Lady Pamela Hicks: why I forgive my father's IRA killers

Mountbatten boat
Earl Mountbatten on Shadow V, the fishing boat blown up by the IRA on August 27 1979  Credit: Keystone

Lady Pamela Hicks says she has followed the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi to forgive the IRA killers who murdered her father, Lord Mountbatten.

Four people were killed, including two children, when a bomb went off aboard Mountbatten’s fishing boat in Co Sligo in August 1979.

Lady Pamela had stayed on shore, and was tasked with identifying her father’s body.

Yet, asked in a new interview if she had forgiven her father’s killers, she replied: “Yes. That is essential.”

She went on: “I mean, we loved the Irish. We’d lived there for so much of our lives. You’ve got to go forward, you absolutely have to go forward.”

Lady Pamela Hicks
Lady Pamela said she had learnt from her grandmother, who lost family members in the Russian Revolution but lived by the maxim 'never complain' Credit: Jeff Gilbert

Lady Pamela said she drew inspiration from Gandhi, who she met when Lord Mountbatten was India’s last viceroy, and who had spoken to her about the importance of faith.

“Gandhi had such good teaching always: he would say to us, ‘Religion is a strong tree and it has many branches and each branch has almost equal importance, but it’s just a different definition of the same thing.’”

The bomb killed Lord Mountbatten, 79, his 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas Knatchbull, 15-year-old crew member Paul Maxwell and the Dowager Lady Brabourne, 83. Other family members suffered serious injuries, including Nicholas’s twin brother, Timothy.

Gerry Adams, then Sinn Fein vice-president, referred to the deaths as “unfortunate”.

Thomas McMahon was convicted of the assassinations. He was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

In an interview on BBC Radio 2, Lady Pamela, 88, recalled the way the boat was “blown to smithereens. Little splinters of the green paint would come up for months afterwards.”

She said the only moment she struggled to cope was when she was asked to identify her father’s body at the hospital.

“I honestly thought, ‘I am not going to be able to do this,’ which is ridiculous because in fact every next of kin has to identify a murdered family member. But I found that a horrific idea.

“Luckily James [Duke of] Abercorn arrived at that moment and I said, ‘James, I can’t do this. Will you identify him?’ I felt slightly wimpish doing it.”

Mountbatten
A small cross marks the spot overlooking the bay where an IRA bomb killed Lord Mountbatten at Mullaghmore, Co Sligo Credit: Geoff Pugh

Lady Pamela said she also drew inspiration from her grandmother, Princess Victoria of Hesse, who lived through the Russian Revolution. “Most of her relations were murdered,” she said.

“I suppose from her one learnt not to complain, not to think too much of oneself.”

A cousin of the Duke of Edinburgh and third cousin of the Queen, Lady Pamela was bridesmaid at their wedding and served as a lady-in-waiting.

She recalled the Duke struggling to be accepted by British courtiers who saw him as “an impecunious Greek prince”.

And she recounted tales of royal tours abroad, when her main task as lady-in-waiting was persuading starstruck cloakroom attendants to leave the room while the Queen freshened up.

“The Queen once did say, ‘I do so hate having to tidy up with them staring,’ so I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of them for you,’” she recalled.

“It’s that idiot sort of thing that makes things easy for them.”

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