London looking back

I thought I’d do a quick post as a reaction to yesterday’s terrible events in London in which four people lost their lives and several are still critically injured. We now know that the attacker was British and that he was known to the intelligence services. He appears to have acted alone and was armed with knives and drove an ordinary car onto the pavement, hitting a number of people before crashing the car and managing to stab a police officer to death before he was himself shot and killed. Whatever his motivations were, it looks more likely on the basis of information currently available that these were the actions of a crazed individual than part of an international terrorist conspiracy. We should, however, avoid jumping to conclusions and wait for the investigation to be completed.

The first thing I want to do is to express my condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives. My thoughts are also with those who were critically injured and I hope with all my heart that they will all recover speedily and completely. Physical healing will take time, but they will need help, support and time  to come to terms with the mental trauma too. The same is true for those who were caught up in this attack and received minor injuries or even just witnessed what happened, because they must have been shocked by the experience. I hope they receive all the help they need at what must be a very difficult time.

The second point is that it’s clear that the police and other emergency services acted with great courage and professionalism yesterday. One policeman sadly died, but the swift actions of his colleagues prevented further loss of life. Ambulances, paramedics and members of the public all responded magnificently to care for those injured, and we shall probably find that their response saved many lives too. They deserve all our thanks.

Finally, I noticed a number of ill-informed comments on Twitter from the usual gang of Far-Right hate-mongers, especially professional troll Katie Hopkins, claiming that London was “cowed” and “afraid” because this attack. I don’t believe that for one minute, and I want to explain why.

I lived in London for about eight years (between 1990 and 1998). During that time I found myself in relatively close proximity to three major bomb explosions, though fortunately I wasn’t close enough to be actually harmed. I also concluded that my proximity to these events was purely coincidental…

The first, in 1993, was the Bishopsgate Bombing. I happened to be looking out of the kitchen window of my flat in Bethnal Green when that bomb went off. I had a clear view across Weavers Fields towards the City of London and saw the explosion happen. I heard it too, several seconds later, loud enough to set off the car alarms in the car park beneath my window.

This picture, from the relevant Wikipedia page, shows the devastation of the area affected by the blast.

The other two came in quick succession. First, a large bomb exploded in London Docklands on Friday February 8th 1996, at around 5pm, when our regular weekly Astronomy seminar was just about to finish at Queen Mary College on the Mile End Road. We were only a couple of miles from the blast, but I don’t remember hearing anything and it was only later that I found out what had happened.

Then, on the evening of Sunday 18th February 1996, I was in a fairly long queue trying to get into a night club in Covent Garden when there was a loud bang followed by a tinkling sound caused by pieces of glass falling to the ground. It sounded very close but I was in a narrow street surrounded by tall buildings and it was hard to figure out from which direction the sound had come from. It turned out that someone had accidentally detonated a bomb on a bus in Aldwych, apparently en route to plant it somewhere else (probably King’s Cross). What I remember most about that evening was that it took me a very long time to get home. Several blocks around the site of the explosion were cordoned off. I lived in the East End, on the wrong side of sealed-off area, so I had to find a way around it before heading home. No buses or taxis were to be found so I had to walk all the way. I arrived home in the early hours of the morning.

Anyway, my point is that amid these awful terrorist atrocities of the 1990s, people were not “cowed” or “afraid”. Londoners are made of sterner stuff than that. It is true that one’s immediate response when confronted with, e.g. , a bomb explosion is to be a bit rattled. I’m sure that was true for many Londoners yesterday. That soon gives way to a determination to get on with your life and not let the bastards win. The events of the 1990s gave us a London of road blocks, security barriers and many other irritating inconveniences, but they did not bring the city to a standstill, as some have suggested happened yesterday. For the most part it was “business as usual”.

I don’t live in London anymore, but I think Londoners are as unlikely to be frightened today as they were back then. And it will take much more than one man to “shut down the city”. As a matter of fact, I think only a coward would suggest otherwise.

 

P.S. I forgot to mention another event, in 2005, when I was at the precise location of a bomb explosion but precisely 24 hours early…

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