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Telegraph
4 days ago
- Telegraph
Britain's craven appeasement of Islam is an insult to the victims of 7/7
Twenty years ago this week I was pottering in the kitchen when the phone rang. It was so long ago that the phone was a landline which sat on the worktop almost buried under school detritus. The caller was Laura, my children's babysitter, and a much-loved member of our extended family. Laura was gabbling, telling me not to worry. Something about being on the train but 'not that carriage'. What train? Why did the carriage matter? 'Laura, you're not making sense, slow down.' Normally, she was the kind of chipper, capable, gale-force girl you would have nominated for Best Person in a Crisis. 'Alli, I want you all to know I'm OK,' her voice broke and she hung up. It was a couple of hours before I understood. Laura had been caught up in a monstrous attack on our capital city by four Islamist terrorists, three of them second-generation Pakistani immigrants from Leeds. Laura was 22 years old and, on the morning of July 7 2005, she was on the way to work in the City with her mother, Katie, when a young man her own age called Shehzad Tanweer boarded their eastbound Circle line train and blew himself up. He murdered seven people and savagely injured 172 more. Down in the Aldgate tunnel it was a scene from Dante's Inferno. Flames shot up a pole close to where mother and daughter were standing. There was a stench of burning flesh. Tanweer had detonated a bomb in the next carriage. In the panic and carnage that ensued, Laura, a volunteer for St John's Ambulance, sought out the first aid kit. When she finally got the box open, all that was inside was an ice-scraper. It was the first, but not the last, time that day that the system would let the people down. Laura wanted to go into the neighbouring 'bomb carriage' to help the wounded, but her mother refused point blank. Some deep instinct told Katie that, whatever was in that hellish place of smoke and screams, her child would not be able to bear it. Laura busied herself ripping up clothing to make slings, tended the injured as best she could, and waited. And waited. Surely, help would come soon? It did not. A single image would haunt Laura. A man in his underpants (the rest of his clothes had been blown off) was kneeling by the side of the track as the dazed survivors walked past him. The charred figure looked as if he was covered in a thick layer of pitch-black tar through which blood was bubbling up. Laura wanted to stay and comfort him, but she was already taking care of two girls and her mum. She walked ahead of them, kicking a chunk of body out of the way before the others could see it. 'I can get mum up to the surface and come back for him,' she told herself. For years after, when Laura thought of the man in the tunnel, she cried with shame that she didn't do something. I will never forget how distressed our brave young friend was by what she saw as the failure of the emergency services to get to the survivors quickly enough. 'I honestly felt like they'd left us to die,' she said. When Laura and her stricken little platoon finally got to the surface, over an hour after the explosion, our respectful, law-abiding babysitter saw a police officer and greeted him: 'About time. Where the hell have you been?' A City broker called Michael Henning concurred. In 2010, he told the 7/7 inquest that victims had suffered agonising deaths of 20, 30, 40 minutes. When Mr Henning eventually made it to the surface, he saw a group of firefighters and shouted: 'Why aren't you down there? There are people dying.' The firefighters turned their backs and seemed too embarrassed to look at him, although he claims one young fireman admitted they were worried about a second bomb. Mr Henning contrasted the risk-averse rules of contemporary Britain with the spontaneous courage shown by his grandfather's rescue team during the Blitz. 'They didn't worry about unexploded [German] bombs. They would go in even if the building was on fire.' To be fair, the emergency services have always denied that staff put their own safety before that of trapped passengers (it is revealing, I think, that some of the bravest rescuers that day were off-duty emergency workers who were free to ignore protocols). But in his book Into the Darkness: An Account of 7/7, Peter Zimonjic stated for the record: 'An ambulance would not arrive at the entrance to Aldgate station until 24 minutes after the explosion. The paramedics would not get into the tunnels for a further 25 minutes after that.' The charred man Laura had seen was left alone with his fear and his unimaginable anguish. This is not the heroic account of July 7 that the authorities chose to recall. But, two decades on, that abandonment of the dying and the shell-shocked works pretty well as a metaphor for the British state's cowardly handling of the Islamist threat, I think. Bury it deep, then, when something awful happens, as it inevitably will, claim that 'we did everything we possibly could', and, if British people get angry that such barbaric fanatics are let into our country in huge numbers, blame those people for causing division and hate. We saw that playbook in full swing on the 20th anniversary of the atrocities this week. Yes, the commemorative service at St Paul's, where relatives broke down as they read out the names of the victims, was hauntingly