Portrait of the Week – 16 July 2005

More than 50 were killed and 700 injured when four bombs exploded in London on the morning of 7 July. At about 8.50 a.m. three bombs exploded in the Underground: between Russell Square and King’s Cross on the deep Piccadilly Line, with at least 25 killed; between Aldgate and Liverpool Street on the Circle Line, with at least seven killed; and between Edgware Road and Paddington, further west on the Circle Line, with at least seven killed. At 9.47 a.m., in Tavistock Square, a bomb on a No. 30 bus killed at least 13. Islamist extremists allied to al-Qa’eda were blamed. A man from Leeds reported missing by his family led police to think that he and three other bombers, two from West Yorkshire, had died in the attacks. Families with missing relations had to wait more than five days before identifications of the dead were made. Some 10,000 American Air Force personnel were ordered not to go within the area bounded by the M25 motorway; but when the press drew attention to the order, it was rescinded. On the Saturday evening after the attacks, police ordered 20,000 people to leave the centre of Birmingham, for fear of another attack. When asked if identity cards would have prevented the bombings, Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said, ‘I doubt that it would have made a difference.’ The atrocities interrupted the meeting of the leaders of the G8 group of industrialised nations at the Gleneagles hotel, at which Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was conspicuously feeling a surge of confidence, all the more since news had come through of the choice of London for the Olympic Games in 2012. The Queen visited the injured in hospital and said, ‘Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life.’