ARCHIVE - JULY 2005


THE 7/7 LONDON BOMBINGS JULY 2005


THURSDAY JULY 7th 2005

AND BACK TO LONDON FOR …

… As I was scanning through this piece (on the anti G8 protests in Stirling Scotland, and the Convergence Camp at which I had played a gig as part of the entertainment … for chumba.com) for typos, the news came in that London had been hit by a co-ordinated string on bombings, with between four and six separate explosions, mostly on underground tube trains but one on a double decker London bus.

Whilst few details have yet been released by the police the bombings were co-ordinated to happen as the G8 leaders sat down to begin the day's business. It is not clear how many, but there have been fatalities and many, many injured. And thus Tony Blair finally reaps his whirlwind, as Britain gets its very own first wave of al Qaida style attacks, as our civilians unwittingly find themselves in the front line of the Bush-Blair war on terror. A tragedy to be sure, and if the record of the last four years is anything to go by, one that you can be sure will bring yet more tragedy as it is exploited by our leaders to consolidate and further their geo-political agendas.

Danbert Nobacon, July 7th www.chumba.com



FRIDAY JULY 15th 2005

THE COMPARTMENTALISATION OF THE STORY


There is a human ability to compartmentalise, and we all have it to wildly varying degrees. It can be extremely useful in keeping annoying work separated from warm family life.

However, like most things it can be taken to extremes. For instance there are those who lead double lives, are married to two different people, have two families, and manage to walk the tight rope between the two, giving the appearance of participating in normal family life to both, for years on end without ever being rumbled. In the mind of the polygamist/adulterer there is an ability to separate the two, almost as if living on two different planets and repeatedly shedding one world as the step is made into the other. The same has been said of serial killers, living mundane normal lives, but then as if stepping into another dimension to commit horrific murder, before retreating back to normality for months, even years before the other murderous life asserts ascendancy again. Of course the compartmentalisation is only a means of how others see them, after the fact, for we can be sure that the compartmentalist has both worlds overlapping and running through their head much of the time.

The same is now being said of the Beeston suicide bombers. They led double lives. At the time there as no outward sign of what was to come. Retrospectively. knowing what we now know, some of behaviour may be remembered as unusual, but the prevailing memory remains that they were just ordinary blokes living in a well established Muslim community in northern England.

In the immediate light of the London bombings, It may then seem curious if not outrageous to consider the behaviour of the British government as exhibiting this very same pronounced ability to compartmentalise, but it is a quality highly regarded in our leading politicians.

The story of the London Bombings as reflected in the media presentation in the first few days of the aftermath was one of extreme compartmentalisation. The narrative of the bombings was quite deliberately insulated from the wider context in which they occurred i.e. of a Britain pro-actively involved in George W. Bush's war on terror and engulfed on the ground in Iraq and all that this entails in terms of double standards, crumbling human rights, torture and the fighting of war without having to accept responsibility for its murderous consequences.

As in the wake of 9-11, to question the official narrative was to side with the terrorists. I do not mean here I am looking for conspiracy theory. There is nothing to suggest that the atrocities were anything other than the 'conspiracy fact' of an al Qaida style cell being recruited and coached or self sufficiently established to come together on the morning of July 7th with the overriding aim of becoming the first suicide bombers on British, and indeed western European soil.

I almost feel guilty for bringing it up, subconsciously feeling the overwhelming thrust of the government drive to keep the story within strictly defined limits, but what I mean is this. Beginning with the orgy of TV news watching on the evening of Thursday July 7th I could not help but being struck by how little information we were being offered. We could even call this my distinct inability to compartmentalise my own thoughts, as my mind raced off in all directions simultaneously, questions in my head rapidly multiplying.

After some hours, trying to collate some of my uneasy feelings, the nagging doubt that we were being led by the nose along a proscribed route, that all our shock and horror and our heartfelt empathy with those who did absolutely nothing to merit their lives being blown to pieces, that our collective grief, was being subtly co-opted. In the end I thought it important to record the feeling, as looking back at it in the cold light of day, a week, a month, a year after the bombing will remain important. Indeed, transcending the shock of the days events for one moment the realisation dawns that why would it be otherwise. Why would this tragedy, one that profoundly affects our government on many, many levels, not be subjected to a normal, and indeed heightened level of spin.

