Home

[NoJo]

I think I might be the only Londoner who (more or less) regularly posts here.
I’ve lived here all my life; my father moved here in 1920.

The feeling I get when seeing the disruption to my town is similar to the feeling I had when I came home once, a few years ago, to find my cosy flat ransacked by burglars. It’s a feeling of violation.

I can’t say I suffer from much fear as a result of the attacks. I was stuck for fifteen minutes on the Underground (at Kings Cross of the Piccadilly Line, by an odd coincidence) the day before the first set of bombings. I was on the top deck of a number 24 double-decker bus at Warren Street, maybe one minute before a backpack failed to explode on a number 26 bus at the same location, this Thursday. But London is vast, and I can work out the statistical chance of me dying or being injured as a result of these attacks. It’s not high enough for me to start smoking again, much as I’d like the excuse to.

But it’s no fun being stuck 150 feet under the street for ages, which is what happens when there’s an alert on the tube – all the trains just stop. So I’m avoiding the underground.

Friends, colleagues and family are nervous. My Israeli family phone constantly, within minutes of any news – usually well before I’m aware of anything.

As well as being a Londoner, I’m from a Jewish background. You don’t have to go far back in my family’s past to hear fantastic stories of courage in the face of extreme violence and hatred. I feel that I have a duty to the memory of my family to show some of that courage and strength. And, frankly, it comes pretty easily to me to shrug off these feeble attempts to intimidate me when I remember that my mother, at sixteen, literally ran for her life to catch the last train out of Poland that allowed Jews on it, in 1940.

When I asked my mother what she felt about Britain when she arrived here as a young woman shortly after the 2nd World War, she told me that in spite of the hardship and austerity, she felt very relieved to be living in tolerant society, where it was impossible to imagine becoming again the target of deep hatred, in constant fear for her life.

And unfortunately, the same tolerance that made her and so many other immigrants feel at home is now under threat, by a new generation of people who take British democratic society for granted, but unlike me, don't call this country Home.

 

[oggbashan]

Londoners born and bred

Myfamily has lived and worked in London since 1326 when we moved into the City of London from Suffolk.

My family, paternal and maternal, was bombed out of London by a Zeppelin in World War 1. We moved out to Leyton but continued to work in the City of London. I used to work in the City of London. I still have close relations working in the City of London and involved in its government. Two of my three daughters and one son-in-law are working in London now.

My family lost members in London during the Civil War, the Plague, (not the Great Fire although most of us were homeless), the influenza epidemic post WWI, to bombing and V2 in WWII, to the polio epidemic, in the Lewisham train crash, in the Moorgate tube crash, and a couple were injured during the IRA's bombing campaign.

What were my daughters and son-in-law doing on 7/7? Two were helping the emergency services as St John Ambulance volunteers and one was looking after a class of mainly Muslim children.

What were they doing yesterday? One was at work in a hospital; one was a first aid volunteer at the Cricket match between England and Australia - a prime target because Australia also has troops in Iraq; and one was still looking after her class.

What can Dad do? Be proud of them and worry. Just like all the older generations through the years.

Og

 

[CharleyH]

And unfortunately, the same tolerance that made her and so many other immigrants feel at home is now under threat, by a new generation of people who take British democratic society for granted, but unlike me, don't call this country Home.

I appreciate your point of view SJ - and always respect it, but I am not sure how Britain is under any more a threat now than in the past, or than MANY other countries every day, Isreal, being one. Don't humans in general take all things for granted?

Also, how are you so sure they do not call Britain home? Did you interview the culprits?

Now, people can get on my ass for this - fine, I expect it, but really ... do you not think other countries do not feel intimidated and threated by the US or Britains affiliation?

This is, afterall, how wars begin.

 

[shereads]

I think I might be the only Londoner who (more or less) regularly posts here.
I’ve lived here all my life; my father moved here in 1920.

The feeling I get when seeing the disruption to my town is similar to the feeling I had when I came home once, a few years ago, to find my cosy flat ransacked by burglars. It’s a feeling of violation.

