Reflections on the hypocrisy of British officials marking the anniversary of the London bombings

Cruel and mindless carnage

 As Britain commemorates, with a memorial in London's Hyde Park, the bombings in the capital, Felicity Arbuthnot reflects on the carnage the UK has enjoined over the last two decades and suggests that, as with the misery and tragedy inflicted on others by its actions, its military assaults might have come back to haunt them.

On 7 July, the fourth anniversary of the London bombings, a dedication ceremony was held in Hyde Park for a monument commemorating the 52 dead and the hundreds injured in the tragedy.

Relatives of the dead gathered to hear the Prince of Wales, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Humanatarian Assistance Minister Tessa Jowell and former newsman Sir Trevor Macdonald, who hosted the ceremony, pay their tributes.

As the skies wept, moving words were spoken at the site of the 52 stainless steel pillars, grouped in four clusters, representing those who died in the four attacked locations: Tavistock Square, Edgeware Road, King's Cross and Aldgate. 

Those who were killed  in Tavistock Square did not die in underground trains, as did the others, but on the No. 30 bus, which runs between east London's Hackney and central London's Marble Arch. Ironically they died just yards from the poignant statue of Mahatma Gandhi, central to a tiny, leafy park, aromatic with floral scents, from vibrant, abundant flower beds and shrubs and a place of pilgrimage for visitors from around the globe.

The Prince of Wales spoke, without irony, of: “… a brutal intrusion into the lives of thousands of people” and the tragedy of those who "...did not walk away from what happened on that awful day". He commented on the "grief and anguish" of his wife and himself, "at the appalling aberrations in the human consciousness which produce such cruel and mindless carnage … an inhuman and deplorable outrage".

He continued on a personal note, having some "small awareness of the shattering loss you have all suffered”. recalling the “intense despair … when my beloved great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was murdered by terrorists 30 years ago next month -- together with my godson, his grandmother and the boatman's son".

He concluded that the "memories of those taken from us" would lead to a path committed "to eliminating the circumstances that caused the violence in the first place" and those memories "lead to a path for peace..."

It has to be wondered [why] the government has doggedly refused a public enquiry [into the London bombings]?...

In 10 years Britain has joined the United States in three major bombardments of Muslim lands under dubious (the Balkans, Afghanistan) and nil (Iraq) legitimacy.

The prince, who talked of peace, holds the ranks of admiral in the Royal Navy, air chief Marshall in the Royal Air Force, general in the army, and has been colonel-in-chief of the Parachute Regiment since 1977.

The day he spoke, his sister, the Princess Royal, was "cutting the steel for Britain's newest warship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to be followed by HMS Prince of Wales, a five-billion-pound project for the Royal Navy… 

His youngest son, Prince Harry, and eldest, Prince William, the heir to the throne, are both in the Blues and Royals, one of the two regiments that form the Household Cavalry. William was especially attracted to the regiment's “outstanding record in recent decades, most notably during the Falklands conflict, Bosnia, Kosova, in Iraq and Northern Ireland”. That's an “outstanding record” of killing!

Prince Harry coordinated “overwhelming firepower” from a bunker in Garmsir, in Afghanistan. Before Britain dutifully joined the “coalition” to blow to bits “hearts and minds”, it had been a thriving agricultural town.

He posed, grinning from ear to ear, while manning a machine gun post, his hands on lethal thousands-rounds-a-minute killing ware. He was pictured on an “abandoned”, pretty smart, motorbike. Surely, it wasn't “liberated” by his mates, the pride and joy and only means of transport and living for some soul? Professor Michael Carmichael of London's King's College, described Harry as "not over complicated". Indeed.

Prince Harry was to go to Iraq but was whisked away when this was revealed. It was feared he might get hurt, killed or worse, kidnapped, and his presence would anyway endanger his “boys”. He is now training to fly a helicopter, with which, reportedly, he seems to be struggling a bit. Unlike him, a helicopter is a fairly complicated machine. 

Harry says it would be "fantastic" to return to Afghanistan, this time safely enabling his colleagues to dispatch the population and shoot up funerals and wedding parties from the safety of considerable height.

At the Hyde Park ceremony, Tessa Jowell talked of the memorial as ".. a place of great beauty but also a place of great pain". Did she reflect on the unspeakable agony her country has inflicted, which might have resulted in that terrible pain?...

Sir Trevor Macdonald, a former newsreader, read the names of the dead. Did he reflect how long it would take to read the names of the dead of the slaughters of the Bush-Blair-Brown years?

Three weeks earlier, the Queen's birthday fly-past over Buckingham Palace marked nearly two decades of RAF operations in Iraq. Air Chief Marshall Sir Glenn Torpy, Chief of Air Staff, told the London Evening Standard: "This year marks the end of 19 years of RAF operations over Iraq, this fly-past recognizes this significant achievement”.

Did he reflect that the “operations” … were illegal “patrolling” and illegal bombing, all outlawed by the Geneva Convention?... Did he reflect that the invasion of Iraq was illegal? Did he reflect on the "cruel and mindless carnage … the deplorable outrage"? Not a “significant achievement” but one of unutterable shame?

Gordon Brown doesn't do reflection. As chancellor of the exchequer he wrote the cheques for 10 years of bombing sheep and goat minders, many little over kindergarten age, for grief, trauma and decimation across Iraq. And he wrote the cheques for the illegal invasion and its almost unparalleled human cost, as he is now doing for Afghanistan's decimation.

Those public figures in Hyde Park on 7 July should, above all, reflect for all time that the actions of the British government brought to their own shores the pain to the utterly innocent that they have been inflicting across the globe.

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Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist specializing in social and environmental issues. She has been nominated for a number of awards for her coverage of Iraq, including the Lorenzo Natali Award for Human Rights Journalism, the Millennium Prize for Women, the Courage of Conscience Award and an Amnesty International Media Award.