Terrorism in London

In the summer of 1973 I was working in Oxford Street, London's main shopping street. At the same time, the IRA was having a terroist campaign against London, and Oxford Street was one of its main targets. We were in a high state of security. As we'd go to evacuate the store (at that time it was in the record books as the busiest store in the world) because of an abandoned suitcase, some idiot would invariably come along to rescue his property, as there was a security alert. Yes, sir, this IS the security alert. Every morning there were more damaged stores to walk past, with plucky signs in the boarded-up windows saying things like "It's a blasted nuisance, but we're still open".

So I was an "old pro" when the 2005 July 7th attacks happened.

I was working this time as a teacher at King's College Hospital School. It's in a part of London, south of the river, where there are not many tube stations. The attacks were north of the river. I heard the first news on my way in that morning, but the full story was not known for some time. We spent the morning glued to the TV in the schoolroom.

The bombed bus

One of the damaged trains

The hospital emptied Accident and Emergency in case it was needed for casualties, but it was not. The journey home that night was chaos, as all public transport had been suspended.

Exactly two weeks later, on July 21st, the failed attacks took place. No one was hurt, but this time the incidents were further south, and one of the few tube stations near the hospital was affected. Again, the hospital was put on standby, but this time the casualties were few and minor. Again, traffic was chaotic. The mother of one of my home-tutees was very worried about me.

On Friday 22nd I was supposed to be visiting a student close to Stockwell tube station, but the mother had caused so many problems that my bosses told me to go into the hospital school itself. It was there that again we watched the scene play itself out, when reports started to come in of a shooting of a suspected terrorist at Stockwell tube station - just around the corner from where I was supposed to be.

The people at the hospital school were lovely. There were two very middle class white women teachers, and a black woman teaching assistant, who could easily have been a teacher herself. She was sceptical from the start, and kept saying, "It could be any one of us." Of course, it would never have been one of us whities. But she had an instinct about the whole thing. Her fears were assuaged, though, when - as soon as the shooting was known about - it was announced that the man who had been shot was wearing a puffa jacket on a hot day, had run from police, vaulted over a turnstyle, and run down the escalator on to the train, where he had been shot.

It was the detail of the puffa jacket that convinced her. It was a lie. So was the running away, the vaulting - all of it was lies. The police were covering their arses from minute 1.

Please note the picture routinely used of the innocent victim, Jean Charles de Menezes. Look just a bit like a mug shot to you?


You have to wonder why the media never uses an ordinary picture like this.

The police assassinated this man because they couldn't managed to work their own systems properly. It really COULD have been any one of us.

Well, anyone non-white, youngish and male. Then. Now it could be - any of us!

As a matter of fact, in the late 1970s, it nearly was me when, after an anti-racist rally which turned into a bit of a running riot, I was standing next to some young black men at a bus stop. Suddenly I was aware that everyone else in the queue was cowering in a shop doorway, and some police horses were almost on top of me. I know what it is like to live in slow motion with feet made of concrete. I got to the doorway in the nick of time, and heard one of the policemen yell, "All right, where are the big boys who were swearing?"

They charged a bus queue because some teenagers swore. Massive retaliation or what?

The local police lie to avoid putting any effort into their policing. The judge on the trial where I was a juror saw it. If the police alienate middle aged, middle class white women, their natural constituency, what must it be like to be young, poor and black?