July 2005 – Page 3

Let's not be morbid

The first hints of Diana-ism are creeping into public view. First, we have the idea of a march in London to say … what? That we’re opposed to being bombed? That we’re not afraid? That we support some specific foreign policy? I don’t think it’s really clear. The most important thing to say is that we’re not afraid, but I think any such demonstration, whatever the actual intention is more likely to suggest to the less-than-stellar intellects attacking us that they are having an effect, and that they are capable of influencing us.

The same, I’m afraid, goes for the idea of a memorial to the victims. Certainly we will have a memorial service, and I should think a discreet plaque or something, as exists for the victims of the Kings Cross fire, but a “National Memorial” to the victims, as suggested by Tessa Jowell, is counter-productive. A permanent reminder for us of the victims is also a permanent reminder for our enemies of their success — a trivial and negligible success which deserves to be forgotten. When the enemy is defeated, then it will be time to build war memorials. Until then, whether it is a year away or a century away, the way to show defiance is to carry on as normal, not to exaggerate our losses.

None of this goes for those elsewhere who choose to show solidarity with us, and involvement with us rather than non-involvement. The people at We’re Not Afraid, for example, have my gratitude, as for them there is the choice of saying “nothing to do with me, mate”. But for those of us that live or work in London, any overreaction is a sign of weakness.

Thoughts on British Muslims

A couple of points:

Firstly that the very definite statements made by Muslim leaders in Britain are significant:

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, said he utterly condemned the attacks. He was joined in his condemnation by church leaders who have been preparing a joint position between both faiths in the event of such an attack. “We are simply appalled and want to express our deepest condolences to the families,” said Sir Iqbal. “These terrorists, these evil people, want to demoralise us as a nation and divide us. All of us must unite in helping the police to hunt these murderers down.”

The gap between “We condemn these murders” and “We must help the police” might seem small logically, but it is enormous emotionally. It is a step, for instance, which some church leaders in Northern Ireland were unwilling to make until the 1990s. As I argue in my piece on the structure of terrorist movements it is the crucial step which makes a long-term domestic terrorist campaign unfeasible. If the large majority of British Muslims are prepared to help the police, then any terrorist infrastructure will have to be based overseas.

My second point, which I have not seen mentioned elsewhere, is the odd location of one of the bombs. Edgware Road is very much an Arab area of London. Note the Arab population in Britain is very small, British Muslims being overwhelmingly from the Indian sub-continent, but what there is of it is very concentrated in a small part of London. When I lived on the edge of Kilburn, I tended to feel quite safe from the IRA, and the fact of a presumably Islamist bomb going off at Edgware Road Station is remarkable.

Of course, it may just have been chosen as a point on a main commuter route – from the West London junctions of Paddington and Baker street stations to King’s Cross and Central London, just as Aldgate is on the route in from the East London junction at Liverpool Street, or it may have gone off in the wrong place, but I do find it curious.

The other reason we know we can take this

1996

2005

I’d actually forgotten what 1996 was like, although I was living in London at the time. I remember the “Ring of Steel” and the Baltic Exchange in the early 90s, but the revived campaign in the mid-90s made virtually no impact on the national mood.

Update: another point from the Guardian, via Slugger O’Toole: There were 36 bombs in London in 1973 (a bit before my time).

Early Reflections

I’m sitting at home today – it’s very impressive that they’ve got the trains running as well as they have, but my journey is a 3-hour round trip at the best of times, and it’s really not worth dealing with the extra delays.

My main reaction today, as I hinted yesterday, is that this was a weak blow. We assumed it was coming, and I expected it to be much worse. The final scale of the event was similar to the Kings Cross fire of ’86, or the Ladbroke Grove crash. The level of disruption is much lower than the Hatfield crash.

More on the implications of this below.

The second reaction is how well the authorities and the transport companies dealt with it. A major city is like a huge old engine, with massive and dangerous forces (the movements and supplies of millions of people) barely controlled. Throw a spanner into it and the secondary effects can be much worse than the impact. The engine took this almost in its stride – pretty much all of us got home last night, there was no chaos, the essential services were available to the victims and to the rest of us. There has been a lot of planning an rehearsals for this kind of situation, but that’s no guarantee the response will come off right. It did, and thanks and congratulations are due to everyone involved.

The third response is amazement at the claim by the group that said it did it, of “fear, terror and panic” around Britain. Get a clue!