lovely, with white petals falling like blossom from the cathedral's dome. But the dead were dishonoured by the official denial and deflection found in the consoling platitudes carefully chosen to mark the occasion. The King and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, both preferred to accentuate the positive, of communities coming together, and never once mentioned the ideology that inspired the carnage. Charles spoke euphemistically of 'tragic events'. As if a blood-curdling assault on the Western way of life were some sort of road-traffic accident, not the most devastating Islamist-planned attack since 9/11 (two of the London bombers had made recent trips to Pakistan). The King is a good man who only wants the best for everybody, but he can be painfully naïve when it comes to the Islamist threat which is apparent to his increasingly alarmed subjects. Privately, millions of Britons have come to agree with Enoch Powell on overwhelming levels of immigration from hostile, incompatible cultures: 'It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.' Mayor Khan, who has allowed supporters of jihad to occupy our capital every weekend shouting vile anti-Semitic slogans, said: 'I have a clear message for those who seek to spread division and sow hatred – you will never win… We will always choose hope over fear and unity over division as we continue building a safer London for everyone.' Seriously – a safer London? Who was it, two decades ago, that set out to 'spread division and sow hatred'? If you are a simple soul like me, you might assume the haters were the ones with bombs in their backpacks. It was clearly too awkward, though, for the Mayor to refer specifically to the British-born Muslims who despised our country so much they set out to kill as many innocent people as possible. Khan's is an attitude brilliantly satirised by the late comedian Norm Macdonald who tweeted: 'What terrifies me is if ISIS was to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims!' We may laugh at that, but after every single terrorist attack on British soil, the official tactic remains the same: swivel attention, with indecent haste, away from the appalling suffering of the victims and on to the 'racists', the so-called 'far-Right' who we are told will use the opportunity to stir up anti-Muslim feeling. (Look at the draconian crackdown after the Southport massacre of little girls on armchair tweeters like Lucy Connolly, while a police officer told Muslim counter-protesters to 'discard [any weapons] at the mosque' to avoid being arrested!) Invariably, the Home Secretary and the BBC will then mention the 'terror threat from the far-Right', pretending it is equivalent. The facts beg to differ. Since the 7/7 London bombings, Islamist extremists have killed over 40 people in the UK; the far-Right has killed three. The vast majority of suspects on MI5's terror watchlist are jihadists – around 43,000, which equals about one in a hundred Muslims in the UK. Seventeen months after the 2005 atrocities, prime minister Tony Blair gave an impressively hard-hitting lecture on religious tolerance and cultural assimilation. As good as admitting Labour's favoured multiculturalism project had failed, Blair called on Muslims to integrate into British society, warning that British values take precedence over any cultural traditions or faiths. 'Belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage – that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common; it is what gives us the right to call ourselves British. At that point no distinctive culture or religion supersedes our duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom.' Blair conceded that 'there are extremists in other communities. But the reason we are having this debate is not generalised extremism. It is a new and virulent form of ideology associated with a minority of our Muslim community. It is not a problem with Britons of Hindu, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese or Polish origin.' Such honesty has rarely been repeated by our political class, which, in the intervening years, seems to have become increasingly afraid of what they have unleashed. When he became prime minister, David Cameron did tell me what had shocked him most was being told about 'the scale of the Islamist terror threat'. You won't hear anything like that from Sir Keir Starmer, who mentioned the risk of becoming 'an island of strangers' in a recent speech – one of the few true things that slithery, shapeshifter has uttered – but then imaginatively claimed not to have read the speech too closely. Fear of losing Labour's Muslim vote seems to have eclipsed the fear of Britain disintegrating. Tony Blair outlined six ways multiculturalism and integration could be promoted, including a crackdown on foreign preachers (imams spouting hatred of the West), investigation of forced marriages, and the refusal of some mosques to allow women to worship there and to participate more generally. The government would also demand a 'shared common language' and 'allegiance to the rule of law; nobody can legitimately ask to stand outside the law of the nation'. How well did all that work out? Well, imams are still spouting anti-Semitic and anti-British rhetoric. Young men from Pakistani-origin communities are put on trial for mass rape and explain they have been taught by their religious authorities to regard white girls as 'chewing