DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, thirty years ago today in the middle of the night a bomb exploded at the Grand Hotel in Brighton.  It had been planted by the IRA and it was intended to kill the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet.  They were staying there for the Conservative party conference of course and Mrs Thatcher escaped but five people were killed and more than thirty others injured.  Here is Margaret Thatcher speaking just a few hours after the explosion.  

MARGARET THATCHER: You hear about these atrocities, these bombs, you don’t expect them to happen to you but life must go on as usual.  The Conference will go on as usual.  

DM: The indefatigable Margaret Thatcher there.  Well hard to believe that was actually thirty years ago but how did the Brighton bombing affect British politics and our approach to counter terrorism?  I’m joined now by Harvey Thomas, he was the senior advisor to Margaret Thatcher at the time and he was staying on the floor above the bomb when it went off.  Peter Clarke is a retired police office and of course was Head of Counter Terrorism for the Metropolitan Police between 2002 and 2008, a very good morning to you gentlemen.  Harvey Thomas, I want to transport you back thirty years precisely, how long did it take you to realise in all the confusion and terror that it was a bomb and probably the work of the IRA?

HARVEY THOMAS: It was only when they actually got down to dig me out because I went up one floor and down three and the firemen told me that there was ten tons of rubble on me and that my substantial bulk saved me, which is my excuse.  It was about 45 minutes after the bomb went off before they actually said to me there’s been a bomb and they were digging down to me.  

DM: What about you, Peter Clarke, presumably you were a young bobby then I guess?

PETER CLARKE: I was a young police inspector at the time.

DM: Oh sorry, I demoted you!  

PETER CLARKE: Only two ranks.  No, no, I remember that morning very well because I was involved in other types of policing, I was actually outside Shirebrooke Colliery in Derbyshire on picket line duty because this was right in the middle of the miner’s strike of that year.  

DM: Harvey, I wanted to pick up there on what Margaret Thatcher said at that time, I said indefatigable and the whole point, and she had to call the mike, call the camera back there just that little clip we ran there, to say the conference goes on.  This was the message that had to be sent out.

HARVEY THOMAS: Oh yes, I remember.  There was never any doubt in my mind, once they actually got me out which was about two and a half hours after the bomb, the first thing I did was to call my wife who was expecting our first baby, overdue.  Then the next thing was to call my secretary and I said, ‘Mother – Mrs T – will want to go on with the conference so you get down to the hall and start running all the lists’ because I was the producer of the conference.  So there was never any doubt in my mind and that was just a reaffirmation when I saw the television of her talking to John Cole and saying we’ll go on as usual.  

DM: It set the tone and what I want to do is relate it to the next thirty years, it set the tone for dealing with terrorists wherever they come from but Peter Clarke, just staying with that particular incident, the shock of that was the scale of it and the fact that this organisation were able to penetrate to the very heart of government there and came within a few inches, a few feet, of assassinating the Prime Minister.

PETER CLARKE: Not only assassinating a Prime Minister but her Cabinet as well.  Yes, it’s probably the most ambitious terrorist attack that we’d seen of that type in terms of the political ambition for many, many years.

DM: Do you think that it did change the way – I mean there was that life must go on, we will not be defeated by you but did it also say, with the benefit of hindsight and in terms of dealings with the IRA, did it also show that there was a stalemate being reached, that the IRA couldn’t entirely be defeated?  Of course they released that statement after the attack didn’t they saying you’ve got to lucky, I paraphrase but they said you’ve got to be lucky all the time, we’ve only to get lucky once.  

HARVEY THOMAS: Yes, I think that’s probably right but I think it’s important to remember that behind the terrorist violence of the IRA there is always a political aspect, there was a negotiable political agenda, that eventually of course brought us to where we now are, the Good Friday Agreement and everything that’s flowed from then and that’s a fundamental difference to what we’re now facing, the current terrorist threat from Islamist terrorist.  

