THERE WILL BE FIRE

A revealing story of an Irish Republican Army bombing against the vast backdrop of Irish history.

“In the tangled, tortuous history of Britain and Ireland, the past is not a settled matter,” writes Guardian journalist Carroll. “There is no grand, shared narrative. Atroc­ities and justified actions are in the eye of the beholder.” Certainly, terrorism is how Margaret Thatcher’s government characterized IRA attacks on British troops and civilians in the 1980s. At the center of the narrative is the 1984 bombing of a Brighton hotel where Thatcher addressed a Conservative Party conference. “Thatcher lived,” writes Carroll. “Well, she and her government now knew that the Troubles could not be contained. The Provos had brought the war not just to England but to her inner sanctum.” The bomber returned to Ireland and then traveled back to England to launch a planned campaign of bombings of British resorts to ruin the tourist economy and frighten the British populace. Although Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams—who, notes Carroll, refused to talk with him for this book—claimed to have no knowledge of the IRA’s military campaign against Thatcher’s government, the bombers had a role in Adams’ “grand strategy.” They met with less favor on the part of former backer Moammar Gadhafi, who dropped his support for the IRA and “sought other, bloodier ways to punish his enemies.” Carroll closes his tense, riveting text by considering the what-ifs and long-term effects of the attack on Brighton—for which, he notes, the bomber later repented, sort of, after a lengthy prison sentence. One of those effects was Thatcher’s increasing hatred of the European Union, of which Ireland was part, which led to Brexit, which in turn is leading to a growing call to integrate Northern Ireland into the Republic. “In the end,” Carroll concludes, “it may be Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, not IRA bombs, that delivers a united Ireland.”

A lucid history of the Troubles in all its manifold complexities.