Brighton Bomb, 25 Years Ago Today

Sozza Letters!

So why did he plant the bomb?

He did talk about 200 years of oppression by the English and how they had no political power to change things and other tactics were tried before they resorted to the campaigns they did. They felt it was their only option in order to bring about change.

I honestly don't know enough about it all but it was interesting to hear it from someone who is clearly intelligent and thoughtful - he's certainly no raving lunatic. I don't know what I was expecting really but he certainly doesn't come across as some extremist loon.

All very interesting.

Northern Ireland may be part of the UK but in this part of the world we know more about its history than British people.

People actually tend to talk about 800 years of oppression rather than 200 in my experience. They speak almost as if they personally endured all 800 years themselves.

Essentially there are two nationalities in Northern Ireland. People tend to talk about Catholics and Protestants but in fact the groupings were Irish Nationalists and British Nationalists. The British Nationalists are largely Protestant and the Irish Nationalists are largely Catholic but really religion wasn't the major issue it's made out to be.

In the 1920s Ireland moved towards independence but Britain insisted on retaining six of the nine Ulster counties which had a majority in favour of remaining in the UK. Several decades later Northern Ireland was an autonomous part of the UK with its own government. However it was far from democratic. The minority population was badly treated in areas such as housing. Elections were gerrymandered. This is a method of drawing constituency boundaries which ensure that one party gets nearly all the seats regardless of how the electorate voted. Some historians describe it as an apartheid statelet within the UK and they've probably got a point. In the late sixties a civil rights campaign was waged. The authorities clamped down. Violence started. The British army was brought in initially to protect the Irish Nationalist areas from rampaging mobs of British nationalists who were attacking them as a reaction to the civil rights campaign. Pretty soon the IRA was formed supposedly to 'protect' the minority. But they soon moved on from mere protection and started a terrorist campaign aimed at getting Northern Ireland out of the UK and into the Republic of Ireland.

And that's where guys like Pat Magee come in. Interesting that he sounds intelligent and thoughtful as you've said. Of course intelligent people are well capable of giving you their own version of history to justify their actions. He is after all a killer. Not a Fred West type killer but he's got blood on his hands. Certainly he was born into a population that was badly mistreated by the UK or at least the Northern Ireland arm of the UK but is that justification for planting bombs? He seems to suggest that it is.

Interesting to meet him I'm sure. I thought it might have been a bit creepy.

He is a killer but, as you say, not in a crazed loon way who takes some macabre pleasure in killing. More in the way that I guess a lot of our grandparents may have been 'killers' in a time of warfare. Not quite the same but it's more the latter than the former.

I don't entirely buy the 'we had no other option' argument and I told him that (checks under desk for bombs) but I also told him I'd never heard the argument expressed so eloquently as he did.

I'd be the first to admit I don't know all the history or understand all the politics but he obviously genuinely believes that their cause was just and feels it was their only option and other tactics had been tried before violence/bombing campaigns were resorted to.

I was surprised at how normal he seemed, there was certainly no feeling of "Argh! I'm talking to a mass murderer!".

Are you going to have Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair speaking next week?