Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown

Product Information

He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 - for which the IRA took full responsibility - before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the 'Troubles' in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. Just over two months after Mrs Thatcher, in tears, left No 10 Downing Street for the last time in November 1990, ending 11 years as prime minister, the IRA propelled an improvised mortar bomb into the back garden of No 10, her “refuge from the rest of the world”, as she described it. He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 – for which the IRA took full responsibility – before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the ‘Troubles’ in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. In his native Belfast, his IRA membership and explosives expertise led to his arrest and imprisonment in Long Kesh.

Neave had been shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland and had advocated military escalation against the IRA. With the amount of moles in the republican side, it’s amazing that the team managed to pull this off.At its centre are three figures: the bomber, Patrick Magee; his target, the British prime minister; and, looming in the background, the ghostly figure of the republican icon , Bobby Sands. Even more fascinating is that a mere 14 years after this, the Good Friday Agreement was signed, essentially bringing the 'troubles' to an end and the Brighton bomber was released by the British Government as part of it. In 1981, it was Thatcher’s absolute intransigence on the issue of political status for IRA prisoners that had led Sands and nine others to start the hunger strikes that led to their deaths. One of only 25 women among the 630 MPs in the House of Commons after the 1959 general election, Mrs Thatcher became the first mother to hold government office in Britain before being elected in 1979 as Britain’s first woman prime minister and first woman head of a European government. For all ebook purchases, you will be prompted to create an account or login with your existing HarperCollins username and password.

She even changed her speech to tone down attacks on Neil Kinnock and the Labour party, cutting references to the “enemy within” and making her seem, if anything, more serene than usual. If the prime minister had been killed, her successors could never have been seen talking to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and politics in Northern Ireland would have been frozen for a generation.It toppled through the blast hole, then veered sideways and plunged down a vertical stack of rooms with numbers ending in 8. Bestseller'As taut as a fictional thriller' Mail on Sunday'Gripping, detailed and richly layered' GuardianKILLING THATCHER is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet - an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot. Magee was eventually arrested and convicted but he was released from prison after the Good Friday Agreement. As with all accounts of the conflict, there is carnage and atrocity, the body count of the bombing campaign carried out by Magee and his IRA comrades exacting the highest toll, not among members of the security forces, but civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the last day of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in the coastal town of Brighton, England.

The Irish government cracked down hard on the IRA but Irish courts were independent and unlikely to allow the extradition of a man accused of a political offence. Apart from Magee and Thatcher, the person who looms largest in this book is former Sinn Féin president, TD and abstentionist MP Gerry Adams. The main players, in both the IRA and the security services, are fleshed out in detail and the narrative has the feel of a thriller. Magee, like so many from his background, had little opportunity at school, or thereafter, to make the most of an intelligent mind.The Brighton bombing is a magnet for alternative histories, sliding doors theories in which it is possible to enter a world of infinite speculation about what might have followed had the most consequential British politician of her time been murdered that night. If the debris of that Victorian chimney stack had taken a slightly different downward trajectory, we can only guess what the real and enduring cost of killing Thatcher might have been.

It was Adams who told Magee and others in Long Kesh that they could defeat the British if they built a political movement and retooled the IRA for a “long war”. For want of two minutes, or a few feet, history could have turned, and with it the fate of Northern Ireland, Thatcherism, and the Cold War”.Rory Carroll, currently the Guardian's chief Ireland correspondent, was a 12-year-old living in Dublin at the time and remembers the scenes in the aftermath of the Brighton bombing. Alongside a history of the Troubles, is the life story of Patrick Magee and others involved in the IRA, as well as the Hunger Strikes, which ended in 1981.