I can’t say I suffer from much fear as a result of the attacks. I was stuck for fifteen minutes on the Underground (at Kings Cross of the Piccadilly Line, by an odd coincidence) the day before the first set of bombings. I was on the top deck of a number 24 double-decker bus at Warren Street, maybe one minute before a backpack failed to explode on a number 26 bus at the same location, this Thursday. But London is vast, and I can work out the statistical chance of me dying or being injured as a result of these attacks. It’s not high enough for me to start smoking again, much as I’d like the excuse to.

But it’s no fun being stuck 150 feet under the street for ages, which is what happens when there’s an alert on the tube – all the trains just stop. So I’m avoiding the underground.

Friends, colleagues and family are nervous. My Israeli family phone constantly, within minutes of any news – usually well before I’m aware of anything.

As well as being a Londoner, I’m from a Jewish background. You don’t have to go far back in my family’s past to hear fantastic stories of courage in the face of extreme violence and hatred. I feel that I have a duty to the memory of my family to show some of that courage and strength. And, frankly, it comes pretty easily to me to shrug off these feeble attempts to intimidate me when I remember that my mother, at sixteen, literally ran for her life to catch the last train out of Poland that allowed Jews on it, in 1940.

When I asked my mother what she felt about Britain when she arrived here as a young woman shortly after the 2nd World War, she told me that in spite of the hardship and austerity, she felt very relieved to be living in tolerant society, where it was impossible to imagine becoming again the target of deep hatred, in constant fear for her life.

And unfortunately, the same tolerance that made her and so many other immigrants feel at home is now under threat, by a new generation of people who take British democratic society for granted, but unlike me, don't call this country Home.

I'm so sorry, sweetie.

I remember the end of the cold war as the end of a fear I hadn't known I had - the fear of nuclear holocaust. A childhood spent on military bases meant that air-raid drills were as routine as fire drills. I remember being taught that radiation could be washed off of our bodies, but I also remember that the teachers seemed a little embarrassed when they delivered that lesson.

Even when I was young enough to be fooled about the survivability of a nuclear attack, I knew it wasn't something I'd want to survive. I don't remember associating the arms race with hatred, so much as bewilderment, and a sad realization that the civilized world wasn't civilized; it just dressed better and ate with utensils. I coped with the threat of nuclear holocaust as I suspect most kids my age did: by accepting, and then ignoring, the possibility that everything and everyone might be flash-fried one afternoon, because a few important men in business suits had been entrusted with the safety of the world and failed. We lived with Mutual Assured Destruction the way people live with the existence of cancer and earthquakes and fatal car wrecks. I didn't know how much of a strain it had been, living with that constant threat, until it was gone.

The relief was short-lived. When terrorism came inside our borders, what I felt when the shock wore off wasn't entirely new. Living with the threat of random mass murder feels like a return of the arms race, stripped of the trappings of civility.

Stay off the subway, Joe. We worry.

 

[oggbashan]

I'm going to London next month for my youngest daughter's formal induction as a medical doctor.

We'll travel by public transport including the Underground because that is what we would have done before the attacks and the only concession we will make is to be slightly more aware of people's luggage.

Statistically we are more likely to be killed or injured driving to our local railway station than by terrorists.

Og

 

[Guest]

Joe, I don't know what to say, except to throw out some big *HUGS* to you.

I was beside myself on Thursday, when I knew my husband was taking a train into central London. I honestly don't think I could live with that every day of the week. But, a conflicting part of me says we all have to carry on as normal, and as Og also said above, the chances of actually being caught up in anything are very small. We cannot let them win, but I don't want anyone I love or care about taking any unnecessary risks, and that goes for you Joe and Og.

What you said about how everyone views the country we live in, and whether or not we/they/them/everyone actually calls it Home, is so true.

Lou

 

[neonlyte]

Joe,

You have my full sympathy - but we both know you don't need that, they are sincere none-the-less.

You pretty much know how I feel, London is home to me even though I choose to live somewhere else, but it will always be home, too many memories, mostly happy. I met my wife in London, the most beautiful slip of a girl I'd ever seen, we lunched in St James Park, I proposed to her in Russel Square. When ever I'm in London and take Thameslink into town, I invariably get off at Russel Square just to walk through the gardens and remember that evening when she agreed to be my partner.

