
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 31, 1990                   TAG: 9007310235
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Short

BRITISH OFFICIAL KILLED

Ian Gow, a senior Conservative member of Parliament who was an outspoken foe of the Irish Republican Army and a close friend of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was killed Monday in a car-bomb explosion at his home.

Gow was backing his sedan out of the family driveway in the village of Hankham, 50 miles southeast of London, when a bomb placed under the driver's side ripped through the car, according to police.

Gow's wife ran out of the house to aid her husband, but he died shortly after an emergency team arrived. No other people were injured.

Gow, 53, was the first public figure to be killed in a wave of bombings and other attacks on the British mainland in recent months. While the IRA, which has claimed responsibility for previous bombings, did not immediately do so in Monday's attack, police said Gow's name was among more than 100 on an IRA hit list discovered in December 1988 and that the bomb appeared to be an IRA device.

As Thatcher's parliamentary private secretary during the first four years of her premiership, Gow served as the main liaison between her and other members of Parliament from her Conservative Party.

Last week Gow appeared on BBC television to bitterly condemn the IRA for an attack that killed three police officers and a Roman Catholic nun in Northern Ireland.

by CNB