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Twenty-five years ago the only reason that Patrick Magee would have gone near the House of Commons would have been to blow it up.

Last night, a quarter of a century after the IRA bomb that he planted killed five people at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, he was a guest speaker alongside one victim’s daughter. It was, inevitably, an emotional meeting. Before a largely sympathetic audience he spoke of sorrow and regret, and how he had become a friend of Jo Berry. Her father, Sir Anthony, a Conservative MP, was one of pearl jewelry those killed.

The journey of reconciliation that Mr Magee has travelled may have been a long one but it has only gone so far. And the fundamental truth remained: given the same options, he said, he would do the same again.

Ms Berry has shared platforms before with cultured pearl jewelry Mr Magee, released from prison in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement. But the meeting in the Grand Committee Room — organised jointly by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues and the Forgiveness Project — was more painful than most. “I feel like I’ve come home,” she said. “This is where I came with my beloved dad when I was little. I can almost see him sitting here.”
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She spoke of how she had learnt that behind every terrorist there was a human being. Last night it was Mr Magee, a softly spoken man who weighed his every word and spoke with obvious sincerity. But a man who, on biwa pearl fundamental issues, would not yield.

He deeply regretted the loss of life and “was sorry I killed Jo’s father”. But knowing what he does now, would he have planted that bomb? “I do not think that I would have made another choice,” he said. The politics of the time made it inevitable. “I wish there had been another way.”

Few of the questions were overtly hostile. Those most opposed to his presence at Westminster, such as Lord Tebbit, whose wife was crippled by the blast, steered well clear of the meeting.

Lord Donoughue, the former policy adviser to Harold Wilson and James Callaghan who said he had some sympathy with the akoya pearl nationalist cause, asked Mr Magee if he would express any sorrow for the other victims of the IRA. Not until there had been a similar expression of regret “from others”: from the British, in other words. “The bigger picture is political,” he said.