You also know, from former posts, how discouraged I feel about today's London, it has changed, in the last twenty years particularly, to be less rather than more. Even in the East End the sense of community has all but vaporised, the Olympics will effectively remove many of the traditions that remain on that side of the city.

I don't know where we go from here, the English spirit so many talk about is not a London spirit, except in the smallest of pockets, Central London where these atrocities have taken place, is little more than an entertainment and business hub, few live there, there is no community, and we project an 'Englishness' onto a situation in false hope that a phlegmatic attitude is all we need to see off these horrors.

It won't help you if I tell you 97% of ethnic residents regard themselves to be British, or that almost 40% of them live in Greater London (2001 Census), or that they abhor the actions of the terrorists as much, if not stigmatically more, than 'white British' because what you are talking about is tolerance and tolerance is the most fickle of emotions stretched and tested under duress, liable to snap with potentially catastrophic consequences. Like it or not, Britain is a racist society that plays lip service to equal rights - oh we do a grand job, but underneath lies a strong plank of prejudism and tolleration begins and ends at what is deemed acceptable to the white majority.

The two questions below come from a leading UK newspaper, they indicate the direction of media thinking and dispell the comfortable notion of Britain as a tolerant society. We British Lit members are amoungst the most tolerant individuals I know, ironic that we are all pornographers to some degree, we certainly do not reflect mainstream British attitudes on tolerance, pornography and little else, but it is good company.

Aren't we frighteningly vulnerable when we have lost control over our own borders, when 570,000 illegal migrants are living here and we have no real idea who is entering or leaving the country?

Haven't our national interests been betrayed by the ruling establishment's obsession with multiculturalism, which actively discourages people from integrating in this country, while at the same time promoting a hatred of our values by a small, twisted minority?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It seems like there's two issues here. There's the issue of personal safety, and, like Joe says, when you calculate the odds, the possibility of being hurt in a terrorist attack in a place like London are probably pretty small.

But there's the larger issue of the feeling of being violated, and the psychological damage it causes. That's what makes a burglary or break-in so traumatic and a terrorist act so effective--the idea that people can come in and trash or destroy something you love simply because it means nothing to them, and the knowledge that these people are still roaming free in your neighborhood

Once your car or home are broken into, there's a feeling of outrage and violation that's hard to describe until it's happened to you. It can take a long time before you view these places with the same level of complacency and feeling of security and trust you had before the event. The same thing must happen in a terrorist attack, but raised to the nth degree. It just turns your world upside down.

On the other hand, though, I imagine that the London bombings could have a positive effect as well, once the original shock subsides. It brings the people together and hardens their resolve. It creates a sense of community. You just hope that the positive feelings persist once that initial outrage has faded away.

 

[shereads]

On the other hand, though, I imagine that the London bombings could have a positive effect as well, once the original shock subsides. It brings the people together and hardens their resolve. It creates a sense of community. You just hope that the positive feelings persist once that initial outrage has faded away.

The sense of community lasted no more than a couple of weeks in Miami, FL after 9/11, and a little longer after Hurricane Andrew when we shared physical discomfort as well as despair.

For a couple of weeks, drivers allowed each other to change lanes, even during rush hour. Violent crime was almost nonexistent. Strangers made eye contact on the sidewalk and exhanged sad smiles. We made donations to charities. We volunteered our time at phone banks. Everyone knew that everyone else had suffered a grave loss, and those left standing offered the comfort we might someday need for ourselves.

For those one or two weeks, everyone wore the same facial expression: a shocked stare, softened with sadness.

It didn't take long for the sadness to be replaced with anger, and for the anger to be directed against the only available targets: each other. Rudeness, impatience, road rage, violent crime, all came back with a vengeance.

In this city, most of us are new here and many of us are on our way someplace else. With no shared history, it's remarkable that even a disaster can turn us into a community. But it lasts only as long as the shared sense of crisis lasts. For a while, we're all in the same boat, taking on water, uncertain that help will arrive. We bail together rather than drown together.

After the shock wears off, we go our separate ways again - jealous of what we have and suspicious of strangers who might take it away.