Thatcher saved by signing one last document

IT was the most audacious attack yet mounted by the IRA, although the toll in lives and injuries was far less than in many other of its atrocities.

But the Brighton Bomb of October 12, 1984, precisely 20 years ago, which devastated the seafront Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party conference of that year, totally failed to achieve the objectives of its perpetrators.

It did not kill then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher nor any members of her cabinet. Five other people died and many were injured, including Margaret Tebbit, wife of the then Trade and Industry Secretary, Norman Tebbit, who himself badly hurt. She was paralysed and has been in a wheelchair since then.