Tight security after bomb kills Tory M.P.

Press, 2 April 1979, Page 8

Tight security after bomb kills Tory M.P.

NZPA-Reuter London The British police have tightened security for politicians both inside Parliament and out on the General Election campaign, in the wake of the car-bomb murder of a leading Conservative politician. Irish Republican Army guerrillas have claimed they planted the bomb that killed Airey Neave as as he drove his car up a ramp from Parliament’s underground car park on Friday. The 1.R.A., in a statement, threatened further campaign disruptions. Mr Neave, who was 63, was his party’s spokesman on Northern Ireland. He had consistently taken a hard line on the 1.R.A., by demanding that captured guerrillas be hanged. Britain has no death penalty. Immediately after the explosion, policemen cordoned off the House of Commons area along the Thames, and doubled security at air and sea ports. Interviews of hundreds of people in the Par-

liament area have turned up no hard clues to the murder. The blast, which turned Mr Neave’s car into a mass of twisted steel, was thought by police to have been caused by a 0.22 kg bomb strapped under the car’s front end. A television monitor continuously scans the car park, but although Scotland Yard put more policemen on parliamentary' duty, security officials conceded it was virtually impossible to make the area 100 per cent secure. Mr Neave’s death was a particular blow to the Opposition Leader, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, now in the campaign for the General Election on May 3. He had been a “father figure” to her, and was the strategist behind her successful attempt to wrest the Conservative leadership away from Mr Edward Heath in 1975. The murder will highlight the law-and-order issue, and the call for capital punishment particularly for terrorist offences — of which Mr Neave was m favour.