gum in the road'. There are now at least 85 sharia councils in the UK. Not legally recognised courts, in theory they do not have the authority to overrule British law, but the fact they exist at all should be anathema to an equal justice system. As for a 'shared common language', the census of 2011 found there were around 846,000 Muslim women living in England; of those, almost 190,000, or 22 per cent, said that they could speak English 'not well' (152,000) or 'not at all' (38,000). (Some 90,000 Muslim men, or 10 per cent, said the same.) More up-to-date figures are hard to come by, but as the practice of importing virgin brides from Pakistan and Bangladesh continues unchallenged, it is hard to imagine that situation has improved much. In fact, as recent figures cited by Prof Matt Goodwin make clear, the establishment of de facto ghettos and alienation from the mainstream proceeds apace. In Luton, 79 per cent of babies have at least one foreign-born parent, Slough (78 per cent), Leicester (71 per cent). Blair's hope of full Muslim integration into British society is now a distant pipe dream. But don't worry, folks! Deputy PM Angela Rayner is working on a new legal definition of Islamophobia, so very soon the problem will go away. Because we will be jailed if we mention anything to do with 'Muslimness'. Twenty years after one of the most heinous terror attacks in British history, our borders are effectively open. Some 20,000 undocumented young males from backward, misogynistic cultures, often exporters of Islamist violence, have entered the UK by boat since the start of this year, and are being seeded in towns up and down the land to try and hide them from a furious populace that is done with immigration. There is now overt sectarianism in Parliament, with Muslim MPs forming their own political alliance with Jeremy Corbyn, trying to affect British foreign policy in favour of Islamic fundamentalists. Another unholy alliance of far-Left, woke Corbynists, Hamas supporters and Greens is poised to form a new party – working title: Jezbollah. On the anniversary of 7/7, I asked someone who was operationally very senior in counter terrorism, both nationally and internationally: 'How bad is the Islamist threat today compared to July 2005?' 'The truth is the threat has grown inexorably,' he replied. 'Perversely, the reason why there are no real terror attacks now is because we are better at monitoring them since the London attack, but also because they are getting what they want. We are where they want us to be. We have their religion enshrined outside of UK law and their community leaders have got the police under control. They are wily; when they see do-gooders they walk all over them. Like the scorpion and the frog it is what they do. The numbers are now so huge that our own government has sleepwalked into a nightmare of extraordinary proportions. They are building while we are continually lying to ourselves.' This former senior figure in counter-terrorism is one of many people who now talk openly about the chilling possibility of civil war in this country. Let's hope it never comes to that, but, at the very least, it is hard not to feel huge sorrow at how the memory of the 7/7 victims has been betrayed by the craven appeasement of our worst enemy. Our institutions may be cowardly, but individual strength and determination remain. At the 7/7 inquest all those years ago, a softly spoken man called Philip Duckworth said he had been thrown by the blast from Shehzad Tanweer's suicide bomb out of the doors of the carriage at Aldgate and into the tunnel. He was blind in one eye because he had been hit by a splinter from the bomber's shin bone. Lying semi-conscious on the track, Philip heard someone say: 'Leave him, he's gone.' So incensed was he, that he hauled himself up on to his knees and willed himself to live. Our wonderful, brave Laura walked past him at that defiant moment of resurrection. Yes, it was the charred man, back from the dead. That kind of courage is in the DNA of our people, and it has served us well all these centuries; no terrorists or alien creed will vanquish it, nor take our country from us.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Darlington women who were caught up in London July 7 attacks look back 20 years on
Two Darlington women have recalled their panic in London 20 years ago today as the city came under attack by terrorists. For Liz Lamb and Hayley Jones, July 7, 2005 is a day they will never forget. On that Thursday morning a group of four Islamic suicide bombers carried out the UK's deadliest terrorist attack since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie. (Image: PA) Within 50 seconds of each other at about 8.50am, three explosions rang out in the vicinity of Aldgate, Edgware Road and Russell Square stations. Just under an hour later, at 9.47am, a fourth device exploded on a bus that had been diverted via Tavistock Square. Frantic commuters were initially told there was a "power surge" as they were directed to find other modes of transport. But, the situation soon became clear when police began to swarm streets and cordon off underground stations. Exiting Kings Cross station just as its underground station was closed was Liz Lamb. Liz, who was a reporter for The Northern Echo at the time, had travelled to London to cover a court case. Liz Lamb, 48. (Image: LIZ LAMB) "I was going to cover a court case at the High