The IRA detonated a 100lb bomb at the Grand Hotel Brighton where the Conservative Party was holding its annual conference. Five people died while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped injury.

Following the bombing, the IRA issued a statement, “Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once; you will have to be lucky always.”

The bomb was planted by IRA activist, Patrick Magee, who had checked into the hotel five weeks earlier. Magee was released from a life sentence in 1999 as part of the Good Friday Agreement. He has since made public efforts at reconciliation of both communities and twenty-five years after the Brighton bombing spoke at the House of Commons with Jo Berry, daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, one of those killed in the bombing.

Photo: Badly damaged Grand Hotel in Brighton, following the IRA bomb blast