No one would know it, but Thursday 7th July 2005 was to be Britain’s equivalent to America’s 9/11. Shortly before 9am on that fateful morning, news flashes on both television and radio channels nationwide broke the shocking news of suspected terrorist attacks on the London Underground…News which would bring my nation to a standstill.
A World United
One week on, thousands of mourners gathered at the sites of the four bomb attacks to honour and pay tribute to the dead in a two-minute silence. They were joined by vigils across the world, in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Stockholm and Ankara, as well as in Madrid, where 191 commuters died last year in a similar terrorist attack, and in Bali, Indonesia, where a 2002 terror attack on the island claimed 202 lives. Many New Yorkers also took a moment to reflect on the terrible events, as the London bombings brought memories of 9/11 flooding back to the city.
As the death toll from the London bombings slowly rises to 56, (with over 700 more people injured), police and forensic scientists continue the painstaking task to recover and identify the rest of the dead. More and more information is gradually being revealed about the men believed to have carried out the attacks; the first suicide bombers to strike on British soil.
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Despite bringing the capital’s transport system to a complete halt that day, Londoners vowed to go about their daily routines as normal, in a bid to show their defiance against terrorism. The bus and Underground network was up and running by the next morning, albeit a partially handicapped one.
Mission impossible
Being the proud people that the British are, (‘our determination to defend our values’, as Tony Blair so nicely put it), they were not going to be deterred from doing anything by anyone, not least Al-Qaeda terrorists. If there were something the Brits learnt from September 11th, it was to carry on like nothing happened. Sure, you would cry and let your emotions show in private, but in public, to show that you are brave and not fearful of any terrorist attack, that was the key in defeating the bombers. They had set out to kill, to destroy the free world, to make sure that their violent acts (supposedly in the name of Allah), would go down in history. In London’s case in particular, it was a failed mission.
Within a few days of the bombings, the suspects were proven to be three young British nationals of Pakistani descent and a 19-year-old Jamaican-born Muslim convert, all of whom had links to Muslim fundamentalism. These four men had probably been preparing for the attacks for weeks, planning their ‘martyrdom’ to strike when Londoners least expected it. And what perfect timing. The morning after the capital celebrated the winning of the 2012 Olympic bid, disaster struck. The attacks caught everyone off guard: Prime Minister Tony Blair was meeting with other world leaders at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, with the talking point being African aid, whilst the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was out in Singapore, where he had no doubt joined in the celebrations of the successful Olympic bid.
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With a nation so unprepared, London was hit bad; no one can deny that. But, as in New York, it was thanks to the Emergency Services that so many people managed to escape the bus and Tube wreckages of 7/7, as it has become known. In the explosion on the No.30 bus in Tavistock Square, victims of the bomb blast were lucky enough in the sense that the incident had taken place right outside the British Medical Association building, where several nurses, doctors, surgeons and neurologists were able to tend immediately to the seriously injured and walking wounded. Had the Emergency Services not attended so quickly, who knows what the death toll would be at now?
Although Britain had been shocked by the attacks, it was in no way a surprise. With Blair having aligned the UK with the US, supporting President Bush in the War In Iraq, a terrorist attack of some sort was to be expected. After all, look what had happened in Spain last year after the Aznar government dismissed repeated public anti-war protests. That incident was similar to the London attacks, where 10 bombs were detonated on the Madrid train network at the height of the rush hour, killing 191 and injuring a further 1,800 people. With Britain looking so likely to be a potential target for terrorists, was there really anything more that could have been done? Maybe that’s the reason for the nation’s calm, collected approach to the bombing of their capital. To some extent, we had expected it, so when it finally happened, Londoners knew how not to react. Turning on each other and fighting like animals was not the answer; that was what the terrorists wanted us to do. Each to his own and all that; dog eat dog. Well, all that bullshit didn’t appear to exist in this country, not when it mattered.
Returning to normality
After the bombings, it took a couple of days before a lot of people returned to use the London Underground system again, but once Monday came, passenger figures were up as people hopped back on the Tube to get to work.
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That Monday morning was also my first time on the Tube since the terrorist attacks, and it was a sombre train journey. As I sat on the Central line train that took me from my East London home to Central London, I stared at the Underground map, my eyes momentarily focusing on each of the station names which had been bombed. As my train passed through Liverpool Street, close to where the first bomb had exploded, I noticed several passengers looking nervously around them, as if they were scanning the carriage for any suspect travellers. The numerous news reports I had seen on that Thursday ran through my mind, bringing a tear to my eye as I thought of all the innocent lives the bomb blasts had claimed. Just the thought of being stuck in one of the dark tunnels made me shudder; I would have been a hysterical mess had I been caught up on one of those fated trains.
