1979 - Airey Neave

During the Troubles, Irish republicans frequently targeted ministers. In March 1979 Airey Neave, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, died in hospital after his car was blown up as he drove out from the underground car park beneath parliament’s New Palace Yard. The Irish National Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the bomb.

A former army officer who had successfully escaped from Colditz during the second world war, Neave had been an outspoken opponent of republican violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

1981 - Robert Bradford

Ulster Unionist MP the Rev Robert Bradford was assassinated by IRA gunmen in November 1981 while attending a political surgery at a community centre in south Belfast. A caretaker was also killed in the attack.

1983 - Edgar Graham

Another UUP politician, the Northern Ireland assembly member was killed in December 1983. A law lecturer at Queen’s University in Belfast, he was chatting to a colleague on campus when IRA gunmen walked up to him and shot him repeatedly in the head.



1984 - Sir Anthony Berry

The IRA Brighton hotel bombing targeted then prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet during the Conservative party conference. Thatcher escaped without injury but five people in the Grand Hotel were killed, including a Conservative MP, Sir Anthony Berry, who was deputy chief whip. His wife was injured but survived. Norman Tebbit’s wife Margaret was among those injured in the blast and was left permanently disabled.

1990 - Ian Gow

Ian Gow, another Conservative MP and former army officer who was opposed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, was killed outside his East Sussex home in July 1990 when the IRA placed a Semtex car bomb under his Austin Montego. The IRA claimed responsibility for the murder, stating that the MP for Eastbourne had been targeted because he was a “close personal associate” of the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.



2000 - Lord Jones

In 2000, Liberal Democrat peer Nigel Jones was attacked during a constituency surgery when he was an MP. Lord Jones was wounded and his aide, Andrew Pennington, was stabbed to death in a sword attack at the party’s office in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.



Jones wrestled with his attacker, Robert Ashman, a regular visitor to his surgery, and suffered severe cuts to his palms as he tried to grab the blade. He eventually escaped and raised the alarm.

Ashman was initially sent to a secure hospital for an indefinite time after a jury decided he was unfit to stand trial. But in 2003 he admitted manslaughter and was convicted of attempted murder. He was released in 2008.

2010 - Stephen Timms

The last serious assault on a parliamentarian was the 2010 stabbing of Labour MP Stephen Timms.



Timms, MP for East Ham, was stabbed twice in the stomach at his constituency surgery in east London on 14 May 2010. The surgeon who operated on him described the injuries he suffered as “potentially life-threatening” because of the possible loss of blood and infection had he not been treated. He spent five days in hospital with abdominal injuries.



His attacker was a 21-year-old radicalised student, Roshonara Choudhry, who told police she wanted to kill the former government minister for supporting the Iraq war. She was pulled off the MP by his assistant and held by a security guard.

Choudhry, who was radicalised online, confessed to police the same day. In November 2010, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 15 years after being convicted of attempted murder.

After returning to work, Timms reviewed his security arrangements. Others, including the then acting Labour leader, Harriet Harman, expressed concerns about the risks MPs were exposed to and said parliament needed to think about how they were minimised.

A study published earlier this year found that one in five MPs (43 out of the 239 who responded to the survey) had been subjected to an attack or attempted attacks.

The only prime minister assassinated while in office was Spencer Perceval, who was shot in 1812 in the lobby of the House of Commons by a man with a personal grievance against the government.