A Tangled Web

A Terrorist and a Useful Fool



Yesterday, Patrick Magee, the Brighton bomber who murdered five people in the attack on the city's Grand Hotel in 1984, returned to the South Coast for the first time in 20 years. He shared a platform with an archetypal 'useful fool' (read up on Lenin for an explanation of this quote) in the shape of Jo Berry. Her father was one of those who perished in the attack that fateful night.



We owe a debt of gratitude to Sir Norman Tebbit for being one of the few remaining politicos who is prepared to tell the truth about the abhorrence of conferring publicity on a man who, in practically every other democracy, would still be languishing in prison for his heinous crime. We must not forget that Sir Norman's spouse, Margaret, was herself left permanently disabled due to Magee's outrage. Sir Norman is of the morally unsullied 'old school' of British politics: a man who is courageous enough to stand up in an era when befriending - and communicating with - Irish republican terrorist dross is almost de rigueur, and articulate the view that the IRA is, in reality, no better than the chador-clad animals who murdered Ken Bigley last week.



Outside the world of appeasement-minded governments and Irish republican disciples, there are a great many people here who are convinced Magee should still be in prison or, better still, be bereft of life courtesy of state execution. If Jo Berry chooses to insult her father's memory and integrity by keeping company with someone no better than Abu Musab al- Zarqarwi, she evidently lacks the moral nous of the victims of Magee's mephistophelian act.