Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Indeed, even as Adams began to contemplate, and then act upon, a scheme to bring an end to the conflict, the IRA carried out more deadly operations. Just before Christmas in 1983, the Provos detonated a bomb at Harrods department store, in London, killing five people and injuring ninety. (Adams said that the bomb “had not gone right.”) The following October, a volunteer placed a time bomb in a room at the Grand Brighton Hotel, where Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet would be staying during a conference. The bomb exploded, killing five people, but not Thatcher. The IRA issued a statement, eloquently capturing the strategic advantage of terrorism: “Today we were unlucky, but remember, we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.”