Court of Justice and was set to meet the barrister in Holborn," Liz, 48, said. "My train from Darlington that day was a bit delayed and I should have got into London a little earlier than I did. Potentially, I could have been on the underground when one of the devices was detonated. "But when I got off the train there was a guard with his arms outstretched, saying 'you can't come down'. There was a whole load of us there. "He said 'there has been a power surge' but couldn't say when it would be fixed and he didn't know what was happening. "Everyone was a bit disgruntled, but we didn't think much of it." The mum-of-two's next move was to take a bus to the High Court - which was travelling on the same route as the double decker that would soon explode at Tavistock Square. It was at this point that she started to see police, ambulances and fire engines across the city. "On the bus we were thinking, 'What the heck is going on?'," she added. Walking wounded leaving Edgware Road tube station to be treated at the London Hilton Metropole on Edgware Road. (Image: EDMOND TERAKOPIAN) "There was a lot of panic. I remember speaking to my mum on the phone very briefly and said that there was something strange going on." By the time she emerged from the court an hour later, phone networks were down and news had broke about attacks across the city. Luckily, Liz, now a lecturer in journalism at the University of Sunderland, was able to board a train home that evening - but every year on the anniversary of the attacks, she thinks of those who lost their lives that day. She added: "It's hard to believe that 20 years have passed since that fateful day. Even though it was two decades ago, it was such a horrific attack on our nation that it is not something easily forgotten. "My memories of 7/7 have faded in places, but when I read my own account recently, I became teary just recalling the sheer emotion and panic of that day, as people desperately tried to find out if their loved ones were alive. The Northern Echo's front page on July 8, 2005. "So many people lost their lives, entire families were torn apart. Others were maimed and scarred for life, and countless others – including rail and underground workers, emergency services, and medical staff – were left traumatised by the horrors they witnessed. "I visited London a week after the attacks to write a tribute piece, and I was overwhelmed by the sense of community and the floral tributes across King's Cross and Russell Square, which had come from across the country and around the world. "It wasn't just an attack on the United Kingdom; it was an attack on humanity. My thoughts are always with those who lost their lives, and their loved ones left behind." Also in London on July 7 was Hayley Jones - who works for Darlington Borough Council. Hayley, who left The Northern Echo in 2006, was in the city with colleagues for an awards ceremony on July 6 and was waiting for a train home on July 7. Hayley Jones, 50. (Image: HAYLEY JONES) Reflecting, Hayley told the Echo: "We were just sat waiting for our train on the concourse. The first thing we saw was a woman who had soot across her face. We thought, that's a bit odd. "Then we saw another couple of people in the same way and a police officer screamed for us to get out. They told us it was a power surge so we waited outside the station thinking we would be let back in." The first Hayley, 50, heard of the attacks was on TV alongside a crowd of people craning to see the screen as others heard a bomb had gone off on a bus. According to Hayley, buses were abandoned and taxis refused to stop as she made her way to a pub where the news blared out emerging information about what was going on. "When we were walking I got paranoid thinking what will they do next? I had convinced myself that there would be bombs in the bins. Walking wounded leaving Edgware Road tube station to be treated at the London Hilton Metropole on Edgware Road. (Image: PA) "Eventually we managed to get on a train up north and at every station there were paramedics checking on people and handing out water. "It was scary - but it was when I got home and turned the telly on that I realised how close we were to it really." More than 770 people were injured and 52 people tragically died in the attacks. In the weeks and months that followed, the four attackers were identified as Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Germaine Lindsay and Shehzad Tanweer. Read more about the July 7 attacks: BBC to air documentary series about response to July 7 London bombings Family's anguish at 7/7 inquest evidence Ten years after terror struck London Leeds man Hussain, 18, was behind the Tavistock Square attack that killed 13 people. Thirty-year-old Khan, of Dewsbury, detonated his device at Edgeware Road, killing six. Flowers left in Woburn Place, near the scene of the bus bomb blast in Tavistock Square. (Image: PA) Behind the deadliest attack, at Russell Square, was 19-year-old Lindsay from London - who killed 26 people with his device that exploded just after it pulled out of King's Cross station. Tanweer detonated his device on a train between Liverpool Street and Aldgate. The 22-year-old, from Bradford, killed seven people. All four men died when they detonated their devices. A memorial service will be held in Hyde Park at 11.15am today where a memorial stands to those who lost their lives. It will be live streamed online.
