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Back Cover Letter from London
July 21st, 2005 -- In the weeks and months preceding the International Olympic Committee’s decision on 6 July, it was hard to find a Londoner outside the city’s sports clubs and schools who harboured any desire, let alone hope, that their city would host the 2012 Olympic Games. Most either resented the cost of hosting the Games or felt sure they would end in humiliation for the city that has had to endure the fiasco that was the Millennium Dome and that still is the National Stadium at Wembley. Official claims that a vast majority of Londoners backed the bid seemed incredible to those who not only expected, but actually hoped, the Games would go elsewhere. None were more shocked than Londoners themselves by the IOC decision, but the confidence demonstrated in our potential as host city shamed even the most resolute Olymposceptic. Still faintly aglow from the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park only four days before, most Londoners seemed to unite behind the Games and the city’s ability to host them. The capital was jubilant. But only for a moment. The following morning, as news spread that hundreds of commuters — many surely savouring reports in the papers of London’s Olympic success — had been maimed in a series of explosions across the capital, mobile phone networks struggled to cope with demand. By late morning it was clear that bombs had gone off on three London Underground trains and a bus and the death toll, though not as high as might have been expected, was devastating. At midday, the prime minister, hosting a gathering of world leaders at the G8 summit in Scotland, confirmed what most by then knew. The explosions that had rocked the capital as the morning rush-hour was winding down were the work of terrorists; terrorists, he claimed, determined to “cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world”. In the following hours and days, Londoners, struggling to comprehend the horrors experienced by those caught up in the blasts, were praised for their serenity and resilience in the face of the attacks. Tony Blair described the city’s stoicism and spirit as an inspiration and there were tales of extraordinary courage and defiance. But if the carefully coordinated attacks crushed the Olympic euphoria, along with it also went a little of the unity the prospect of the Games had inspired. Muslim Londoners who had celebrated the bid’s success also shared in the shock and loss caused by the bombings. Only now many felt excluded from the sense of shared grief that consumed the capital. But the expected backlash never really materialized. Londoners, on the whole, behaved in such a way as made obvious just why this city has the reputation it does for tolerance and cosmopolitanism. There was some irritation at the commanders of American forces based in the UK who put a ban, lifted almost as soon as it was imposed, on US servicemen entering the capital. Baghdad it seems was safe enough for them, London apparently not. And as the investigation into the attacks got under way, there were those who felt a resurgence of the familiar scepticism many feel about the way things are done here. There were questions to be answered. Why were the CCTV cameras on the destroyed bus not in operation on the day of the bombing? Were the bombers already known to the authorities? But on the whole the government’s response, which immediately sought to locate the attacks within the world-wide problem of international terrorism, was remarkably successful. Londoners demonstrated little appetite for laying any blame at their government’s door and the swift pace of the investigation was reassuring to most. The city was declared “open for business” again on 11 July and there was little evidence, for those venturing back on to public transport for the first time since the attacks, of the horrors of the week before. If a spate of deadly suicide bomb attacks in Iraq offered Londoners a little perspective, most were none the less proud of the way in which their city had responded. The mood was not entirely self-congratulatory, however. As one caller on the capital’s LBC radio station said: “We may be stoical, but we have still had our arses kicked and stoicism alone is not going to stop it happening again.” |
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