Forgiving this sordid IRA killer proves just how weak Britain is
AND so the number of those murdered by the IRA at Brighton in 1984 rises to six. Margaret Tebbit, nursed faithfully by her husband during long years of pain and paralysis, died last week. There is no doubt that her death was caused by the terrorist Patrick Magee. Yet the IRA man who planted the bomb was freed as part of the surrender to the IRA imposed on us in 1998 by our American allies. He is unhurt. He has emitted words which some have foolishly seen as remorse, but they are not. Look at them: ‘My involvement in the Irish Republican Army and the whole armed struggle was necessary simply because we had no other course. But I have to regret the fact that people were hurt.’
‘No other course’? A flat lie. People ‘were hurt’? No, it was not a storm or an accidental fire. It was a deliberate act of evil – done by him. He killed and maimed.
He planted a bomb in the Grand Hotel not caring who it might kill, as long as it slew Margaret Thatcher as well. Can you imagine being crushed by tons of masonry, in agony for hours as rescuers sought to dig you out?
Norman Tebbit has no need to imagine this. It happened to him and his wife. He thinks (as I do) that forgiving people who have no contrition or repentance makes a mockery of forgiveness.
Simply giving up violence was not enough. He has rightly said that if Magee was truly repentant, he would show this by naming those who actually plotted and ordered the murders. No sign of that, for reasons we can easily guess at.
There is a great deal of easy forgiveness about and people who have been badly wronged are often puzzled by it. They cannot see why Christian churches urge it. It understandably puts them off religion. I don’t blame them for being baffled. Read the Lord’s Prayer carefully and you will see that it asks God to ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’.
Well, exactly. I would not expect to be forgiven for anything I was not sorry for, in this world or the next. Nor will I forgive those who are not sorry for injuring me.
Our Lord, whose birth we celebrate this week, explained this in Luke, 17:3: ‘If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.’ It is blazingly clear from this that repentance comes first, forgiveness afterwards. In any other age but this, the idea of pardoning a killer who wasn’t sorry would never have crossed anyone’s mind. Our release of the sordid Magee, and the capitulation which brought it about, were not the acts of a strong nation showing generosity. They were the acts of weak people afraid to stand up for themselves.
RIP Margaret Tebbit.