An English Spring by Cormac Murphy O'Connor

Author:Cormac Murphy O'Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoirs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

Together yet apart

I awoke at 6 o’clock or so on 12 October 1984. When I switched on the radio I heard the news that a bomb had exploded in the Grand Hotel in Brighton in the early hours of the morning, and that a number of people had been killed or injured. Of course I knew that the Conservative Party annual conference was being held in the town, and I guessed that the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, would have been staying at that hotel.

I thought straightaway, I should go. And then I instinctively picked up the phone and called Eric Kemp, the Bishop of Chichester. ‘Look, Eric,’ I said, ‘have you heard about the bomb? I think the two of us ought to go down to Brighton together.’ He said: ‘Yes I agree.’ Eric came over in his car, picked me up and the two of us drove down to Brighton. We found a place to park near the promenade and walked over to the hotel. It was scene of terrible chaos. The hotel’s façade had a gaping hole, there were emergency services people everywhere, police were cordoning off various areas in case there was another blast, and there were people whose faces I recognized, cabinet ministers, wandering around, dazed and unshaven. It’s strange, but at times like this, even people who have no religion seem to welcome the sight of a priest.

Eric and I went to the hotel where Margaret and Denis had been moved to from the Grand, and went in. We were in the lobby writing a note of condolence to send up to her, when we saw John Gummer, then the Conservative Party Chairman. He said: ‘I think she would like to see you.’ He rang up and the message came down: ‘Would we go up?’ So we went up and went into this little room. The Prime Minister was standing, wearing black, looking firm and composed, with Denis behind her and Robin Butler, the cabinet secretary, in the corner of the room. We spoke for a few minutes about the people who had been killed or injured; then she said: ‘Bishops, will you pray with me?’, which we gladly did.

My decision to pick up the phone to call Eric was spontaneous. It had become almost second nature to me to ask first, isn’t this something we can do together? After we left Mrs Thatcher, Eric and I were able to speak to several other people in and around the hotel, including some of the injured and the bereaved. It was good for the two of us to be able to offer a little comfort to her and others during that terrible day. Somehow, when the leaders of different churches act or speak together, the effect is more than the sum of their separate parts. The instinct to only do on my own the things I couldn’t do together with my opposite numbers in other churches had gradually developed over the years since I was a curate, and stayed with me when I came to Westminster.

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