It had to be just my luck then, when there appeared to be a suspension problem with the train I was travelling on and we were all told to dismount. Thankfully, we had stopped in a station, and it was only minutes later that we were able to board another train to take us to our chosen destinations. However, in the minutes between the train stopping and the announcement of a suspension problem, my imagination had gone into overtime. Why had we stopped? Was there a terror alert? Had there been another attack on the Underground? Try as I might, I couldn’t help but fear the worst. Everyone was nervous, and understandably so, but it was such a relief for everyone to hear that it was only a minor problem with the train and not another bomb. Our worlds would keep turning after all.
Speaking to commuters at Kings Cross station, I began to get a real sense of how everyone else was feeling after the events of the 7/7. Hearing everyone talk about their own experiences and feelings made me realise how lucky some people had been, and how close they had come to losing a loved one.
“I had just left Liverpool Street station when the first bomb went off, and was walking towards Aldgate when the second bomb exploded,” said James Nebuma, from Stratford. “I didn’t know what had happened; I just remember praying to myself, hoping that it wasn’t a bomb.”
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Selina Robertson, 19, was at Kings Cross station when the bomb on the Piccadilly line train was detonated. “It was the scariest day of my life; there was complete panic on the platform, and my heart was racing so fast just thinking, ‘I need to get out of here,’” she recalled. “My thoughts are with the families of the innocent victims; I feel blessed to be alive.”
Having heard her account of that morning, I was surprised to see her standing in the same station two weeks on. “It took me a few days to recover from the shock and everything, but I had to get back on the Tube sooner or later. I live in South London; I’ve got no other way to get to work!” she laughed. “Seriously though, it’s just something that we’ve all had to overcome. We can’t let this change the way we live. If anything, we should be more determined to carry on as normal.”
Other passengers echoed this sentiment, although it appeared that it was the younger generation who were less fearful of travelling on the Underground again. Discussing this observation with Patrick Yeboah, 72, from Lambeth, he said, “The younger ones are more carefree. They don’t get scared by much. I know when I heard of the bombs I didn’t want to take the Underground anywhere. If I can, I’ll take the bus, but now everything seems to be going back to how they used to be, I think I would take the Tube, I’d just be more alert.”
The Beat Goes On
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With public transport passenger figures gradually returning to pre-7/7 numbers, it would appear that London is fully back on its feet. As the summer sun shines on the capital, people are back out on the streets, in the parks, in the bars and pubs. Unlike originally thought, restaurants, bars and clubs in Central London haven’t suffered too much of a decline in customer numbers. The usually bustling Leicester Square in the heart of the city is still glowing at night, with people willing to travel into town to have a good night out. Even on a Monday night, when I went to attend The Game’s Aftershow Party at Cirque in Leicester Square, the crowds were buzzing.
It would seem that regardless of the fortnight’s events, people would turn up in their droves to see their favourite artists in town. Twice before, in the week following the terrorist attacks, I had witnessed this: first at the Snoop Dogg show in Wembley, where the Long Beach rapper had proudly declared, “I’ma do my show in muthafuckin’ London, England, and I’ma keep coming back!” , and secondly at the one-off Lauryn Hill concert at The Coliseum.
London: a city defiant
With all that’s happened since 7/7, I, like so many others, am proud to call myself a Londoner; even more so when I think of the terrorists who tried to destroy this capital city and its way of life. I’m angry that such lawless, cold-hearted people think that they can bomb this city and get away with it. But, moreover, I feel sorry for these terrorists, who think that killing so many innocent people is their ticket into heaven.
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Life in Britain will go on, regardless of how many terror attacks Al-Qaeda (and anyone else who’s planning on blowing this country to bits) launch against us. As The Sun newspaper promised, ‘In the name of New York, Washington, Bali, Nairobi, Madrid and now London, we shall have vengeance and justice.’ The feeling in London is clear, with the general consensus being: ‘We survived the Blitz and the IRA bombings; we will survive any more attacks you throw our way.’
This article was intended for the 2 week anniversary of the bombings…as we now know the terrorists or copycats had something else planned for 7/21/05 as reported by Reuters:
“Four attempted bombings on London’s transport system on today look like an intended carbon-copy of attacks that killed 56 people two weeks ago and may be masterminded by the same group, security analysts said. They put forward two main scenarios behind the latest blasts, which were much smaller than the previous ones, and did not cause any fatalities.”
There’s a clear message for all terrorists in the way London has handled the attacks, as one web article bluntly put it:
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We’re London, and we’ve got our own way of doing things, and it doesn’t involve tossing bombs around where innocent people are going about their lives… So you can pack up your bombs, put them in your arseholes, and get the fuck out of our city
Was that clear enough for ya?