It would be naïve in the extreme to think that government departments, and in particular their in-house press departments, suddenly downed tools — around the time Blair speaking at the G8 summit began addressing the world in response to the bombings — out of respect for the victims of the bombings. In fact the opposite was probably true as they worked around the clock to pre-agreed stratagems to steer the story in particular directions, and away from unwelcome and awkward questions.




HISTORY RE-WRITTEN AS IT IS HAPPENING

The bombings were expected sooner or later and about that there is little disagreement. Perhaps the only real surprise was that it took suicide bombers so long to strike in Britain. From Blair's point of view he was forever preparing us in advance for the consequences of his actions, but consistently never took any responsibility for the fact that his actions contributed greatly to making Britain a target for Islamist extremists. Indeed Blair would have had very recent practice in calculating and rehearsing his responses to a terrorist strike in Britain in that the British election period in May 2005 was a clear window of opportunity for anyone plotting suicide bomb attacks on Britain with a view to having a major propaganda impact. In fact the terrorist threat level was high for the election but reduced a notch just before the July bombings took place.

Blair had two striking examples on which to base his own response, and both contained clues as to how to, and how not to steer the story with regard to his own particular situation. I am speaking of 9-11 and the Madrid train bombings of March 2004. Like famous people whose obituaries are prepared by the major news outlets, whilst those people are still in fact enjoying their later years of life, Blair had a long established 'plan on the shelf' of how to respond. The structure was in place before the bombings and the blanks were filled in with all the circumstantial detail surrounding the event in the minutes and early hours after it happened.

For our purposes, of analysing the nature of how history is co-opted, packaged and channelled, it is worth a least one moment of sober reflection that in this case, some of the history of the London bombings had already been written before the event itself had even happened. As well as the emergency services having well rehearsed and well prepared pre-plans so did the British government know how it would respond.

Blair needed to be more robust than Bush had been in the immediate wake of 9-11, and he needed be less calculating and callous than Spanish prime minister José María Aznar had been in the immediate wake of the Madrid bombings.

The fact that the bombers did not strike in the immediate run-up to the British election in many ways gave Blair a break in terms of winning the election, but would theoretically have caught him off guard coming two months later. Indeed coming as it did whilst the G8 leaders were in session in Britain had much more international shock value, and propaganda value to al Qaida, but Blair was very well prepared because he had been expecting Britain to be hit, at least since the Madrid train bombings and probably form when the tanks rolled into Iraq in March 2003.



COMTEMPORANEOUS NOTES (except where bracketed)


THURSDAY JULY 7th 2005

Watched the news channels for much of the evening, BBC 1, ITV present a very controlled affair, in that:

There is very little real information as to who is responsible or how it happened. This is understandable to an extent given that it is only hours after the event, but the US news channels are quoting US officials having being told by their British counterparts that it was remotely detonated bombs rather than being suicide bombers. (In retrospect this deliberate 'leakage' of the wrong story was probably designed to stave off awkward questions and contain the shock — that the bombers were born and bred in Leeds — which was a full five days in being released to the public, thus buying valuable time for government news management teams.)

There is no mention that 44 billion ($ or £) that was immediately wiped off the value of the stock market.

There is a preponderance of spokespeople saying as Blair did, that London will not be cowed, that the British spirit of calmness and quiet getting on with it was shining through, backed up by some sound-bites from people caught up in chaos of the aftermath of the attacks. At this time there were people still trapped in the trains and the underground and whilst obviously not all of the people emerging from the bombed out tube stations were of one mind, there was little on the news to suggest that people had been profoundly convulsed by shock, panic, hysteria and distress. The point being, in news management terms, that the overall impression was projected that, the emergency services are supremely well prepared (in itself a lie as the report ten months later showed) and that the people are of one mind and will continue to go about our business in the spirit of Londoners during the Blitz.

