Dame Jane Whiteley was married to Ian Gow, the brilliant, charismatic Conservative MP
The anniversary of her first husband’s death fell on a Sunday this year. Dame Jane Whiteley passed the day quietly, attending a Holy Communion service at her local church — ‘That’s terribly helpful, I find,’ she says.
Later, she talked to his older brother and twin sister, just as she has every July 30 since that terrible day in 1990.
‘We are all very close,’ she says. ‘We talked about what Ian might look like now.’
Dame Jane was married to Ian Gow, the brilliant, charismatic Conservative MP who kissed her goodbye that summer morning as he left their East Sussex farmhouse, got into his car and started it — triggering an IRA Semtex bomb which had been placed under the driver’s seat of the Austin Montego.
It was 8.39 am and he died some ten minutes later, having suffered appalling injuries to the lower part of his body. As a fierce pro-Unionist and chairman of the Tory backbench committee on Northern Ireland, Ian Gow knew he was an IRA target, but refused to be cowed.
He had no bodyguard, his address was in Who’s Who and he was in the telephone directory.
He had also rejected the offer of a round-the-clock guard, although Sussex police had placed his constituency home on ‘short-patrol’, which meant patrol cars regularly cruised the area.
Some might say he was reckless, but friends say the father-of-two was a fearless man determined not to let terrorism dictate his life.
He paid the ultimate price: that life cut brutally short at just 53.
Gow was the third Conservative MP to be killed by Irish terrorists in mainland Britain. Each, like him, was a close associate and friend of Margaret Thatcher.
In 1979, Airey Neave was killed when a bomb planted under his car by the IRA breakaway group INLA (the Irish National Liberation Army) exploded as he drove out of a car park at Westminster; Sir Anthony Berry died in the Brighton bombing in 1984.
After the atrocity, Dame Jane, a woman whose quiet dignity and inner strength is evident to all who meet her, sold the constituency home near Eastbourne where her husband was killed and moved to London to rebuild her life with her sons Charles, who was 22 at the time of his father’s death, and James, who was 20.
She remarried in 1994 and immersed herself in family, friends, charity work and her great passion, music.
‘It is extraordinary, isn’t it, that life goes on from that devastation. It’s a very small, mundane little life, but it’s a jolly good one,’ she says.
However, in recent days, Dame Jane emerged from her ‘mundane, little life’ to intervene very publicly in an issue about which she feels she can no longer remain silent: justice, or the lack of it, for British Army veterans of the Troubles.
She says she read with mounting disbelief news reports that thousands of former troops who served in Northern Ireland — now in their 60s, 70s and older — are facing a new ‘witch-hunt’ over the deaths of suspected IRA terrorists more than 40 years ago.
Collect picture from Dame Jane, showing the family with children Charles, left and James
The authorities in Northern Ireland are calling for witnesses after opening a string of new inquests, and the Ministry of Defence confirmed that it will be asking former troops it believes were present at fatal shootings to provide legal statements.
Senior Army officers are furious, arguing that the move could lead to veterans being questioned as murder suspects and being forced to attend coroners’ hearings, where their personal security might be jeopardised.
More than 300,000 British soldiers served in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007, with around 25,000 troops deployed during the Seventies and Eighties. The Troubles cost the lives of 1,441 British military personnel.
More than 3,500 killings in the Province were terrorist-related, but coroners and the Police Service of Northern Ireland have angered many by focusing on deaths at the hands of British security forces.
These matters have long preoccupied Dame Jane, not least — as she said in a letter published in the Daily Telegraph last week — because the identities of the two suspects alleged to have planted the bomb that killed her husband are known to the police, yet they have never been named or brought to trial on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute them.
Ian Gow’s wrecked car in the backyard of his home. While serving as MP for Eastbourne, he was assassinated by the IRA who exploded a bomb under his car at his home in East Sussex
The Mail’s own inquiries suggest that one of the pair, both of whom have served jail sentences for other violent crimes, is among nearly 200 IRA terror suspects who received the so-called ‘comfort letters’ controversially guaranteeing them immunity from prosecution, as part of a secret deal between IRA leaders and Tony Blair’s government ahead of the Good Friday Agreement in 1999.
In her letter, Dame Jane wrote: ‘To put soldiers who were doing their duty in very difficult conditions through the stress of further investigations, while allowing two known bombers to live without threat of arrest, seems like cloud-cuckoo land.’
In the large, light-filled living room of her home in the pretty village of Biddenden, Kent, Dame Jane, 73, gives a rare interview and shares her thoughts on the ‘injustice and unfairness’ of the latest developments.
‘Every time I have read about soldiers being investigated, I quietly boil. I have always felt it, and I have always resisted the temptation to say it,’ she says.
‘Now, elderly veterans are being asked to give new witness statements for a fresh wave of new inquests into killings during the Troubles. These are likely to include killings of suspected IRA terrorists that have been repeatedly investigated.’
She continues: ‘I am very sympathetic to soldiers and servicemen. They do a very difficult job. I think it’s incredibly tough that they should be hounded.
‘People who committed terrible crimes, like the two suspected of being responsible for the bomb that killed Ian, have been given a sort of “amnesty”.
‘But the poor soldiers haven’t. It seems so unjust and unfair.’
Mr Gow quickly caught the eye of Margaret Thatcher, who admired his fierce intelligence and patriotism and made him her Parliamentary Private Secretary when she became Prime Minister in 1979
Dame Jane pauses briefly and looks down at Abi, her golden labrador who sits attentively on the floor beside her chair throughout our conversation.
