Thatcher's response to bomb attack 'like Trump's fist raise' after assassination attempt, says ex-aide

Margaret Thatcher's resuming the Tory conference, just hours after an IRA bomb attack targeted her, has been likened to raising his fist post-assassination attempt.

The blast ripped through Brighton's Grand Hotel, targeting the then-prime minister and her colleagues during the conference on October 12, 1984, The explosion killed five people and injured another 34.

In the aftermath of the early morning devastation, Mrs Thatcher and Lord Robin Butler headed to Hove police station. Lord Butler recounts watching as the tragedy unfolded on TV and later advised Mrs Thatcher of the casualties at 8am when she emerged, ready to take charge.

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"I said to her, surely, you’re not going to continue with the party conference while some of your closest friends and colleagues have been killed and injured and some are still trying to retrieve John Wakeham. Norman Tebbit had been brought out, badly injured. And she said: ‘The conference is due to resume at 9.30 and it must resume on time. This is our opportunity to show that terrorism can’t defeat democracy’," he said. Looking back, he concedes that Thatcher's decision was correct.

"She was right and I was wrong, and she made an important statement, really by doing that. It rather reminds me of – with an odd comparison – Donald Trump emerging after they tried to shoot him, and saying, ‘fight’."

Lord Butler, who was the civil servant in charge of Mrs Thatcher’s Downing Street office, said: "You usually don’t see politicians having to react to something very unexpected instinctively, and Margaret Thatcher’s instincts when the bomb went off were first of all to see if her husband was okay, and second, to show that she is not going to be stopped from carrying on business as usual."

As he assisted her with preparations for her conference speech, he described the moment the bomb detonated: "So, at 2.54 in the morning, she was in an armchair in her suite. I was in another armchair 10 feet away, waiting and hoping that she wasn’t going to take too long in dealing with this document, and that’s when the bomb went off."

"I was tired and getting sleepy. And of course, the bomb woke us up – woke me up. She didn’t need any waking up. And I realised it was a bomb, it was obvious it was. I’d heard bombs before. There had been some close shaves that I’d been previously involved in."

Lord Butler also detailed Mrs Thatcher's immediate concern for her husband, Dennis: "She said, immediately, ‘I must see if Dennis is all right in the bedroom next door.’ And so she opened the door to the bedroom and through that, you could hear falling masonry. It was actually her bathroom, rather than the bedroom, that was collapsing."

Mr Thatcher was seen hastily pulling on trousers over his pyjamas as he, along with others, ventured into the corridor to investigate what appeared to be smoke seeping from beneath then-foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe’s door. Mr Howe and minister John Gummer, now Lord Gummer, joined them, alongside secretaries who had been busy typing up Mrs Thatcher’s speech.

Recalling the chaos, one witness recounted: "I’ve got this vivid memory of [Howe’s] protection officer running against the door of the bathroom of the suite trying to kick it in so he could get in. Luckily, he didn’t succeed, because the hotel had collapsed the other side of the door."

Despite the blast causing several floors at the front of the hotel to crumble, the lights remained on, a detail that Lord Butler highlighted. He said: "[Thatcher] was so surprised that the lights hadn’t gone out when the bomb went off. She always, after that, carried a torch in her handbag so that if there was another bomb attack that she was involved in, she would be able to find her way around."

Lord Butler later braved the conditions to retrieve clothes and documents from his room, noting that while dust was everywhere, it had not penetrated the wardrobe, leaving the clothes intact. He packed up the papers, unaware of the imminent danger as the hotel structure was compromised. Reflecting on the aftermath, he mentioned he had "ingested a lot of dust".

After surviving an attack, he felt a heightened sense of danger in his daily life. Before attending a conference at Dublin Castle later that year, he penned a letter to his wife and left it at their home as a precaution.

Patrick Magee, the man who planted the lethal bomb, was sentenced to eight life terms at the Old Bailey in 1986, with a recommendation to serve at least 35 years. Lord Butler, who observed the end of the trial, remarked: "[I] saw the winding up speech by the prosecution, and for the only time in my life, clapped eyes on McGee himself and the other members of the active service unit ... my impression was there were three male members of the active service unit, two women, and how very smartly they were dressed. And you know, this was no doubt in the hope of creating a good impression on the jury."

Magee was released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement after serving just 13 years for the bombing. Lord Butler said that the Agreement brought "a feeling of great relief and satisfaction that we were moving into a political phase and out of violence".

The daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, the MP for Enfield Southgate who perished in the blast, has since met with Magee hundreds of times and shared with the her hope that he will one day acknowledge that any killing is wrong.

Lord Butler said: "I wouldn’t have wanted to meet him. What I feel about Patrick Magee, is that he was somebody who was devoted to his cause, and I believe that he is still devoted to the cause, not of terrorism, but of a united Ireland."