In the face of the objective reality that things are not at all normal with most of London being completely shut down … there is no end to what in many respects amounts to a state of denial. In place of any genuine kind of analysis or attempts to glean some insight into what has happened, the false impression persists in priority over the reality for many, that they will stay out of London all day Friday and for the long week end ahead, before even thinking of getting back to any sense of the normal working routine …

The possible political fall-out for Blair is only briefly touched upon. There was the obligatory show of support for the Prime Minister from all the MP's in the Commons, with the solitary exception of George Galloway, but little exploration of the fact that he does not know how the dust will settle for him? Indeed the one thing that could dent Blair's standing — connectivity between Blair's actions in Iraq and the London bombings — was painstakingly kept off the agenda for discussion.

With the fate of Aznar in Spain in mind Blair's people are working around the clock to manage this story in a way that does not allow much room for people to cast doubt on Blair's role in this as the eager beaver of the war on terror, whilst — and this is the whole thrust of the government's news management. — effectively censoring all inference that there was direct connectivity between Britain's foreign policy since 9-11 and the thinking which what drove the bombers to do what they did. Indeed, the coverage in the hours (and days) after the bombings on the whole reeked of the idea that maintaining this glaring omission, was priority number one for the government news managers, and had been planned for long before the bombings took place.

Am I cynical to the bone, and in an extreme minority for viewing the tragedy in this way? (Yes judging by the Guardian's letters page Friday July 8th, No judging by the Independent's letter page Friday July 8th ) No, because if we pinch ourselves and force ourselves to look at the coverage under the microscope, and it is no easy task, we know in our bones that the government's media teams had a long thought out strategy to put their spin on the this, when in their words it 'inevitably' happened.

It was only Channel Four (I did not see BBC 2 much) that mentioned the fact that suicide bombings in crowded places are a daily reality in Iraq. And even then it as up to the viewer to remember that there had been no such bombings in Iraq before the US-British invasion. Or as Robert Fisk put it only a fortnight ago:

"How many suicide bombers have now immolated themselves against the Americans and their mercenaries and the new Iraqi army and the new Iraqi police force and their recruits? The figure appears to stand at around 420. Back in the days of Hizbollah’s war against Israeli occupation in Lebanon, a suicide bomber a month was regarded as phenomenal. In the Palestinian "intifada", one a week was amazing. But in Iraq, we reach seven a day …" ("We Shelter Behind the Myth that Progress is Being Made" - Robert Fisk - The Independent 23rd June 2005)

Hundreds of suicide bombings in Iraq as a direct result of the Bush-Blair invasion and we are supposed to believe that when it comes home to London there is nil connection?


FRIDAY JULY 8th 2005

8.55 am. Taking the children to school along one the main axes of hipster multi-cultural north Leeds. The Muslims' Girls' School en route, not five minutes walk from where we live, has had it's external corner walls daubed with graffiti slogans. I involuntarily and audibly gasp and my five year old boy asks what is wrong. I make something upon the spot about the traffic being busy.

The graffiti says "Fuck Bin Laden" on the busier Chapeltown Road facing wall, and "Paki Scum" on the Polish centre facing wall. There is what looks like one of the teachers, hopelessly unable to cover up the diatribe with his small frame in the moment, talking in to his mobile phone, presumably tying to sort it out. On my way back home some twenty minutes later the council graffiti removal van is just pulling up.

My mum rings up in the early afternoon. "Tubthumping" 'is the most requested song on the radio' … whilst this may be more apt for the survivors of the bomb blast and Londoners in general (and much more so than the song being heavily requested on forces radio in Kuwait on the eve of the invasion of Iraq) … it still feels weird, in effect being recruited without being asked, by the PR campaign driven at the highest level that London is unbowed etc. This is doubly so when we realise that the over-riding impression of a London unbowed is at the expense of any political analysis implicating British foreign policy in making London a target for suicide bombers. And for those who did not survive in London and Iraq there is no "… I get up again."



