One small observation from the media coverage of yesterday’s bomb attacks in London. Alex Thomson of Channel 4 news was standing on the deserted streets around King’s Cross. “It’s important to note,” he said, “that what you see here is not typical.” I thought he was going to proceed with an observation about how London had never before been hit by a terrorist attack in this way. Unprecedented, unique, blah blah. But, no, he said something much more important. He said: “All around us, the streets of London look much the same as normal.” This was momentarily revealing of how our minds are focused by cameras onto the epicentres of news. No doubt, deep in the murky underground of Kings Cross, there were people had been not just killed and injured, but traumatised. The station has had its fair share of bad luck, and its tempting to imagine that the tunnels themselves are now flickering with flashbacks to the Kings Cross fire of 1987. We might even imagine that the station, London even, has just been traumatised. And yet, it’s just a walk up the Caledonian Road from there to my house, where all day I only heard one siren. What seems to happen is that the cameras home in on the traumatic event, and seemingly traumatised people. But think again of what Alex Thomson said. We are only looking at the site of the event. Draw the frame back and we see a much more complex picture: London going on, adapting to travel problems, absorbing the shocks easily. Of course, among those who were directly affected by any of the four bombs, there will be those who will block, or bury, or become psychologically trapped by what they experienced. They will need care and treatment. But even among the victims, they will be a minority. The trauma is the exception rather than the rule. Then think about London as a whole. It’s a grumbling, complaining sort of city at the best of times. But are terrorist attacks really likely to disable the whole city. I don’t think so. I think the capital can take much worse than this without losing its head. I think we are stronger—psychologically—than we give ourselves credit for.
Yesterday I wrote an article for the Swedish newspaper, Expressen, and the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung. This was a quick reaction piece, trying to reflect the view from London. I’ll post it below – not because I expect any Brits should be interested, but just so its there to come back to later, and see if it stands up:
Letter from London to Europe
For anyone looking outwards from London over the last week, the world changed shape and meaning several times. At the weekend, we were arguing about climate change and Africa and whether Bono of U2 was right when he said that debt relief was about “justice, not charity.” The Live8 concert in Hyde Park, the anti-globalisation protesters in Edinburgh, the G8 preparations at Gleneagles: we disputed all this, whether it really meant anything. But there was no doubt that from our perches in the British capital, the big wide world appeared to be in full view.
Then the picture changed. On Wednesday came some unexpected and thrilling news. London had got the 2012 Olypmics. And, if that weren’t good enough, we had beaten the French to get there! At that moment, Africa seemed to vanish. The reaction was joyous, but also narrow and nationalistic. It was about us, the British and, especially, it was about Londoners. Of course, African poverty and climate change are more important than sports. But you can’t help what you feel; and what feels most important is what happens on your doorstep.
Which is why, when yesterday’s bombs tore apart a bus and several underground stations in our city, the rest of the world seemed to vanish altogether. When Tony Blair stood up to address the cameras, the other G8 leaders standing woodenly behind him seemed remote and irrelevant. The casualty figures in the city were then still unclear, but they were certainly not as big as the Bali or Madrid bombings, let alone those of 9/11. This time, however, it was we who had been attacked. And we were angry.
Such is the universal reaction to disaster. On impact, you experience events within the smallest of circles. You reach out to check that your wife, your children, your friends, your colleagues, your people are alright. You feel vulnerable first, then furious. If the attackers believe they are fighting the powerful, this is—presumably—the reaction they seek. Thus, when the prime minister spoke for the first time, his most bitter words were addressed to those who would disrupt the attempt (however limited) of world leaders to reach out beyond their national borders to a bigger conception of the world.
But then there are further reactions, and concentric circles of meaning that spread out from your small inner world. Police and intelligence services have long warned that an attack in London was “inevitable.” The city harbours Europe’s largest terrorist network; it is the biggest in the EU, the most ethnically diverse, the most open, and perhaps ultimately the hardest to police. Yet, under the congested circumstances of rush hour traffic, the emergency services operated with remarkable speed and efficiency. The terrorists may have had their plan, but the police, ambulance workers and hospital staff also had theirs. They were prepared, and in the streets people remained calm. A world war II veteran told the BBC: “We’ve been here before, we’ll be alright.”
If the attack was timed to coincide with the G8 summit because the world’s eyes would be on Britain, it also means that the British are now asking themselves how they will stand up in the eyes of the world. There is a widespread conception that, because of 30 years of the IRA terrorist threat — 1970s-90s — Londoners can handle this kind of event. But there is also a sneaking anxiety that this might not be true after all — that we have become a people more likely to weep for the death of Princess Diana than to remain strong in the face of attack.
In this respect, the bombers have not so far succeeded. With more than 50 people dead, and hundreds of casualties, this is the most deadly terrorist attack the UK has ever seen. And yet even this level of damage is sufficiently limited for the British instinctively to bring out the best in themselves. “Don’t worry about me,” says a woman staggering out of King’s Cross tube station, her face blackened and her legs bleeding. “See what’s happening to the others down there.”
Perhaps the most impressive response came from London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, a former Marxist. “This wasn’t an attack on the rich and the powerful,” he said on his way back from Singapore. “This was an attack on working class Londoners—old and young, black and white, Christian and Muslim and Hindu.” Livingstone was borrowing from the old lexicon of revolution to mock any idea that the attackers might think of themselves as revolutionaries. They were merely killers.
Furthermore, Livingstone was returning from London’s Olympic presentation, where the vote had been swung by the emphasis on youth and diversity, by the idea that London’s population contains all the people of the world. The lessons of the Olympics, it turns out, are the lessons to apply to a terrorist attack.
In the face of that diversity, it was the narrowness of vision of the attackers that Livingstone lampooned. They had not scored a victory, they had not caused enough damage to terrify people deeply, and they had given Londoners a chance to prepare for whatever comes next. And whatever that will be—even if it is worse—London will not quickly forget that its people are a world people and that the world is on their doorstep.
