Steve Ramsey - Something Has Gone Wrong: Dealing with the Brighton Bomb

T hats definitely not thunder, said one police officer who had heard the noise, which came from the direction of Brightons Grand Hotel. The Prime Minister and many of her colleagues, in town for the Conservative Party conference, were inside. The air was dusty, and there were pieces of the hotel on the seafront. It was 2.54 a.m. on Friday 12 October 1984.

A police vehicle outside the Brighton Centre, next to the Grand, was shaken by the shockwave, and hit by dust so thick that it was almost like someone had thrown a blanket over the van, policeman Paul Parton recalls. I think my immediate thought was, gas explosion, or something like that. And then someone obviously said, Oh, IRA. And it was like, What, in Brighton?

Harvey Thomas, the conference organiser, came to in mid-air. When you dream youre flying through space, you kind of brush asteroids and things off, he says. But, in this case, they were bouncing off me, I was bouncing off them, and I realised: this is real.

Norman Tebbit,

At Brighton police station, about a mile away on John Street, Sergeant Paddy Tomkins heard the detonation. And then a couple of seconds later, the Tannoy directed all staff to respond. The connection was obvious.

Slightly further away, at Preston Circus fire station, a message came through that the Grands fire alarm was ringing. The message didnt say why. was all we knew on the way down. So, when we actually got there, it was a great surprise to us to see what we saw.

I remember jumping out the back of the van and the ground was covered in rubble, bricks, broken bricks, bits of railing off the front of the hotel and everything, policeman Paul Parton says.

And you could taste the dust and the mess. It was all up your nose and everything, and it was everywhere. And course youre trying to make your way forward to help people, and youve got eyes full of muck and stuff.

You couldnt see anything. In your mind you knew where the front of the building was, so you naturally move forward, gingerly. Well, you couldnt run, because of the state of the debris on the floor. And theres always that thing in your head what are you going to find? You dont know what youre going to find. You just move forward and deal with what comes up.

As we got closer and the dust was starting to settle, you could see [a policeman] laying on the ground, being supported by other policemen, people screaming, hanging off balconies, alarm bells ringing, water pouring out of broken pipes, and you could see the people up on the balcony. It was horrific, insomuch as, where do you go first?

The rubble covered the front door and the main part of the front hall, says PC Simon Parr.

People were going in through windows, getting people out, there were people in ball gowns there, there were nurses nearby whod been at a dinner and they were ripping their evening dresses to bandage the walking wounded as they were coming out. I remember the white and red dust. Everybody was covered in dust, because it was such a big hotel and such an old building. I remember just the incongruous nature of people in dinner suits and evening dresses, with blood on them, literally staggering as they were helped out through the windows and side doors.

As police officers in particular, everyone thinks youll be calm and know what to do. Well, of course, I dont think any of us had ever seen anything like it. But the basic instincts of policing are to get people out.

Here its suddenly got misty, said one of fire officer Fred Bishops colleagues, as their vehicle turned onto the seafront. Bishop recalls:

As we drove along the seafront, we suddenly became aware that this mist, as we thought it was Thats not quite mist. And suddenly we saw sheets, and pillowcases probably, and curtains and all sorts of material, hanging onto the lights that go along the seafront.

As soon as we stopped, obviously, we had a job to do. And I remember a policeman being there and I said to him, What actually happened? And he was completely foxed, really, because he said, Um, it just went bang. And he was kind of standing there thinking, What am I supposed to do? He was really confused, poor chap.