The daughter of an MP murdered in the Brighton bombing 40 years ago has said it would make her life easier if the man responsible would state that the IRA’s violence was wrong.
Jo Berry, whose father was Sir Anthony Berry, the former Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate, said she had struck up a “very unusual friendship” with the man who planted the device Patrick Magee.
The bombing on October 12 1984 tore apart the Brighton Grand Hotel, where then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher and members of her cabinet were staying while the Conservative Party conference took place.
Jo Berry said she wanted to turn her experiences of the bombing into something positive (Chris Ison/PA)
Five people, including Sir Anthony, were killed in the explosion and another 34 were injured.
Magee was handed eight life sentences at the Old Bailey in 1986, with a recommendation he serve a minimum of 35 years.
He was released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Ms Berry, who was 27 at the time, says she cannot believe that 40 years have passed.
She told the PA news agency: “I can still remember the day very well, I can remember the trauma, the horror, the shock, the waiting.
“We had to wait until mid-afternoon to get news that they had found my dad’s body.
“It was so public and it still is. There is something about terror attacks, they never go away.”
She said her father was “one of those MPs who really cared”.
“He was well respected on both sides of the chamber,” she said.
Former IRA bomber Patrick Magee was released from prison in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement (Gareth Fuller/PA)
“He was loved by the people in his constituency, he loved nothing more than meeting people and helping them.
“He was very much a family man, very private man who loved nothing more than having his six children be with him.
“He was a wonderful dad.”
Referring to IRA violence, Ms Berry said: “As a teenager, sometimes I couldn’t get to school, there were bomb scares, bombs did go off in London. I was aware of it from the TV, the horrible pictures of bombs going off.
“But I always thought it wasn’t going to impact me, it was something that impacted other people. I never thought my dad would be a target.”
Days after the bombing which killed her father, Ms Berry said she made a choice to “bring something positive out of it”.
She said: “Looking back on the young me, I am amazed that I had that strength and clarity.
“I have carried on, I haven’t stopped trying to bring something positive out of it. I didn’t want to use my pain to hurt anyone else.”
This resulted in Ms Berry first meeting with Magee in 2000. Since then, they have appeared together at events hundreds of times.
She explained: “I wanted to meet him, not to change him, not to tell him that he was evil, but to actually hear his story, see him as a human being. That would help me, it wasn’t about helping him.
The upper floors of the Grand Hotel Brighton after the bomb (PA)
“I went to meet him for the first time in Dublin. I thought this would be a one-off meeting, no-one will ever know, I won’t want to ever see him again, that was my plan.
“What happened at that first meeting, it started off with him giving a lot of justification, talking about political ideas and talking about my dad as a legitimate target. That is not easy to hear.
“But I had heard enough to see he was someone who cares about his community. When I thought I was about to walk out, that is when he changed and would later say he was disarmed by my empathy.
“He had to open up and the walls came down and the journey started where he began to see my dad as a human being.”
She added: “I do care for him (Magee) and I actually appreciate his courage in keeping on meeting me because I actually think I am a hard choice for him because he has to live with the knowledge of what he did, the impact and who he killed.”
Ms Berry said Magee was on a journey and was “conflicted” by his past actions.
She said: “For me, if he ever got to the point where he said ‘Now I do realise that violence is something that under no circumstances should ever be used’, that would make my life a bit easier.
“But this isn’t about an easy life.
“The way we resolve conflict has not brought us peace in the world, so I am trying something different.”
Ms Berry said she would be marking the 40th anniversary of her father’s death privately with family.