On 12 October 1984, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempted to assassinate members of the British government at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England. A long-delay time bomb was planted in the hotel by Patrick Magee before Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet arrived for the Conservative Party conference. Five people were killed, including the Conservative MP and Deputy Chief Whip Sir Anthony Berry, and a further 31 were injured. Thatcher narrowly escaped the explosion.
The Grand Hotel on the morning after the bombing
The Grand Hotel at night, 2006, the bomb damage occurred to the right of the area lacking balconies.
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army, officially known as the Irish Republican Army and informally known as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary force that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It argued that the all-island Irish Republic continued to exist, and it saw itself as that state's army, the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, who was twice chief-of-staff of the pre-1969 IRA during the Border campaign of 1956–1962, was a member of the first Army Council of the Provisional IRA in 1969.
Martin McGuinness was part of an IRA delegation which took part in peace talks with British politician William Whitelaw, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in July 1972.
Memorial to the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings, which killed twenty-one people in November 1974
IRA political poster from the 1980s, featuring a quote from Bobby Sands written on the first day of the 1981 hunger strike
