Fury over 'moral reprobate' Labour candidate who
wrote of disappointment that Mrs Thatcher didn't die in the Brighton bomb blast
From Mail Online
The Labour candidate in the crucial Eastleigh by-election said he wished
Margaret Thatcher had been murdered in the IRA attack on Brighton’s Grand Hotel.
Left-winger John O’Farrell felt a ‘surge of excitement’ when he
heard of the attempted assassination in 1984 and was ‘disappointed’ the
terrorists failed.
He asked himself repeatedly: ‘Why did she have to leave the bathroom two
minutes earlier?’ The bathroom of Lady Thatcher’s suite was wrecked in the
explosion. She had been in it shortly before the bomb went off.
Writing about Lady Thatcher, Mr O’Farrell said: ‘I would invent all
sorts of elaborate scenarios whereby she would cease to be Prime Minister of
Britain. Some involved a sombre deputation from the 1922 Committee [of
Tory MPs] and others involved me popping up with a machine-gun at the
Conservative Party Conference.
‘In October 1984, when the Brighton bomb went off, I felt a surge
of excitement at the nearness of her demise and yet disappointment that such a
chance had been missed.
'This was me – the pacifist, anti-capital punishment, anti-IRA liberal –
wishing that they had got her. “Why did she have to leave the bathroom two
minutes earlier?” I asked myself over and over again.’
In the same book, published in 1998, Mr O’Farrell made a similarly
provocative statement on calls for Lady Thatcher to be given a state
funeral.
‘It would be far more appropriate to allow competitive bids from private
companies to run the funeral arrangements: “And we now go over live to
Westminster, where . . . we see the coffin respectfully borne on the
shoulders of six part-time burger-flippers . . . before the private cremation
when the body will be flame-grilled with gherkins and a slice of cheese.” Now
that’s a funeral I would turn out for.’
'I would invent all
sorts of elaborate scenarios whereby she would cease to be Prime Minister of
Britain'
Five people died in the bomb attack, including Tory MP Sir Anthony Berry
and Roberta Wakeham, wife of Tory Cabinet Minister Lord Wakeham.
Lord Tebbit told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Ed Miliband should repudiate this
incontinently voiced moral reprobate who tries to excuse murder as a
weapon against those who won democratic elections time after time against the
rag-bag remnants of a once great Labour Party.’
Mr O’Farrell also said he wished Lady Thatcher had lost the
Falklands War in 1982, in which 255 British servicemen died. ‘I
settle on the uncomfortable and convoluted position of wanting Great
Britain to lose the war for the good of Great Britain. I was
against the war, against people’s reaction to the war, even against the outcome
of the war.’
A Labour Party spokesman said: ‘John made these comments many years ago
and of course does not condone or wish harm on anyone.’
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