I suppose every nation has a central “modern myth” of how it sees itself at its best. We’ve just been celebrating Nelson and Trafalgar and all that, but there can be no doubt that the defining myth of modern Britan is the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. The story of that myth is that an apparently invincible enemy went all out to destroy us, failed, and allowed itself to be worn out in the process, picked to pieces by a few of our best.

That’s one reason why our response is neither the “fear and panic” imagined by our enemies, or the vengeful rage of the Americans with their myths of rattlesnakes and so on. That we could allow ourselves to lose our cool, in the sight of our parents and grandparents who lived through the 1940s, would be the most shameful thing I can think of, even if the situation today were a hundred times worse than it is. We will stand and take it, as they did, and we will grind out a victory, as they did.

That is the emotional response. The history, as always, is more complicated, but I am talking mythology not history, and the mythical ideal in front of us is clear.

So what to make of the feebleness of the long-anticipated blow? While not wanting to praise a bunch of murderers too highly, the attacks on New York in 2001 showed imagination, sophistication, skill and patience. By Madrid in 2004, the imagination had gone, the scale of planning was reduced, but it was still a very competently executed and effective attack. Here in 2005, the level of compentence was way down. How can you set off four bombs in the London rush-hour and only kill 40 people? There’s either a severe shortage of backup (supplies, explosives, whatever), or a severe shortage of brains, or both.

Indeed, the most striking fact of the last five years is that there has been no follow-up attack on the United States. As the months went by we believed they were preparing for another major spectacular, and then as the years went by and attacks came elsewhere – Bali, Madrid, it sunk in that they just weren’t capable of continuing their campaign.

As I suggested yesterday, I believe that leaving aside labels and slogans, the organisation behind September 2001 was essentially destroyed in Afghanistan. There are volunteers and sympathisers aplenty, there is money and possibly brains available, but there’s no core of skilled organisers with the right contacts to put it all together in secret.

Another possibility is that September 2001 was a one-off fluke, and there never was an enemy capable of seriously threatening western society. The scale of the threat has been overestimated, either honestly or intentionally by politicians looking to further particular foreign or domestic agendas.

I don’t really buy that. The World Trade Centre was perhaps a fluke in that the towers collapsed, putting the death toll into thousands rather than hundreds, and of course they had a greater advantage of surprise then, but there was clearly a significant organisation there, with supply lines, contacts, knowledge and skills to repeat the process. It seems likely that if they had been left alone, they would have done so. To strike first at the heart of the enemy, powerfully, then less strongly in Bali, then the same in Madrid, and now less strongly still in London, really shows decline in a way that any coherent leadership would be desperate to avoid if it could.

7th July

I don’t really have time for blogging these days, but here’s a few updates:

I’m OK – The Northern line was out by the time I got to it, so I switched to the Victoria.

No idea if or how I’m getting home tonight. The underground will be out for days or weeks, I think.

I’m mainly relieved. I always knew this was coming – it’s happened and it missed me.
The choice is between a Manhattan-style major event or a Madrid-style set of co-ordinated strikes. Here in Canary Wharf would one of the top targets for the Manhattan-style attack.

So far, it seems the impact has been smaller than Madrid. Possibly there’s a trainload of bodies in a tunnel somewhere, if not then we’ve got off very light.

Still, a very heavy double blow for London these two days. This might cause even more damage to the life and economy of London than the Olympics.

Update 13:45 : Thameslink are running trains outbound from King’s Cross, so it looks like I should be able to get home (probably have to walk across London). Wikipedia has rumours of something up at Luton, but no confirmation anywhere, so I think we can ignore that. A commenter on europhobia had a story about Marines shooting a suicide bomber at Canary Wharf, which I think is rubbish. As of 12:32, company security was reporting “no specific threats have been made in relation to Canary Wharf”.

No more attacks as yet. This seems to be more on the scale (though not in the style) of the IRA than the sort of attack I was afraid of. If this is their best shot, we can definitely take it.

Update 16:00 : Getting ready to call it a day. DLR is resuming service, which will get me half way to King’s Cross. They’re saying the Underground will resume tomorrow morning, so I might even be able to come in tomorrow.

Transport and Emergency services appear to have done a superb job. If the network is running anywhere near normal tomorrow that will be an amazing feat.

There is of course the possiblity of follow-up attacks, but frankly I don’t think the bad guys are up to it. I looks to me like the brains in that outfit have all been rounded up or blown up, and we’re dealing with wannabees and idiots. Still dangerous, of course, in an unsubtle way — almost any idiot can blow up 20 people on a packed tube train — but not capable of anything really spectacular.