PETER CLARKE: I think they targeted it too in the sense that collateral damage was actually a concern in their minds whereas in today’s terrorist world anybody who happens to be around could be blown apart but there was actually a significant attempt not to have too much damage outside the people you were targeting.  

DM: That does dignify I think some of the attacks that did take place that seemed pretty indiscriminate I think to a lot of people involved but you are right, Harvey is right isn’t he, in the sense that you would know that the IRA ideally wanted to target the armed forces, the establishment and that awful phrase, anyone else was collateral damage.  

PETER CLARKE: Well that’s absolutely right and in many occasions when they placed bombs in public places, shopping centres and wherever, they used coded warnings deliberately to try to actually minimise the loss of life because they didn’t want to lose traction in whatever political process ….

DM: I mean we shouldn’t glamorise them with some Queensbury Rules of terrorism should we?

PETER CLARKE: No, no, no, we shouldn’t, I mean they are killers, it is quite clear but that is a difference though because the ambition that we see now with the Islamists is quite simply to kill as many people as possible, 3000 people in 9/11, potentially several thousand with the Transatlantic airliners plot, here in London 52 of course murdered on the Underground on 7/7.  That scale of casualty is something that we didn’t actually see with the IRA campaigns.  

DM: I suppose in a way it is a purer form of terrorism in that it is just about terror without, I mean there are no political ends it seems to it.  

HARVEY THOMAS: No, nothing to discuss at all, it’s just a question of blowing up as many people as you can including yourself in many cases with suicide bombers.  We didn’t have suicide bombers in those days.  I must say that Pat McGee, when he spoke to my wife, he was the main bomber and he got 15 years for it and he said to my wife one day in tears, I only just realised that if you hadn’t been five days overdue you’d have been in the hotel with Harvey and you were collateral and that would have been awful so I’ve called to say I’m glad you weren’t in the hotel, I’m sorry but it was a concern.  It doesn’t glamorise anything, it doesn’t make anything right.

PETER CLARKE: No, it’s 100% wrong.

DM: So the question then is how to deal with the current terror threat we face, Peter Clarke.  You’ve looked into some of the roots of it as well, where people are getting these ideas and some of the processes at work that are radicalising in particular young people.

PETER CLARKE: Well yes but the change in the method of attack if you like, what Harvey has described, the suicide bombings, no-notice attacks, mass casualties, all of this has made it very difficult for the police and MI5 to choose the moment to intervene because the priority has always got to be public safety and sometimes that means that they have to intervene earlier than they might ideally like to because what they want to do is get enough evidence to prosecute people in the courts but if you intervene early then maybe you haven’t got enough evidence to go to court and then of course the allegation is easy to make, oh this is just picking on particular communities, it’s Islamophobia, it’s racism.

DM: And that can radicalise more people.  

PETER CLARKE: Indeed, yes, it can do and we had this ten, twelve years ago when we were being accused of arresting groups of people simply to justify British foreign policy in Iraq.  That’s complete nonsense but it is a very easy allegation to make and quite hard to disprove.

DM: What’s your recipe, your recommendation, Harvey Thomas, on how one should try and address the radicalisation process?  How do you talk to people who either want you dead or want you to convert?

HARVEY THOMAS: There is no answer, I wish I knew the answer because the only way you can change people like that is by personal contact.  You can do it by constant brainwashing and Peter would be more expert on this but constant brainwashing, constant discussion, all within a confined area.  The more you are out in the world the more you see the rest of it and are less brainwashed but I don't know the answer, I wish I did.  It was easier when you had people who had a political motive and you could at least those motives, now there’s nothing you can do except pray and work with them and it can be done.  I send Christmas cards out to at least 300 Muslims and this year I had 81 back from Muslim friends in Saudi Arabia and other places I’ve worked saying dear Harvey, thank you so much for remembering us at your time of Christmas.  You can build relationships because if it isn’t done it won’t solve.  

DM: Gentlemen, thank you for your thoughts, Harvey Thomas and Peter Clarke there.