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

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All this ended with the launch of an armed struggle by the Provisional IRA in 1969. The number of British politicians who were killed by republican groups was small, but British politics was changed for the worse. Politicians associated with Northern Ireland, defence, home affairs and justice – and, a fortiori, the prime minister – could no longer walk the streets or strike up casual conversations. Ministers became ever more remote from the people over whom they ruled; any intelligent person who wanted their family to have a tolerable life thought twice before going into politics.

Earlier in 1981 when Thatcher had to decide how to handle Northern Ireland, she takes a hard stance that to treat all resistance movement as criminal activities. This leads to belittling of the Irish sentiments and builds hatred. Politician Bobby Sands openly started threatening the British of repercussions and follows it by various factions setting off bombs across England. Her survival and her anti-EU rhetoric made her a progenitor of Brexit and its unforeseen consequences for Northern Ireland, Carroll says, adding that this created “the great irony” that “it may be Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, not IRA bombs, that delivers a united Ireland”.

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After three years of planning, a time-bomb planted by Magee was detonated during the Conservative Party conference at the Grand Hotel on October 12, 1984, killing five people and injuring many more. She was more than midway through the first of her three terms as British prime minister and she was already arguably the world’s most powerful woman, lauded by US president Ronald Reagan as “the only European leader I know with balls” and glorying in the label “Iron Lady” bestowed on her by a Soviet newspaper. if there is one thing to take away from this book, it is that the brighton bombing gave way to one of the hardest warnings of all time: In not providing the proper context for Magee’s actions, Carroll fails his readers by giving the impression The Troubles could be boiled down to “good vs. evil.” In actuality, both the IRA and the British government have apologized for their actions on numerous occasions. Not only does a one-sided depiction not provide the full story of The Troubles, but it is dangerous. To avoid future conflicts, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, we must properly understand what drives someone to plant a bomb or torture a prisoner. Only with a thorough understanding of others’ reasonings can we prevent violence. Carroll’s account fails in this, as it misleads its readership into thinking there are “good guys” (Thatcher) and there are “bad guys” (Magee). Through that lens, humans will continue to misunderstand each other, and conflict will follow.

For any British or Irish writer to remain un-partisan about the Troubles in Northern Ireland is a tough ask but Carroll shows sympathy and respect for all sides of the conflict in this masterful and compelling account of a remarkable episode in the Modern History of both countries. I tried to show the reader what these people were experiencing and how things looked to them,” he said. KILLING 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. In this fascinating and compelling book, veteran journalist Rory Carroll retraces the road to the infamous Brighton bombing in 1984 – an incident that shaped the political landscape in the UK for decades to come. 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.

Apart from Magee and Thatcher, the person who looms largest in this book is former Sinn Féin president, TD and abstentionist MP Gerry Adams. 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”. He declined to speak to Carroll.