The Brighton bomber nearly killed my father. But Daddy forgave him - and invited him to breakfast

Reconciliation is a word I first heard in the 90s, parading around Coventry Cathedral with 300 other Christians, singing ‘We are marching in the light of God’ as part of Reconciliation ‘97 - an international reconciliation conference.

Not yet a teenager, I knew there was something important about that moment, but I’m not sure if I understood or appreciated the critical importance of forgiveness in a world in need of healing and unity. 

Just a few years later in 1999, my parents called my sister and I into our living room to talk with us. My dad, Harvey Thomas, explained that he had been in touch with the man who had placed the Brighton bomb in the room below his, 15 years previously. He told us that he had offered his forgiveness to the man convicted. He then let us know that he was going to meet this man, who had tried to kill him. 

I remember saying to my dad, very strongly, “I don’t want you to meet him! How could you possibly want to meet the man who did this!?” Daddy had already come to a place of forgiveness and was on a journey towards true reconciliation, but I was not yet in that place. 

The blast

At 2:54am on 12 October 1984, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a bomb at the Conservative Party Conference, held at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. As Margaret Thatcher’s Communications Director, my father was directing the conference and was asleep in the room above the bomb when it went off. He was blasted through the roof, crashed down three floors and his body caught on a steel girder over a 6ft drop with rubble and icy water from burst pipes pouring down on top of him.  

He often told us that in that moment, his prayers were with my mother, overdue with their first child, my big sister. He had every certainty where he was going if he died, but he didn’t want my mum to have to raise their daughter alone or for Leah to grow up without her Daddy. His faith, even in that moment, directed his thoughts and prayers not towards anger or fear, but love. 

A few hours later, firemen heard his cries for help and rescued him from the wreckage, telling him in no uncertain terms that his ‘substantial bulk’ had likely saved his life. Other than ears full of rubble and multiple cuts and bruises, he was mercifully unharmed. He had no broken bones, no serious injuries and from that day until his dying day, never suffered shock from the trauma. And while his size 16 shoes were obliterated in the blast, his Bible was later found and returned to him, which he kept carefully in a ziplock bag, rubble and all.  

Many other victims were not as fortunate that day. Five people were killed - including MP Sir Anthony Berry - and others suffered life-altering injuries - including Margaret Tebbit, the wife of Norman Tebbit, who was paralysed. The suffering and experiences of every person impacted is personal to each one of them and, like my father, I wouldn’t presume to tell their stories or expect their responses to mirror ours. 

I arrived in the world a few years after the bomb and the story of the IRA and what happened in Brighton was an ever-present, though never dramatised, part of my childhood. The Troubles - a period of conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s until 1998 - were explained to us in an age-appropriate way and our parents helped us to understand that there are always two sides to a story. But to me, the man who planted the bomb would forever be the terrorist who almost killed my Daddy. Had he succeeded, as I later told him, I wouldn’t even be here. 

Patrick Magee - then a member of the Provisional IRA - was arrested for the Brighton bombing in 1985 and sentenced to eight life sentences in 1986. He was released 13 years later under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement - an historic pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998, which officially brought an end to the Troubles.  

Daddy had written to Pat in prison, expressing that his faith and understanding of the Bible’s call to forgive had led him, after 14 years, to a place where he wanted to extend forgiveness to Pat for the role he played in placing the Brighton bomb. That letter began a dialogue between the pair. 

The meeting

After Pat’s release in 1999, their communications continued and eventually they agreed to meet in person. That first meeting in Dublin, as with most of their future meetings, was a very private one. A couple of years later, it was decided that Pat would come to London to meet here.  

The plan was that they meet near the airport. My sister - more accepting and hopeful than I was at the time - decided to go with Daddy to the airport to meet Pat, but I opted to stay at home with my mum, not wanting to be in the presence of the Brighton Bomber. 

In true Harvey Thomas style, my mum received a call shortly after Pat landed saying that as it was so early, no decent restaurants were open near the airport and so he was bringing Pat home for breakfast instead - requesting my mum get some beans on toast ready. My father treated everyone the same - from the cleaner to the President - “they’re all just people, Harvey” as Billy Graham once said to him. So he saw nothing wrong or odd in inviting this man into our home. To him, as with everybody he met, Pat was just a person with a story and that story could write its next chapter in our own home just as easily as anywhere else. 

