Attacks are déjà vu for Londoners
Last week, my home city came under assault from a man wielding a knife and car, a few days after a former commander of the Provisional Irish Republican Army(IRA), Martin McGuiness, who did much more to damage London and our political institutions, passed.
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Unlike cities such as Paris, Orlando and Boston that have been the target of recent terrorist attacks, the last few years, perhaps decade, have been relatively tranquil in London. And I guess the reason why the city remained calm and stoical – despite the efforts of the 24-hour news media to whip up mass hysteria – in the face of the attacks last week is precisely because we lived with such incidents for years.
Attacks on the mother of Parliaments
The British Parliament has been the target of terrorists since Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators in the Gun Powder plot attempted to blow up the House of Lords in November 1605. In fact, many people forget that before Islamic terrorists, Irish Republican terrorism, led by such people as the late Martin McGuiness and supported and financed by many well-healed and powerful Irish-Americans on the East Coast, blighted the lives of many in the UK. More than that they killed, maimed and injured several thousands, with muted condemnation and deafening silence from occupants of the Oval Office.
The IRA attacked Westminster pretty routinely during the so-called ‘troubles’. In 1979, they planted a bomb in the vehicle of then Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Airey Neave, who was blown apart within minutes of driving out of the House of Commons car park. Twelve years later, they tried to take out the entire British cabinet, firing three mortar rounds from an abandoned vehicle outside Downing Street, while cabinet sat under Prime Minister John Major’s leadership in 1991.
London has seen deadlier attacks
The IRA did not limit their mayhem to Westimnster however. Earlier in 1975, they exploded a bomb in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel Park Lane, killing two people and injuring 63. A ring of steel’ was erected around the financial district of London (commonly known as The City) after the IRA detonated a bomb near Bishopsgate in 1993. One person was killed, 40 were severely injured, but the damage to property was much more extensive, stretching from the Natwest Tower, then the tallest skyscraper in the City, Liverpool Street Station all the way to Threadneedle Street, the home of the Bank of England. Many of the buildings in the area, including the famous Natwest Tower which then housed the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank had to be demolished and rebuilt.
These were a few in a series of bomb blasts that became a regular disruption to life on the mainland. An exasperated British government did not know how to respond but such was the ferocity of the bomb blast and its impact on one of the Crown Jewels of the British economy, that the entire city was cordoned off with a ring of steel for many years to control the flow of traffic. As a young professional then, I used to drive through the city to get to work and was lucky not to have been caught in the blast. The most i suffered was the inconvenience of having to cope with checkpoints and looking for alternative routes for many years subsequently. It ended some lives; blighted others but for many of us, this was just another of the disruptions we had grown wearyingly used to.
In February 1996, another IRA bomb exploded on one of London’s iconic red double decker buses on the Aldywch near the Strand. Three people were killed and many others injured. Curiously on this occasion, the IRA failed to give any warning as it had done in previous attacks. I distinctly remember that was the day when my reflexive but fast-diminishing sympathy for the Republican political cause all but ended. It could have been me on that bus.
The Aldwych bus bombing followed right on the heels of the Docklands blast in the city’s new financial district at Canary Wharf just over a week earlier. Two people, including a newsagent from the subcontinent, were killed; a 100 others were injured including a British Moroccan family whose father was permanently challenged. Docklands marked the end of almost two years of self-imposed ceasefire by the IRA and the return to many such atrocities until the Good Friday Agreement at the zenith of Tony Blair’s Prime Ministership when the “hand of history” was proverbially placed on his shoulders.
Defiance and Stoicism
So while the attacks on Parliament by a marauding terrorist who deliberately mounted a pavement and drove into an unsuspecting crowd, were utterly contemptible, they also reminded Londoners of the experience we lived with for many years. Seeing many of my ‘townsfolk’ turn out in large numbers to protest the attacks was moving and in particular because they were vocal in their defiance of the attempt to divide this multicultural and ethnically diverse and beautiful city. IRA terrorists were Irish but no one attacked Irish people because of that or held them responsible.
Despite the efforts of the news media to play this out endlessly, the people of London quickly returned to the humdrum routine of their daily lives. The dastardly attack may have been a rude reminder of what we put up with for years, but like all the others before it, the people of London showed that it would not change our lives. We have lived with the scourge of terrorism for years and we will not be cowed by it.
We are all Londoners too
Memes like “Je suis Charlie” spread widely among non Parisians after the unfortunate spate of terrorist attacks in Paris; this time I can proudly say “I am a Londoner too” in solidarity with the people of my home city – and mean it!
