On 30 July 1990 Ian Gow, the Conservative MP for Eastbourne, was murdered by the Irish Republican Army. Terrorists had placed a bomb beneath his car, parked on the driveway of his home.
Gow was not the only Tory MP murdered by Irish terrorists during the Troubles. Airey Neave was killed by a car bomb in the House of Commons carpark in 1979; Sir Anthony Berry by the Brighton bombing in 1984. (Robert Bradford, who’s Ulster Unionists had not then completely severed their links to the Conservatives, was also slain, in 1981).
But of the three Conservatives, Gow’s stands out because it seems the closest to the threat experienced by MPs today.
Both the Palace of Westminster and party conferences have long since disappeared behind the rings of steel that have been thrown up around so many places post-9/11. But MPs homes (Gow refused to take his address out of the local telephone directory) remain a frighteningly plausible target. It is not normally difficult for a constituent to find out where their MP lives if they want to; it remains the norm to print candidates’ addresses on ballot papers.
For how much longer? Today’s Daily Telegraph reports that, as part of a £31m security drive, private security guards will soon be deployed at constituency events. MPs most at risk will be able to apply for 24/7 protection. Funds “will also pay for increased security such as CCTV, alarms and sensors required at MPs’ homes or constituency offices.”
In theory, all this will be laid on precisely so that MPs can continue to perform the public-facing parts of their role as now. But it cannot help but change things. A country where politicians’ events are closely monitored and patrolled by armed security is, in an important way, very different to one where one can meet one’s local MP face-to-face in a constituency office or café.
Moreover, the logic of security means these changes will probably become more pronounced with time – or at least, if ever there is another murder or near-miss. Full close protection is very expensive; far too costly to provide to 650 members of parliament, especially if they remain as accessible to the public as they are today.
The most effective way to keep someone safe is to fortify their place of work, take their home out of the directory, and closely control their exposure at public events. It is not difficult to imagine, not too many years from now, MPs’ constituency surgeries becoming ticketed events: free, but with attendees needing to register in advance, and furnish proof of ID to do so.
Technology makes that practical in a way it wasn’t a generation ago. It also amplifies the risks of MPs’ traditional way of working: in 1990 there was no way that potential assassins could get live updates on a target’s physical location; today, it might simply be tweeted out.
Perhaps that is one reason why our response to the danger posed to MPs today is so different to the response during the Troubles, when to modern eyes the relative lack of security response is startling.
Another might be that at least in the 1980s the threat was from a clear vector: generally, politicians in danger from Irish Republican terrorism knew it; Gow’s stubborn refusal to adapt to his security situation was brave, but reckless.
Today, the danger comes from all sorts of directions. Jo Cox was murdered by the far right; David Amess by an Islamist; one of the farmers who met Rishi Sunak over the weekend has had to employ armed security after death threats from Welsh nationalists.
In such a society, the relentless expansion of the rings of steel around our politics and institutions may be unavoidable. But we will all be poorer for having allowed it to come about.