Holding a class based grudge is a good thing though sometimes it can make you seem a touch bitter. I used to work with an old school member of the Communist Party who held strong views about Norman Tebbit. He said to me once “I wish something really bad would happen to that bast..d Tebbit.” Attempting to be the voice of moderation I remarked “Jim it already has. A hotel collapsed on top of him and his wife was paralysed for life.”

Jim’s response stuck with me. “Yeah, but worse, much worse.”

Whatever Tebbit had done to annoy Jim he was never going to forgive.

While Jim thought the Brighton bomb was a bit inadequate, Patrick Magee’s, appearance at an event in the House of Commons has provoked a bit of a reaction because he has not been prepared to disown his beliefs, deeds or former programme, all of which included the idea that trying to blow up the British government was a noble and worthy cause. His movement thought it was such a good idea that they tried it twice. The Grand Hotel bomb, for which Magee was jailed, and a later mortar attack on meeting of John Major’s cabinet. How times have changed and there are few better ways for a prominent Irish republican to spend an afternoon than sipping tea in Downing Street, ideally with a couple of chums from the Democratic Unionist Party.

Most of the carriages on the peace process gravy train are labelled are marked “community” but there are a couple marked “victims” and “reconciliation”. Magee was speaking  at an event organised by the Forgiveness Project to mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the bombing. The idea is that now the conflict is over repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness are much more important than politics. Magee more or less accepts the logic and said it “was never about wanting forgiveness, it was always about trying to explain, trying to understand the hurt you have caused.” This was not quite good enough for papers like The Daily Telegraph. It was piqued by his “defiant attitude”. For the Telegraph the only proper attitude for a defeated enemy of British imperialism is self abasement, a rejection of everything you used to believe in and recognition of the higher virtues of British civilisation. In many ways this insistence on total victory is preferable to those groups which intellectually co-opt their former adversaries.

Now compare the treatment the British state offers its own Patrick Magees. A memorial service in St Paul’s Cathedral for those who had served in Iraq was attended by Elizabeth Windsor, her husband, Gordon Brown and the cream of the British political class. Today in the House of Commons Gordon Brown read out the names of those who’d managed to get themselves killed in Afghanistan in the last few months. The bit where he regretted the deaths of those his armed organisation killed has not received a great deal of publicity.

Tebbit is still as unpleasantly off beam as ever. In his view of the world it’s the Provies who are responsible for Islamist terrorism.  “Now, encouraged by the success of violent republicanism, Islamic terrorists have the long term goal of the worldwide caliphate, and they see Britain as a weak point in the defence of the West.” It’s his mission in life to be offensive and right wing so you can’t hold it against him. What is much more objectionable is the spectacle of Brown and Clinton rushing to “save the Norn Iron peace process” for the 800th time while blowing the hell out of Afghan villagers and eulogising the people doing it on the ground.

Compared to them Patrick Magee was a dilettante.