoining bathroom was more severely damaged, though the worst I would have suffered had I been in there were minor cuts. Those who had sought to kill me had placed the bomb in the wrong place.

  Apart from the broken glass and a ringing fire alarm, set off by the explosion, there was a strange and, as it turned out, deceptive normality. The lights, thankfully, remained on: the importance of this played on my mind for some time and for months afterwards I always kept a torch by my bed when I was staying the night in a strange house. Denis put his head round the bedroom door, saw that I was all right and went back inside to dress. For some reason neither of us quite understands he took a spare pair of shoes with him, subsequently worn by Charles Price, the American Ambassador, who had lost his in the confusion of leaving the hotel. While Crawfie gathered together my vanity case, blouses and two suits…one for the next day…Robin Butler came in to take charge of the government papers. I went across the landing to the secretaries’ room to see if my staff were all right. One of the girls had received a nasty electric shock from the photocopier. But otherwise all was well. They were as concerned about my still only partly typed-up speech as they were for themselves. ‘It’s all right,’ they assured me, ‘we’ve got the speech.’ A copy went straight into my briefcase.

  By now more and more people were appearing in the secretaries’ room with me…the Gummers, the Howes, David Wolfson, Michael Alison and others, unkempt, anxious but quite calm. At this stage none of us had any clear idea about the extent of the damage, let alone injuries. While we talked, my detectives had been checking out as best they could our immediate security. There is always a fear of a second device, carefully timed to catch and kill those fleeing from the first explosion. It was also necessary for them to find a way out of the hotel which was both unblocked and safe.

  At 3.10 a.m., in groups, we began to leave. It turned out that the first route suggested was impassable and we were turned back by a fireman. So we went back and waited in the office. Later we were told that it was safe to leave and we went down by the main staircase. It was now that I first saw from the rubble in the entrance and foyer something of the seriousness of the blast. I hoped that the porter had not been injured. The air was full of thick cement dust: it was in my mouth and covered my clothes as I clambered over discarded belongings and broken furniture towards the back entrance of the hotel. It still never occurred to me that anyone would have died.

  Ten minutes later Denis, Crawfie and I arrived in a police car at Brighton Police Station. We were given tea in the Chief Constable’s room. Soon friends and colleagues started to arrive to see me. Willie Whitelaw came in. So did the Howes, accompanied by their little dog ‘Budget’. But it was Leon Brittan, as Home Secretary, and John Gummer, as Party Chairman, with whom I had most to discuss. At this stage none of us knew whether the conference could continue: had the conference hall itself been attacked? But I was already determined that if it was physically possible to do so I would deliver my speech. There was discussion about whether I should return to No. 10; but I said, ‘No: I am staying.’ It was eventually decided that I would spend the rest of the night at Lewes Police College. I changed out of evening dress into a navy suit and, as I left the Police Station with Denis and Crawfie, I made a brief statement to the press. Then we were driven at great speed to Lewes.

  Nobody spoke during the journey. Our thoughts were back at the Grand Hotel. Whether by chance or arrangement, there was no one staying at the College. I was given a small sitting-room with a television and a twin-bedded room with its own bathroom. Denis and the detectives shared rooms further down the corridor. Crawfie and I shared too. We sat on our beds and speculated about what had happened. By now I was convinced that there must have been casualties. But we could get no news.

  I could only think of one thing to do. Crawfie and I knelt by the side of our beds and prayed for some time in silence.

  I had brought no night clothes with me and so I lay down fully clothed and slept fitfully for perhaps an hour and a half. I awoke to the sound of the breakfast television news at 6.30 a.m. The news was bad, much worse than I had feared. I saw pictures of Norman Tebbit being pulled out of the rubble. Then came the news that Roberta Wakeham and Anthony Berry MP were dead. I knew that I could not afford to let my emotions get control of me. I had to be mentally and physically fit for the day ahead. I tried not to watch the harrowing pictures. But it did not seem to do much good. I had to know each detail of what had happened…and every detail seemed worse than the last.

  I bathed quickly, changed and had a light breakfast with plenty of black coffee. It was soon clear that the conference could go ahead. I said to the police officer in charge that I must get back to Brighton to open the conference on time.

  It was a perfect autumn day and as we drove back into Brighton the sky was clear and the sea completely calm. I now had my first sight of the front of the Grand Hotel, a whole vertical section of which had collapsed.

  Then we went on to the Conference Centre itself, where at 9.20 a.m. the conference opened; and at 9.30 a.m. precisely I and the officers of the National Union[49] walked on to the platform. (Many of them had had to leave clothes in the hotel, but Alistair McAlpine had persuaded the local Marks & Spencer to open early and by now they were smartly dressed.) The body of the hall was only about half full, because the rigorous security checks held up the crowds trying to get in. But the ovation was colossal. All of us were relieved to be alive, saddened by the tragedy and determined to show the terrorists that they could not break our spirit.

