Thatcher, IRA Trade Barbs as Tories Meet in Brighton

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher traded defiant words with the Irish Republican Army as her Conservative Party gathered to open its convention today in the same hotel where the outlawed IRA tried to blow her up four years ago.

The convention opened this morning amid tight security. Overflights by civil air traffic were banned, a Royal Navy destroyer patrolled off shore and delegates were forced to line up early outside the conference hall and endure rigorous security checks.

Without prior announcement and ringed by security men, Thatcher arrived late Monday with her husband, Denis, at Brighton’s seafront Grand Hotel. It was badly damaged in the Oct. 12, 1984, bomb blast that killed five people. The prime minister narrowly escaped injury. The IRA claimed responsibility.

The current four-day convention is the Tories’ first there since the bombing.

Thatcher said today that her strongest memory was that the day after the bombing, the convention started on time and “people flooded in.”

“They weren’t going to be defeated,” she said.

This morning, Thatcher attended a private memorial service at the Church of St. Paul for the victims of the 1984 bombing. She unveiled a memorial plaque to the five who died which reads: “They paid the price of freedom.”

The Irish Republican Army, in a statement circulated to Irish news media Monday, said it “takes great delight from the hysteria and the expense surrounding the security of Mrs. Thatcher and the Tories at their Brighton conference.”

The predominantly Catholic IRA is fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland and unite the 60% Protestant province with the 95% Roman Catholic Irish Republic.

More than 1,500 police officers were deployed in the normally staid resort on the south England coast 45 miles from London.

The IRA, which declared “we only have to be lucky once” after its failed 1984 assassination attempt against Thatcher, has vowed to kill her. She has said she will not bow to terrorists.