MONDAY JULY 11th 2005

Yorkshire Evening Post, professional true blue Yorkshireman John Thorpe MBE uses his opinion page to slam G8 anarchist protestors as being "just as dangerous as the fundamentalists" who had struck in London. … He suggested putting Human Rights Act in the dustbin of history … as it deprives of security services of the muscle they need to tackle fundamentalists and anarchists, … and advocated tightening border controls and bringing back the death penalty for the perpetrators of the London bombing …



TUESDAY JULY 12th 2005

1.30 pm En route to picking the children up from school, the Yorkshire Evening Post hoarding (Montreal Newsagents) just further up from Islamic girlschool … posted with words to the effect that bombs have been found in Leeds.

Later that afternoon BBC News 24 has Leeds as its main story … 500-600 people evacuated from Burley area, from the aerial shots I can recognise Burley Lodge Road leading to Hyde Park Road (minutes from the basement where Chumbawamba was born in 1982) where we used to buy our second hand furniture, two minutes from where riots occurred in 1995 …They show the mosque that was being built directly across the street from when Ms. Nobacon and myself lived in Brudenell Road (in the late nineties). The news talks of a controlled explosion off … six raids across West Yorkshire (Leeds and Dewsbury) that morning.

Don't get much more info than that until six o'clock news on BBC 1, which follows the 5.00 pm Scotland Yard press conference … in tones reminiscent of John Nott's Falklands War press briefings, the guy(?) reveals thoroughly shocking information but is still holding back. Four men caught on camera at Kings Cross at around 8.30 am on July 7th … three from west Yorkshire, one possibly from Luton area … one of the West Yorkshire men was reported missing by his family on the morning of July 7th after the blasts, and has personal effects in the bus wreckage … personal stuff and/or DNA of the other men has been found at two/or three of the other sites.

The reluctance to admit that these are the first British born suicide attacks on British soil is palpable. It is up to the newscasters and pundits, and indeed us the viewers to infer this, as if this beating around the bush approach, will somehow lessen the blow. And remember this is a full five days after the attacks took place.

Channel 4 News at 7.00 pm is more forthcoming … barely holding back that the men were indeed suicide bombers (the only other explanation from the information released that all were accidentally killed whilst planting their explosives, which would be a coincidence that stretches credibility to be breaking point). At least three of the men are thought to be British born, with Pakistani heritage.

Jon Snow tries to coax the Muslim MP for Dewsbury, from his obligatory apologising bordering on the obsessive, by giving him the space to offer some genuine insight into how we might challenge this extremism in the community, but Snow's efforts are ignored. (The callous bullying by Blair and his people in the weeks to come of the more malleable and timid Muslim leaders, was yet more news management to put the microscope on anyone but Blair himself.)

Channel 4 offers an analysis that the bombings were intended to spread out to the north, south, west and east, but on the morning of July 7th the northern line was not operating, hence one of the bombers, forced out of the underground by people evacuating after the other blasts, took to the bus.

I had said to Ms Nobacon on the evening of July 7th as we were sucked into the orgy of TV news watching in the aftermath (before we knew anything), that all the blasts were in a radius of of Kings Cross, that the bombers could have travelled from the north and into London. Kate's dad came up with a similar theory. This is probably a northern perspective. For anyone who travels to London by mainline train, Kings Cross is London. It is the entry point. There was so little real information on offer on that over the long hours of that Thursday evening, that it was natural that ones mind would start to run with it in this way.

Moreover, in the many times Ms Nobacon and myself have stood in Kings Cross since 9-11 we have entertained the natural fears about our point of contact with London. And as time has marched on since September 2001, the consciousness that London, is prime target number one for anyone wishing to target the British government via inflicting murder and injury upon its civilians.

The main concourse at King's Cross, at busy periods has hundreds of people spread out in a fan, eyes glued to the digital display boards, all waiting for the stupidity of the last minute revelation as to which platform their train will depart from. It is like being corralled and funnelled from the city outside and below into a vast holding cell, which in its inefficiency induces anxiety and tension as it makes you stand there, or sit on your bags, waiting for the green light. The concourse in recent years has been a living metaphor for how poorly our railways are currently being run.

