Twenty years ago today I was in the Press Association’s old newsroom on Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, when a news editor yelled out that there’d be a power outage on the Tube network.
In the hours that followed it became clear this was something more deadly and grotesque than an electrical blip.
Four suicide bombers – Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 18, all from West Yorkshire, and Germaine Lindsay, 19, from Luton – murdered 52 people and injured more than 770 others in three bomb blasts on the Underground, near Aldgate, Edgware Road and Russell Square stations, and a fourth on a bus diverted via Tavistock Square.
UK’s worst terror attack
It was the biggest loss of life on British soil from a malign attack since World War II, and remains the single most deadly terror attack on these shores in our history. A tragic and chilling moment.
This was a tragedy born of decades of failed government policy which had allowed silos of embittered young men to coalesce around a shared hatred of a country that had welcomed in previous generations of their own families.
In the days that followed there was a dawning reality that British citizens, radicalised by Islamist ideology, while at the same time as benefiting from Britain wanted to destroy it. Until that moment most people had not imagined that to be possible. On 7/7 2005 we lost our innocence.
London was eerily quiet
I was dispatched to the area of the subterranean blasts to interview survivors. I spoke with people, their faces blackened from smoke and debris, near Liverpool Street.
Mobile networks were jammed so I phoned in my report to PA’s copytakers from an HSBC bank which let me use its landline.
I ended up walking to St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, to speak with more survivors and glean some more idea of the scale and cause of the carnage.
London was eerily quiet that day. The streets became big footpaths full of shocked people offering to help each other as they tried to come to terms with what had happened.
The Queen visited survivors in hospital
Next morning I was sent to Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel to report on the Queen visiting patients injured in the blasts.
“I do hope you’re all right. Isn’t it awful that someone would do this,” she said.
Simple words conveying simple sentiments from a monarch who stood for everything that the 7/7 bombers did not.
Viewpoint: governments have not learned
Sadly, in the two decades since, successive governments appear not to have learnt any lessons from this dark day.
Today hundreds of young Islamist men continue to enter this country illegally, the most publicly obvious route being small boats – keen to take advantage of the freedoms and generosity Britain offers while at the same time despising it.
Hard-left wokeists will scream racism or other off-the-shelf words designed to shut down any meaningful conversation on a topic that matters, but they must be ignored as the unserious people they are.
With the current surge in brazen antisemitic hate and overt support for Hamas and other terror groups seen on the streets of UK cities every week, one thing is clear on 7/7 2025: the societal problems which provided the unhealthy foundation for the 7/7 atrocity remain, and are arguably larger and more dangerous than they were 20 years ago.
In this moment of history, to honour the memories of those who died this day in 2005, we must say what we see without fear or favour.