  By chance, but how appropriately, the first debate was on Northern Ireland. I stayed to listen to this but then left to work on my speech which had to be completely revised. Michael Alison (my Parliamentary Private Secretary) and I retired to an office in the Centre where we removed most of the partisan sections of the speech: this was not a time for Labour-bashing but for unity in defence of democracy. Whole new pages had to be written, though there were tough sections on law and order which could be used as they stood. Ronnie Millar then polished the text as he and I went through it. All the while, and in spite of attempts by my staff to minimize the interruptions, I was receiving messages and fleeting visits from colleagues and friends. I knew that John Wakeham had not yet been freed from the rubble and several people were still missing. A steady stream of flowers arrived which later were sent on to the hospital where the injured had been taken.

  As in earlier days, I delivered the speech from a text rather than Autocue and ad libbed a good deal as well. But I knew that far more important than what I said was the fact that I, as Prime Minister, was still able to say it. I did not dwell long in the speech on what had happened. But I tried to sum up the feelings of all of us.

  The bomb attack… was an attempt not only to disrupt and terminate our conference. It was an attempt to cripple Her Majesty’s democratically elected government. That is the scale of the outrage in which we have all shared. And the fact that we are gathered here now, shocked but composed and determined, is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.

  I did not linger after my speech but went immediately to the Royal Sussex County Hospital to visit the injured. Four people had already died. Muriel McLean
was on a drip feed: she would die later. John Wakeham was still unconscious and remained so for several days. He had to be operated on daily for some time to save his legs which had been terribly crushed. By chance we all knew the consultant in charge, Tony Trafford, who had been a Conservative MP. I spent hours on the telephone trying to get the best advice possible from experts in dealing with crush injuries. In the end it turned out that there was a doctor in the hospital from El Salvador who had the expertise required. Between them they managed to save John’s legs. Norman Tebbit regained consciousness while I was at the hospital and we managed a few words. His face was bloated as a result of being trapped for so long under the rubble: I scarcely recognized him. I also talked to Margaret Tebbit who was in the intensive care unit. She told me she had no feeling below the neck. As a former nurse, she knew well enough what that meant.

  I left the hospital overcome by such bravery and suffering. I was driven back to Chequers that afternoon faster than I have ever been driven before, with a full motorcycle escort. As I spent that night in what had become my home I could not stop thinking about those unable to return to theirs.

  THE IRISH DILEMMA

  What happened in Brighton shocked the world. But the people of Northern Ireland and the security forces face the ruthless reality of terrorism day after day. There is no excuse for the IRA’s reign of terror. If their violence were, as the misleading phrase often has it, ‘mindless’ it would be easier to grasp as the manifestation of a disordered psyche. But that is not what terrorism is, however many psychopaths may be attracted to it. Terrorism is the calculated use of violence…and the threat of it…to achieve political ends. In the case of the IRA those ends are the coercion of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, who have demonstrated their wish to remain within the United Kingdom, into an all-Ireland state. Along with the political objective go crimes of other kinds… robbery, protection, fraud to name but a few.

  There are terrorists in both the Catholic and Protestant communities, and all too many people prepared to give them support or at least to acquiesce in their activities. Indeed, for a person to stand out against the terrorists carries great personal risk. The result is that it is impossible to separate entirely the security policy, required to prevent terrorist outrages and bring the perpetrators to book, from the wider political approach to the long-standing ‘Northern Ireland problem’. For some people that connection implies that you should make concessions to the terrorist, in particular by weakening the Union between Ulster and Britain. But it never did so for me. My policy towards Northern Ireland was always one aimed above all at upholding democracy and the law: it was always therefore determined by whatever I considered at a particular time would help bring better security.

  The IRA are the core of the terrorist problem; their counterparts on the Protestant side would probably disappear if the IRA could be beaten. But the best chance of beating them is if three conditions are met. First, the IRA have to be rejected by the nationalist minority on whom they depend for shelter and support.[50] This requires that the minority should be led to support or at least acquiesce in the constitutional framework of the state in which they live. Second, the IRA have to be deprived of international support, whether from well-meaning but naïve Irish Americans, or from Arab revolutionary regimes like that of Colonel Gaddafi. This requires constant attention to foreign policy aimed at explaining the facts to the misinformed and cutting off the weapons from the mischievous. Third, and linked to the other two, relations between Britain and the Republic of Ireland have to be carefully managed. Although the IRA have plenty of support in areas like West Belfast within Northern Ireland, very often it is to the South that they go to be trained, to receive money and arms and to escape capture after crimes committed within the United Kingdom. The border, long and difficult to patrol, is of crucial significance to the security problem. Much depends on the willingness and ability of the political leaders of the Republic to co-operate effectively with our intelligence, security forces and courts. So it was that throughout my time in office security issues and political initiatives were intertwined.