The imagined fear was always that someone could freely walk amongst us, and take up their central position, with concealed explosives and ball bearings strapped to their body, looking no more, and probably less frustrated than the rest of us, at being penned in like this by invisible restraints. Choosing rush hour, choosing the moment at their leisure, if we were unlucky enough to be stood close we may have heard 'Allah Akbar!' and then the split second blast before the lights went out forever for tens if not hundreds of people. It was all a bad dream until Britain's first suicide bombers reversed the image, by using King's Cross as a gateway in to the main coronary arteries of London


Mental note/ write a letter to YEP re John Thorpe … before Monday's (July 11th) paper has even been put in the box to wrap Tuesday's chips the police are raiding houses in Leeds … and neither tighter immigration would have stopped home grown bombers, nor would the death penalty have deterred suicide bombers.


WEDNESDAY JULY 12th 2005

Calendar (local TV News) and world's media are in Beeston (south Leeds) where two of the three named bombers lived and one of the others had lived until moving to Dewsbury. Fourth as yet unnamed bomber also believed to have been from Leeds …. Alexandra Grove (the 'bomb factory' )(off Alexandra Road where it joins Hyde Park Road, which runs parallel to Burley Lodge Road) is still being investigated, residents still evacuated.


Channel 4 News, the fourth segment of the programme has a debate between Jon Snow and four young Muslims …one points out the main, news managed narrative thread of the last twenty four plus hours, that 'the solution will come from the Muslim Community itself in challenging the conditions, a.k.a the line being furiously pushed by Blair and Charles Clarke. Whilst this is partly true, it is only partly true, and it represents a massive steering of the story, focussing on the Muslim community under great pressure to distance itself from any dissent whatsoever, and expressly focussing attention away from government and its foreign policy. When one of the other guest makes this very point, someone at last being allowed to make this connection on TV news, he is almost drowned out by the barraging from his fellow guests.


THURSDAY JULY 12th 2005

Letters to the Editor (Yorkshire Evening Post)

Re "Thorpe's Thoughts" July 11th and the one-side (wholly supportive) readers letters responding to Thorpes' article, printed under the banner "True Voice of the People" July 14th.


Dear sir,

I beg to differ with John Thorpe. Though he nor I knew it when his article was published Monday July 11th, tighter immigration would have not stopped the London bombers because three of them merely had to leave their homes in Beeston and Dewsbury to get to London. Secondly the death penalty would not have deterred them, for in blowing up underground trains and buses in London they executed themselves.

Throwing the Human Rights Act in the dustbin of history will not help. Bin Laden's predecessor Sayyid Qutb in Egypt was tortured, imprisoned and executed in Egypt in 1966 and became a martyr to the cause of civilian murdering fundamentalist Islamism. One of his proteges, Ayman Zawahiri and currently bin Laden's deputy, the al Qaida number two and the man bin Laden calls his 'mentor' was a moderate theologian who learnt his extremism being tortured whilst imprisoned in an Egyptian jail.

The US today sub-contacts torture of those suspects deemed 'tough nuts to crack' to those same Egyptian jails. The lack of human rights applied by the US military in Guantanamo Jail, and Abu Ghraib and by British forces in Basra, as well as producing people some of whom in the long run will become human rights workers, some of whom will commit suicide, will also produce some who will be the next generation of Zawahiris.

We cannot lock the doors, and throw away the keys and hope that the suicide bombers will pack up and go away. They are here and now and in Leeds. We as a society have no choice but to try and challenge their whole way of thinking, a cause which will not be advanced by the abandonment of human rights.

(But then what would I know, when juxtaposed with John Thorpe Member of the British Empire. I am but a humble anarchist, who if Thorpe had his way would be thrown in jail along with the any Muslim who even dared to question the way the world is currently being run.)


Danbert Nobacon

Chapeltown
Leeds 7

(last paragraph in brackets, edited from the letter when it was printed in the Yorkshire Evening Post)





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