Her voice barely falters as she continues: ‘I can’t bear to think about it really, but what happened to Ian was premeditated, cold-blooded murder.
‘To put soldiers, who were doing their duty in very difficult conditions, through the stress of further investigations, while allowing two known bombers to live without threat of arrest, seems like a nonsense.
‘It’s madness. It’s standing the law on its head.
‘So much for British justice.’
Jane met Ian Gow, a former Household Cavalry officer and solicitor, at the London law firm where he worked and she was a legal secretary. They married in 1966 and eight years later he was elected to Parliament, with Jane quickly fitting smoothly into the role of a committed constituency wife.
Mr Gow quickly caught the eye of Margaret Thatcher, who admired his fierce intelligence and patriotism and made him her Parliamentary Private Secretary when she became Prime Minister in 1979.
He was already a distinctive and popular figure in Westminster — instantly recognisable in his three-piece suit cut in the style of the 1950s, adorned by a gold watch-chain, and wearing his old-fashioned spectacles.
There was, a friend once wrote, ‘an air of dry sherry, deed boxes and muniment rooms’ about him. He was a devotee of Churchill, de Gaulle and Enoch Powell, able to quote them at length.
Gow went on to become a Treasury minister in the Thatcher government, but resigned the post in protest at the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement which gave Dublin a role in Northern Ireland for the first time in more than 60 years. He saw it as a concession to terrorists.
Having frequently condemned the IRA, it was no surprise when, in January 1989, his name appeared on a hit-list of 100 public figures found at a terrorist bomb factory in South London.
A few weeks before his death, he gave a small drinks party at which the subject of Ulster had come up.
Having frequently condemned the IRA, it was no surprise when, in January 1989, his name appeared on a hit-list of 100 public figures found at a terrorist bomb factory in South London
Jonathan Aitken, then an MP, said: ‘Ian, old lad, I hope you vary your route to the Commons and check under your car.’
Gow was emphatic. ‘Certainly not,’ he replied. ‘I am at less risk than any serving officer in Her Majesty’s Royal Ulster Constabulary — and anyway, I wouldn’t know what to look for.’
Now, 27 years on, the circumstances of his murder are playing once more on Dame Jane’s mind.
Rather than further inquests and the prospect of Army veterans being asked to be subjected to questions about their work from years ago, she would prefer to see a ‘very firm line drawn under all the events of the Troubles’.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arrives at Ian Gow’s memorial service
‘If the MoD were to write a letter to the veterans along the lines of that which Mr Blair wrote to the IRA terrorists, this might become reality,’ she says, referring to the ‘comfort letters’ sent to 187 on-the-run paramilitary suspects — the existence of which did not emerge until 2014.
‘As things are at present, it is grossly unfair that known IRA bombers should get away with their crimes scot-free, while elderly, retired soldiers, who were carrying out their duty in Northern Ireland, should be hounded.’
She agrees with the former head of the British Army, General Lord Dannatt, who said there should be no obligation on soldiers to co-operate in the latest trawl for eye-witnesses, because they have previously given evidence on the assurance of no further action being taken — and this has proved a ‘false promise’.
For its part, the MoD says it ‘complies with requests from coroners and part of the process involves contacting and supporting veterans’.
Dame Jane, who remarried in 1994 to Lieutenant Colonel Michael Whiteley — an officer in the Scots Guards who is now aged 78 — says her strong Christian faith helped her deal with her husband’s horrific death and what she was confronted with that morning.
‘I try to get on with my life — I’ve had a very long time,’ she says.
‘Obviously, I think about Ian a lot, but I try not to think about all that [the suspects] because it’s pretty awful.
‘Occasionally, I take it quite far and I try to pray for them, but that really is pushing it. But I do try.’
Her philosophy for coping with grief is straightforward: ‘You have to pick yourself up.’
She has also found music a great solace. ‘It is a wonderful thing,’ she says. ‘It takes quite a lot of work and concentration.’
A grand piano and an organ take pride of place in the living room. She plays both and is practising hard for a piano recital in aid of a local church, St Mildred’s, where she will play Mozart, Schubert, Debussy and Chopin.
‘My husband Michael has been absolutely wonderful,’ she continues. ‘He says you must never feel sorry for yourself. Really, it is a day at a time, even still now, and just getting on with one’s life and trying to plough a straight furrow. I keep busy.’
Mrs Jane Whiteley with sons Charles and James at the funeral of Sir Ian Gow who was killed by the IRA
Of course, there is her charity work, too. Dame Jane is a patron of the JPK Sussex Project, which helps people with learning disabilities to live independently and to find work experience. She received her damehood for political and public service in 1990.
‘Lots of music, lovely husband, dog walking, swimming . . . And my friends are so wonderful.
‘People kept saying that I needed counselling [after Ian’s death]. But all I needed was my wonderful friends — to whom, when you felt really desperate or angry or whatever else, you could say whatever you needed.
‘You do come through it.’
As, indeed, she has — and with the residual strength to speak up now for those treated so unfairly by the country they risked their lives for.
‘I think it’s awful that the powers-that-be don’t do more about it and other people in authority don’t speak up for the soldiers,’ Dame Jane says.
‘I can’t bear the idea of the soldiers being anxious and stressed by the whole thing. A bit of common sense in all this would be welcome.’
There are millions of people who surely agree with a woman whose uniquely tragic perspective and experience has highlighted a gross injustice in the making.