My memories of 7/7

It is often said that one always remembers what one was doing when something big happens. It’s true. People even now can vividly recall the events of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Though only 7 years of age, I can remember in great detail the day of Princess Diana’s untimely death. The same is true of the terrorist attack 10 years to this day.
It is hard to know how best to pay tribute on a small political blog, but I feel I ought to do something. Perhaps that is just to tell it as I remember it.

I don’t remember the morning in great detail. We were off on a school trip the next day to Belgium and France to see sites of the First World War.

I was in school, year 10, and it was a few weeks to the summer holidays, which I was looking forward to. It was going to be the first time I had gone abroad with my family apart from going to Ireland, which, being half Irish, feels like another homeland to me rather than a foreign country.

It was lunchtime when we heard. I think it might have rained, but there was some reason why, rather than eat outside as we normally did when dry, we had gone in to a classroom to take our lunch, where a radio played BBC Five Live.

Although we were chatting away and I couldn’t really hear it, I could tell it wasn’t the usual afternoon discussion programme but that a big news story was being discussed. I suggested everyone hang on a minute and listen, and as we did, the picture became clearer as to what had happened.

Underground at a standstill! Explosion! Possibility of a terrorist attack!
Everyone was stunned, shocked and saddened. I’ve always had a tendency to rationalise anything shocking, so I said, “It’s sad, but it wasn’t a surprise.” This might sound callous and unfeeling, but in reality it was the only objectively sound truth in the sorry episode.

My most abiding memory, however, is that it was a Muslim who, out of all of us, was the most distressed, shocked and upset. The rest of us weren’t even consciously having to remind ourselves that this was just our friend, as much a part of our small group as any of the others, who needed assurance. That was completely instinctive and natural.

As I grew in political awareness and looked back on it, I became more conscious of that part of the story. I could see its significance, as demonization of the Muslim community, and fears of the threat within seemed to flourish. I think it’s the moment where I understood that the complete lack of association between extremists and the vast majority of Muslims isn’t just something I understand intellectually, but is something I know to be true through my own lived reality. It’s where my hatred of true Islamophobia comes from.

In that moment, good and evil confronted us in black and white. We were a young group of friends, naïve about the world, innocent about its excesses and unfazed by the differences among us, trying to make sense to each other of a senseless slaughter whose full horror we couldn’t possibly hope to understand.

On the other hand, some-one (we didn’t know who yet), had bombed people. They didn’t know or care who they were, they were just there. Life’s greatest cruelty, at times, can be its arbitrary randomness.

I remember feeling so close to those friends at that time, perhaps sub-consciously aware of the need to hold on to hope, to love, to peace, to togetherness, even if I didn’t have the capacity to articulate it
IT is, as adults, much harder to do this. With more understanding, it gets easier with age to be angry, vengeful and bitter. Indeed if it happened today, I’d be conscious of the Muslims in the group, even if I didn’t blame them remotely. I’d want to assure and comfort them, in part, because of who they are, not just because I call them friend. It’s just how it is.

But even if it’s harder, it can be done. The commuters today, who got off the tube a stop early and defiantly walked the last stop, showed how, with quiet and understated dignity, we can roar a message that the terrorists hate.

What they can’t stand is our civilisation showing that it is just that. It can’t be blown apart by a bomb. It won’t descend to violent, hate-filled anarchy. We mightn’t be bonded in grief, for no-one other than those injured or who lost loved ones will experience comparable emotional agony today, but we can unite in solidarity. That’s what we’ve done.

My 7/7 story ended undramatically. There was some discussion as to whether our school trip to Belgium and France the next day would go ahead. IT did.

We celebrated the dog’s birthday, an event which we’re also celebrating again today.

I watched the news, as the full detail had now come to light. I listened to Ken Livingstone’s speech and was heartened by its compassion and determined resolve.

When I’d heard enough, I put Magic on. Phil Collins’s One More Night was playing, so I listened to that and went to sleep.

My life carried on, unchanged. For hundreds of our countrymen, that wasn’t the case. It is they who should be foremost in our thoughts and prayers today.