Talk:Brighton hotel bombing

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Brighton hotel bombing article.
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The article had this, which I have removed

In the event that the Prime Minister were killed it is believed that the Queen would have appointed Viscount Whitelaw, then Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council, and de facto Deputy Prime Minister, as acting Prime Minister. As the Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine was out of the country on official business, it is widely believed that he would have won the party leadership, and would therefore have become Prime Minister

This is unsourced speculation. Certainly, Heseltine would have been a candidate, but really we don't know what would have happened, which would in any case have depended upon who died apart from Thatcher. Morwen - Talk 13:04, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Magee talk should be moved to his page

Unless something is done to determine Magee's co-conspirators in the bombings, the dialog on his recent claims probably belongs on his own page. 64.162.72.149

[edit] Contradictory Information

There is contradictory information between this page and the Margaret Thatcher page.

  • The Margeret Thatcher page claims Thatcher was saved because she was in the bathroom when the bomb went off, and thus avoided the bomb blast.
  • This article says she wasn't in the bathroom, and that the blast "shredded through her bathroom".

At least one of these accounts has to be wrong. What really happened? -- FirstPrinciples 07:12, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

One of her biographers, John Campbell, says this:
She was very lucky to survive unscathed. The bomb ripped out the whole central section of the hotel and badly damaged her bathroom. When it went off, just before three in the morning, she had just been putting the finishing touches to her speech for the next day with Ronnie Millar and John Gummer. As they left, Robin Butler came in with a last letter for her to sign before she got ready for bed. But for that, she would have been in the bathroom at the critical moment and, though she might not have been killed, she would certainly would have suffered serious injury from flying glass. Her sitting room, however, and the bedroom where Denis [Thatcher] was asleep, were undamaged.--[Campbell, The Iron Lady, p. 430.]--Johnbull 13:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loathed Mrs Thatcher and her regime with a vengeance, and think that the only thing wrong with the Brighton bomb was that it was much too small, but is it right to just call her 'Thatcher' instead of 'Mrs Thatcher' or 'Margaret Thatcher'?. Love her or hate her, she was/is a human being. 160.84.253.241 10:45, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
It's common practice to often refer to someone by their full name in the first instance, then family name after that, which is what this article does. Others, including the BBC, The Times and CNN do the same. Bazza 12:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Fairy Nuff. I hadn't noticed how widespread it had become. I always used to associate it with describing criminals, i.e. "When arrested; Parker (34) denied involvement.....", but now it seems to be used for everybody. 160.84.253.241 13:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that only applies when referring to men, and those links bear that out - Mel Gibson, for example, is referred to after the first mention as "Gibson", but Diane Sawyer is consistently called "Ms Sawyer". And on Wimbledon it's always been "Game, set and match Miss Navratilova", or whatever. It - or I - may be chauvinist, but it strikes me as disrespectful to refer to a woman by her surname only.--Dub8lad1 13:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Do demons really have genders?70.71.188.156 21:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Stop your whining. In the correct environment, we are ALL capable of evil. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.95.151.196 (talk) 09:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] How many bombs?

The article is a little confusing. The first section mentions "two large bombs" and repeatedly talks about "the bombs". But the Magee section states "he planted the bomb" (singular). Were there two bombs? Did Magee plant both of them? --Nickj69 08:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wasn't the bomb hidden behind a bath panel?

Worthy of a mention? Biofoundationsoflanguage 11:32, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

No it wasn't.--padraig 11:37, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm.

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Looks like it to me! Biofoundationsoflanguage 11:53, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I read an account of the bombing recently in which went into detail on the planting of the bomb, in which it stated the bomb was planted in the actual wall void between the bathroom and the adjoining room, by magee and another unnamed bomber, I will have a look for it and post the details here.--padraig 13:01, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay. I think if we can get to the bottom of where the bomb was hidden it might be worth adding. The article's hardly long. Biofoundationsoflanguage 13:11, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
There was a TV documentry on this a few years ago where they showed how the bomb was behind a bath panel and the timer unit (from a video recorder) was the first use of such a type of device in a terrorist attack in the UK. This was is significant because it enabled the bomb to be planted weeks before the intended attack. At the time the UK security services would have checked the names of people who had statyed at the hotel in the days before the conference but wouldnt have checked far back enough to be alerted to any known/suspected terrorists. Nor did they find the bomb during the security checks/searches prior to the conference. 80.229.222.48 (talk) 13:48, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Probable non-controversial change to photo caption

I was a bit confused comparing the photo taken soon after the blast and the 2004 photo. As a result, I added a caption noting that the recent photo has a new addition. Most people probably figured it out much quicker than I did. Of course, I'm sometimes an idiot. Archtransit 17:39, 12 October 2007 (UTC)