  My own instincts are profoundly Unionist. There is therefore something of a paradox in that my relations with the Unionist politicians were so uncomfortable most of the time. Airey Neave and I felt the greatest sympathy with the Unionists while we were in Opposition. I knew that these people shared many of my own attitudes, derived from my staunchly Methodist background. Their warmth was as genuine as it was usually undemonstrative. Their patriotism was real and fervent, even if too narrow. They had often been taken too much for granted. From my visits to Northern Ireland, often after terrible tragedies, I came to have the greatest admiration in particular for the way in which the little rural Protestant communities would come together, looking after one another, after some terrible loss. But, then, any Conservative should in his bones be a Unionist too. Our Party has always, throughout its history, been committed to the defence of the Union: indeed on the eve of the First World War the Conservatives were not far short of provoking civil disorder to support it. That is why I could never understand why leading Unionists… apparently sincerely… suggested that in my dealings with the South and above all in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which I shall discuss shortly, I was contemplating selling them out to the Republic.

  But what British politician will ever fully understand Northern Ireland? I suspect that even the most passionate English supporters of Ulster do so less than they imagine. Certainly, time and again I found that apparently innocuous words and phrases had a special significance in the overheated political world of Ulster… indeed the mere use of that term to describe the province is an example, allegedly denoting a ‘Protestant’ bias. In the history of Ireland… both North and South… which I tried to read up when I could, especially in my early years of office, reality and myth from the seventeenth century to the 1920s take on an almost Balkan immediacy. Distrust mounting to hatred and revenge is never far beneath the political surface. And those who step onto it must do so gingerly.

  I started from the need for greater security, which was imperative. If this meant making limited political concessions to the South, much as I disliked this kind of bargaining I had to contemplate it. But the results in terms of security must come through. In Northern Ireland itself my first choice would have been a system of majority rule…devolved government on the same lines as Westminster, and subject to its supremacy… with strong guarantees for the human rights of the minority, and indeed everyone else. That is broadly the approach which Airey and I had in mind when the 1979 manifesto was drafted. But it was not long before it became clear to me that this model was not going to work, at least for the present. The nationalist minority were not prepared to believe that majority rule would secure their rights…whether it took the form of an assembly in Belfast, or more powerful local government. They insisted on some kind of ‘power sharing’… that in some way both sides should participate in the executive function…as well as demanding a role for the Republic in Northern Ireland, both of which proposals were anathema to the Unionists.

  I had always had a good deal of respect for the old Stormont system.[51] When I was Education Secretary I was impressed by the efficiency of the Northern Ireland education service. The province has kept its grammar schools and so has consistently achieved some of the best academic results in the United Kingdom. But majority rule meant permanent power for the Protestants, and there was no getting away from the fact that, with some justice, the long years of Unionist rule were associated with discrimination against the Catholics. I believe the defects were exaggerated, but Catholic resentment gave rise to the civil rights movement at the end of the 1960s, which the IRA was able to exploit. By early 1972 civil disorder existed on such a scale that Stormont was suspended and replaced by direct rule from London. At the same time the British Government gave a guarantee that Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom so long as the majority of its people wished, and t
his has remained the cornerstone of policy under governments of both parties.

  The political realities of Northern Ireland prevented a return to majority rule. This was something that many Unionists refused to accept, but since 1974 they had been joined in the House of Commons by Enoch Powell, who helped to convert some of them to an altogether different approach. His aim was that of ‘integration’. Essentially, this would have meant eliminating any difference between the government of Northern Ireland and that of the rest of the UK, ruling out a return to devolution (whether majority rule or power sharing) and any special role for the Republic. Enoch’s view was that the terrorists thrived on uncertainty about Ulster’s constitutional position: that uncertainty would, he argued, be ended by full integration combined with a tough security policy. I disagreed with this for two reasons. First, as I have said, I did not believe that security could be disentangled from other wider political isssues. Second, I never saw devolved government and an assembly for Northern Ireland as weakening, but rather strengthening the Union. Like Stormont before it, it would provide a clear alternative focus to Dublin… without undermining the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament.

  FIRST ATTEMPTS AT DEVOLUTION

  Such were my views about Northern Ireland’s future on entering office. My conviction that further efforts must be made on both the political and security fronts had been strengthened by the events of the second half of 1979.[52] In the course of that October we discussed in government the need for an initiative designed to achieve devolution in Northern Ireland. I was not very optimistic about the prospects but I agreed to the issue of a discussion document setting out the options. A conference would be called of the main political parties in Northern Ireland to see what agreement could be reached.