Remembering 7/7

Simon Keyes writes

“The extent to which you are loved is a source of joy and comfort to us”.

These generous and dignified words were written by the parents and brother of Miriam, a young Jewish woman killed when 18 year old Hasib Hussain detonated his homemade explosive device on a No 30 bus in Tavistock Square on 7 July 2005 killing himself and thirteen other people. These words appear in a Book of Tributes ,compiled by the families and friends who lost loved ones on that terrible morning, which we keep at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace – a building which itself was destroyed by an IRA bomb. The book was written in the year following the murders and reading it can be a difficult experience – so much raw, dark pain, so many broken hearts. But it also contains many extraordinarily beautiful words that reveal the capacity of the human spirit to find meaning in even the deepest grief.

I don’t want to suggest that this is easy. Perhaps it is only possible for a few people. A veteran soldier from the Burma camps who meets here with the Japanese community in London told me that three quarters of those who went through that particular hell were never able to come to terms with the idea that their captors might be also be human beings.

Since the bombings the Government has been busy. It has poured resources not just into security measures but into the wide-ranging “Preventing Violent Extremism” programme. It has started investing in front line religious groups for the first time, presumably on the basis that they may provide some of the adhesive required for its social cohesion objectives. This has fuelled a growth industry in multi-religious education programmes and interfaith dialogue, which are good things but unlikely to have influenced Hasib Hussain’s disastrous personal development. Maybe some of the more sharply focused Muslim-led initiatives such as those of Radical Middle Way and the Luqman Foundation might have reached him. I suspect the best opportunity for intervention would have been when he was arrested for shoplifting. An alert police or court service could have diverted him if it had the confidence of a mature Muslim community leadership willing to take responsibility for disabusing him of his mangled view of Islam. Or would this been seen as a religious ASBO?

When two men from Newry blew up Bishopsgate in 1993, whilst calculating that the mediaeval gem of St Ethelburga’s was acceptable collateral damage, I doubt they foresaw that they were kickstarting the redevelopment of this area of the City. They also created the possibility of a “new creation” at St Ethelburga’s. What was actually a redundant church is now a busy Centre for Reconciliation whose transformation attracts people from all round the world to share stories, ideas, skills about moving beyond conflict. Ten years from now what will we see as the outcome of the 2005 bombings?

Reconciliation is “the building of relationships across division caused by conflict”. Anyone can do this and, as Abraham Lincoln observed, it makes sound political sense to “destroy your enemy by making him a friend”. This is where the bereaved friends and families can help us. Their heroic public struggle with grief can inspire us not to waver in our belief in the transformational power of human relationships.