Will There Always Be An England?
by Joanna Bogle - January 1, 2006
Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.
Winter sees London at its most traditional: early-morning mist over the Thames, rain and sleet lashing against windowpanes, and red double-decker buses trundling through the damp streets as darkness falls at teatime. Uglier aspects of the place fade a bit – drunken rowdies tend to remain indoors rather than gather in scowling groups on street corners.
The July 2005 bombings of the London Underground have not hallmarked London as September 11 has New York. Although it is generally assumed that "there'll be more – it isn't over yet," in practical terms last summer's events have already receded in the public memory, despite the reality that Britain's relationship with Islam is an ever-present topic, and the political and social fall-out from the bombings continues.
A slogan for the past few months has been on billboards around the city and the suburbs and flashed up on screens at the big railway stations: "7 Million Londoners: 1 London." It's a message from Ken Livingstone, the official mayor of London, designed to boost morale and emphasize people's unity in the face of terrorist attacks. But Livingstone is no Giuliani. His political ideas are in the mainstream of the Left: He entered politics as "Red Ken"; has always operated with a steady agenda combining the standard slogans of peace, gay rights, women's issues, etc.; and his overtures to Islamic preachers are endured as a sort of joke (he claimed that one supporter of suicide bombers was really a moderate and likened him to Pope John XXIII). Livingstone is no icon for the city or its people. His posters – clear propaganda – aren't even necessary: London is not in a state of panic.
True, there are police in uncomfortable-looking bullet-proof jackets outside major public buildings, sometimes brandishing weaponry that would have seemed very sinister a couple of decades ago, but with rising crime and previous terrorist attacks from the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the sight is not such an unfamiliar one. There are searches of bags and luggage at places like the BBC headquarters in Portland Place, but these are fairly perfunctory and there are none at Underground stations where some 2 million passengers still throng daily.
On the whole, Londoners are simply getting on with their normal lives. Many were slightly embarrassed by the over-emotional references to World War II and the "blitz spirit" in the mass media during the immediate aftermath of the July bombings. Older people were quick to point out that the incidents really were not the same as the aerial bombardments of whole districts 60 years ago. Days after the July events, tube stations were open again, and the Londoners' sense of downbeat humor began to assert itself: There was some cynicism over Mayor Livingstone's denunciation of the bombers for attacking "ordinary working-class Londoners," causing people to speculate whether it would thus have been acceptable to bomb, for example, eccentric upper-class Londoners or ambitious working-class ones with middle-class aspirations. In any case, many victims were not actually Londoners – they were tourists, or traveling from other parts of Britain on business – and few would probably have defined themselves as "working class."
But the real discussions currently taking place – and they are quite anguished – concern the nature of British society itself, following the revelation that the suicide bombers were British-born and raised in Yorkshire, played cricket, and attended mainstream British schools.
Large-scale immigration to Britain from the Indian subcontinent has been widespread since the 1960s, and any criticism of the policy was denounced as racist and effectively silenced. The true figures were not revealed at the time, but when, a couple of years ago, it was admitted that the published figures had been false and that the real numbers were much higher, there was little public reaction, as it was recognized that nothing could be done about it. Britain now has a substantial Islamic population that is steadily growing, through natural increase and through continued immigration. The latter occurs either illegally or – more usually – through admission on the grounds of political asylum.
