The bomb, planted weeks earlier behind a bathroom panel by Patrick Magee, went off at 2:54 a.m., bringing down a large section of the hotel's façade. Thatcher, still working on her conference speech, escaped injury. Five people died, including the MP Sir Anthony Berry, and more than 30 were hurt, including Norman Tebbit and his wife, Margaret, who was left paralyzed. The conference opened on time at 9:30 a.m., and Thatcher gave her closing speech that afternoon. The IRA declared: "Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once."
The Provisional IRA had tried for years to strike at the British government. In mid-September 1984, Magee checked into room 629 of the Grand Hotel under a false name and hid a bomb with a long-delay timer beneath the bath. It was set to explode during the party's annual conference, when Thatcher and much of her cabinet would be staying in the hotel.
At 2:54 a.m. on October 12, the bomb blew out the center of the building, and floors collapsed onto one another. Thatcher was in her suite with her husband, Denis, and aides; the bathroom she had left minutes earlier was damaged. Rescuers pulled survivors from the rubble for hours. Norman Tebbit, the trade secretary, was filmed being lifted out of the debris, and Margaret Tebbit spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
Thatcher insisted that the conference go on. It opened at 9:30 a.m. with a standing ovation as she arrived on stage, followed by a two-minute silence, and at 2 p.m. she gave her closing speech, calling the bombing an attempt to cripple the government and saying that "all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail". Magee was caught through a fingerprint on the hotel's registration card and was released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.
Key people: Margaret Thatcher, Patrick Magee, Norman Tebbit, Anthony Berry