While my father had long since forgiven at that point, I still hadn’t. My response to meeting Pat was therefore unsurprisingly somewhat antagonistic if not a little curious as to what he would be like in person.  

It’s funny the things the brain recalls. I vividly remember him walking up through the back garden, watching him come closer to the house and trying in vain to hide behind my mother (I say in vain as she is 5’6” and even as a mid-teen I already towered over her). I was still adamant that I did not want him in our house. I later learned that he was just as nervous about being unexpectedly invited into the home of the man he had targeted so many years before. 

My preconceptions were soon challenged though, sitting opposite Pat over breakfast. As I listened to his soft Irish lilt and observed his calm, humble manner, I began to wonder if someone so intelligent and normal could really have been the person behind such an act of violence. When my mother asked if his flight had been very early or whether he would like something else to eat, he responded matter-of-factly that you get up when you’re told to and eat what you’re given in prison.  

He was smart, gentle and unassuming, but his life was anathema to me. 

I was quite a stubborn teen, so it didn’t take long to get over my initial hesitancy and blurt out that if Pat had succeeded in killing my Daddy I wouldn’t even be here. I wanted him to understand that there were consequences to his actions, literally life or death ones. He had caused death and had almost prevented my life. 

In that moment, with my truth and anger hanging in the air, our relationship changed. Pat put his knife and fork down, apologised to me and my family for the hurt he had caused us and graciously - and perhaps unknowingly - began a process towards reconciliation with the youngest daughter of the man he had tried to kill. His undefensive demeanour shifted something in me as I started to see him not as an abstract terrorist, but a real person with a real story. 

My father always said that while he never agreed with Pat’s actions, he understood the motivations behind them. This understanding was key to their ongoing reconciliation, though he never pressured anyone else to forgive. He was quite clear that forgiveness is a personal choice. 

What I realised in time, was that personal choice also extended to me.  

Choosing to forgive

While I wasn’t even alive at the time of the bombing, its impact on the life of my father, whom I adored and with whom I was so close, had inadvertently created a bitterness in me towards someone I had never met. Like my father, I could never condone Pat’s actions, but could I understand them and release the anger I held towards a person who had hurt someone I loved?  

As I watched their friendship grow and as the two men continued to speak and listen, so my heart continued to soften. As I understood more about why Pat had planted that bomb - while I to this day do not agree with him - so I began to understand more about the other side of the story. The outworking of the Christian command to forgive took form in front of me as I watched them develop an ease with and enjoyment of each other’s company. 

Over the next five years, as their friendship deepened, so did my understanding of the power of forgiveness. It was during those years, in 2004, that we came together to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the bomb with a press conference. Pat was heckled by a member of the audience and it was only in that moment that I realised how my own perspective had changed over the past half decade. I was surprised to find that instead of indifference or agreement with the man shouting, I found myself almost instinctively protective of Pat, this man whom I had once resented. 

Reconciliation

It has now been 23 years since my first meeting with Pat and we have met up with him many times since. I introduced my husband to him in Belfast not long after we married and my family and I are in semi-regular contact with him, inviting him to many of the milestone events in our family’s life. 

One of my most treasured photographs is of our daughter’s dedication in 2021. My mother, father and sister are on one side with myself, my husband and our two children held in our arms on the other. Right in the middle of us all, is Patrick Magee. It was our joy and delight to have him as our guest on one of the most important days of our lives.  

It remains our privilege to tell our children the story of reconciliation begun by their Opa so many decades ago. Even at such a young age, they recognise the power of forgiveness in their own way. When we met with Pat for brunch last year, our children, while only 5 and 3 at the time, were very clear that this man was “a very important person” to our family. He is a treasured friend.  

And when Daddy died in 2022, Pat was on our list of people who should be called personally to deliver the news.  

I thought that when Daddy died, his story of reconciliation had reached its natural conclusion. In many ways, there was nothing for me personally to forgive. I hadn’t even been born when the Brighton bomb exploded. But never have I seen first-hand such a transformation as a result of forgiveness, as the story of Harvey Thomas and Patrick Magee. Their legacy of reconciliation has become my own story and the one I pass onto my children. 

And it is my deep hope that one day - I will keep praying - there will be a heavenly reconciliation, where we will all be united again in glory.