Patrick Joseph Magee (born 1951[1]) is a former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, best known for planting a bomb in the Brighton's Grand Hotel, targeting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet, which killed two men and three women. He is sometimes referred to as the Brighton bomber.
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Magee was born in Belfast but moved with his family to Norwich when he was two years old. He returned to Belfast at the age of 18 in 1969, and joined the IRA soon afterwards.[2]
By the height of the Troubles in the 1970s, Magee had been made an officer and was responsible for the development of bombs. In 1973, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment after admitting to being a member of the IRA, and was released in November 1975. In 1978, he travelled to England and planted sixteen bombs in cities across the country, including London, Manchester, Liverpool, Coventry and Southampton.[3]
The plot to bomb the Grand Hotel had started in 1981 as an act of revenge for the stance Thatcher had taken over the death of Bobby Sands and other republican hunger-strikers who were demanded political status in prison.[4]
Magee had stayed in the hotel under the false name of Roy Walsh four weeks previously, during the weekend of 14–17 September 1984, when he planted the bomb, with a long-delay timer, in the bathroom wall of his room, number 629.[5] The bomb exploded at 2:54 a.m. on 12 October 1984, killing five people and injuring 34.[6] Magee escaped to Holland, but later returned to England. He was arrested in the Queen's Park area of Glasgow on 24 June 1985 with other members of an active service unit, including Martina Anderson, while planning other bombings. At his trial in September 1986 he received eight life sentences, with the judge branding him "a man of exceptional cruelty and inhumanity."[2][7] While in prison, he earned a PhD in 'Troubles' fiction. In August 1997, he was married for a second time, to novelist Barbara Byer.[2]
Magee was released from prison in 1999, having served 14 years in prison, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.[8] He has since indicated that he did not act alone at Brighton. He continues to defend his role in the blast, but he has expressed remorse for the loss of innocent lives.[9]
One of the victims of the bombing was Sir Anthony Berry, whose daughter, Jo Berry, publicly met with Magee in November 2000, in an effort at achieving reconciliation as envisioned in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement.[1]