How the IRA gang who plotted to kill Mrs Thatcher 40 years ago were found hiding in Glasgow
Patrick Magee was arrested at a safe house filled with bomb-making gear
Last updated 11th Oct 2024
On the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the Brighton hotel bombing, where the IRA came close to killing Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, a retired detective is telling Absolute Radio news about the moment police arrested the bomb gang at a safe house in Glasgow,
The IRA planted a bomb in a sixth-floor room at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where the PM and leading figures from the Conservative Party were staying for their 1984 conference.
The bomb exploded at 2:54 am on 12 October, and the couple occupying room 629 where it had been hideen, were Donald Maclean, the president of the Scottish Conservatives, and his wife Muriel.
Muriel was killed in the blast which tore an enormous gap across the front of the hotel, while her husband was discovered down in the basement of the hotel, but survived.
Four others died, including the Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry, and more than thirty people were injured, some very seriously, including Margaret Tebbit, the wife of Lord Tebbit who was left paralysed from the chest down.
The target of the attack, Mrs Thatcher, who was still working at the desk in her suite of rooms on the first floor, was unhurt.
Hunt for the bombers
The investigation to track down the bomb maker, Patrick Magee, and his accomplices, led detectives to a tenement block in Langside, on the south side of Glasgow.
In June 1985 Detective Chief Superintendent Ian Robinson, who was head of Special Branch at Strathclyde Police, was given a tip-off from the Metropolitan Police about two IRA suspects who were headed to Glasgow from Carlisle on a train.
Remembering the operation for Absolute Radio he said: “The previous evening, we had information that a man named Peter Sherry was coming across in a fishing boat from Ayr harbour. They gave us the times when he should arrive
“I was at home painting the garden gate when my wife told me ‘The office wants you’. I went in and answered the phone. ‘They’re coming back to Glasgow – Sherry and another man’. So, I got in the car right away – I still had paint on my hands and sped in Glasgow.”
Confronting the bomber
Recalling the moment of arrest, Robinson, who now lives in Waterbeck in Annandale, says: “Magee came to the door, and he could do an English accent because he was brought up in England, and he says, ‘Can I help you?’.
"Brian just grabbed him and pulled him out whilst the rest of them dashed into the house.
"There were about five of them but they got Magee, a guy named MacDonald, Ella O’Dwyer, and Martina Anderson in the house.
The flat was being used as a bomb factory, but Ian says nothing was found on when they first took an explosives detector into the building.
“The machine went whizzing mad and they thought it had a fault. They didn’t find anything, there was nothing there.
“So, I thought about it and the guy seemed insistent on what he had seen, and he seemed reliable, so I sent another team down again and they found explosives – 34 of them – and they had live timers on them.
“When the bomb disposal man came down, I asked him what would have been the result if all these things went off. I mean, one of them fitted into a child’s piece box. He said 100 yards would have been completely destroyed, 500 yards would be severe damage and 750 yards would be flying objects so it was a really serious find.”
Averting further tragedies
“On the top of the list that we found was ‘H’ and Ruben’s Hotel and a time which I think was the time it was meant to go off, so they had obviously planted a bomb in the London hotel.
“I think there were 34 bombs made. These bombs were to be put on the beach, but I think that it was said that they would have given a warning about the beach bombs.
“But they had a history of making a mess of the phone calls by leaving it too late. People could have been killed and the hotel… It could have been another Brighton situation.
Kept in the dark
It was to be another week before Ian Robinson was told about the significance of the arrest his team had made, such was the high level of security around the operation.
“I didn’t know that Magee was wanted for the Brighton bomb, they kept that to themselves. They could have arrested him in Carlisle, but they let him run and he came up to Glasgow.
“My reaction to finding all that stuff and seeing the list was we had foiled a major bombing campaign, and I thought that was the major success of it, not just capturing Magee.”
What happened to Patrick Magee?
Patrick Magee was released, on licence, in June 1999 as a consequence of the Good Friday Agreement.
The following year he met Jo Berry, the daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, who said she wanted to understand the conflict in Northern Ireland from Magee's perspective.
The two became friends, later forming the organisation, Building Bridges for Peace, aiming to bring divided communities together through dialogue.