BBC News
5 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Bomb expert who rushed to London to help on 7/7
Ten years ago, four suicide bombers attacked central London, killing 52 people and injuring hundreds Dominic Murphy, now head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism squad, had been an officer with Hertfordshire Police for 12 years at the trained as a bomb scene examiner, he said he rushed to London and was "so struck" by the professionalism and commitment of officers, that he decided to stay with the Met."The way that commitment portrayed itself to their service to the public and the victims was overwhelming for me," he said. "I was an officer who could be called into London or some other part of the country to help SO13 (the former Met anti-terrorist branch) if they were responding to a terrorist attack, or conduct searches or support them in some way," Cdr Murphy recalled when he saw the horror of the events on the television."I remember sitting in the special branch office, which is our intelligence unit in Hertfordshire, and I was watching this unfold on TV, and I did that thing that police officers shouldn't really do."I didn't wait to be deployed. I spoke to my line manager and grabbed a car and all my kit and equipment and drove straight down to London to be here as quickly as I could." In London he was deployed to work with the Met's forensic management team."These were the officers and staff that were leading the response at the scenes to gather the evidence and recover those that had been unfortunately killed in the incident," said Cdr Murphy."I arrived to something I would describe as a really high pace of activity, the sort of activity you would expect policing to be doing at a terrible incident like this, but of course, this was on a scale and a type of incident we had never seen."I was struck by all of those counter-terrorism officers from SO13 that I met, their professionalism, their commitment to finding who was responsible for this attack, their overwhelming compassion for victims... that compassion extended to how they recovered those that were deceased from the attacks."I was struck by the end of that first day to see the professionalism and the pace they were working at." After this experience, Cdr Murphy said he never wanted to work anywhere else."I really only ever wanted to work with this group of people who I thought were some of the most impressive people I'd ever seen, and just the way that commitment portrayed itself to their service to the public and the victims was overwhelming for me."So I had been a Hertfordshire officer for nearly 12 years at that point, but I never really went back to Hertfordshire."I stayed here then, and have been here in counter-terrorism for the rest of my career." Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Irish Times
26-06-2025
- Irish Times
‘He was perfect, a one-off': Pensioner killed in London is remembered as proud Kilkenny man
John Mackey, the 87-year-old Irish man who died after being attacked while walking home from grocery shopping in north London, will be remembered as a man 'with a twinkle in his eye', his funeral heard on Thursday. Originally from Callan, Co Kilkenny, Mr Mackey had been living in London since the age of 19. He was running errands on the afternoon of May 6th when he was allegedly assaulted near his home close to Goodchild Road. He suffered serious head injuries and died in hospital two days later. On Thursday, his remains were carried into the Church of the Assumption in his south Kilkenny hometown by six pallbearers, a number of whom were his nephews. READ MORE A guard of honour was provided by retired Irish UN peacekeepers, as one of Mr Mackey's brothers is a former member. His coffin was adorned with two flags, representing his beloved Arsenal Football Club and the county colours of Kilkenny. There was also a photograph of Mr Mackey wearing his trilby hat. Mementos of his life were brought to the altar by members of his extended family. Parish priest Fr William Dalton said Mr Mackey's trilby exemplified how he had always been a dapper dresser with a love of good clothes. The Callan flag, and a book on the town by John Fitzgerald that had brought Mr Mackey memories of his beloved county, were included, as well as a photo of him with two nephews and his brother Christy. John Mackey worked as a postman in Callan before moving to England where he became a loyal part of the Irish community, his funeral heard. Photograph: Sarah Murphy There were his rosary beads which were said to have helped him through his long, happy and fruitful life. Fr Dalton told mourners they were there 'to say farewell as a person with faith which helped him through a long and happy life'. 'When we think of the Mackeys in the 1930s and 1940s, a family of 11 children, six boys and five girls, a very Catholic family. Their mother died when the eldest of the children was 15 and to make matters worse their father was taken from them. It was a time when there were no social services and no children's allowance, but they were able to survive,' he said. He recalled how their sister Kitty reared the children, enabling them to live together as a family. 'Most of them in time went to England with some returning.' Mr Mackey, he said, had worked as a postman in Callan before moving to England in 1956 where he worked for a pharmaceutical company. 'There he would spend his life and would become immersed in the culture [and] integrated into society. He became a devout Arsenal fan and a loyal part of the Irish community there. Part of him will always be with us, even though there is a void, the memories of him will always be with us.' In her eulogy, his sister Betty recalled how her brother had been well-known in Callan before his departure. Pat, the eldest of Mr Mackey's 22 nieces and nephews remembered 'the perfect uncle' who 'always had a twinkle in his eye, always smelling of lovely aftershave'. 'He was a new age man, many [women] had tried to get him to the altar but failed. One woman almost got him there, but John forgot his wallet on Christmas Eve at 4.55pm and the jewellers were closing,' she said. She recalled spending time with him in Finsbury Park, trying to get him to eat Chinese food. 'But, no, he had to have his fry with chips. We all remember such happy times, he was a one-off. We are so incredibly lucky to have had him as our uncle.' Mr Mackey was one of 11 siblings and is survived by four. He was buried in Kilbride Cemetery. A man has been arrested and charged with Mr Mackey's murder and with robbery.
