Defying those who wanted to destroy

This article originally appeared on Dale & Co...

On the afternoon of the 11 September 2001, I was at my desk in Tavistock Square, London. I had been told that a flying accident had taken place in New York and that it was suspected that a light aircraft had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. It seemed as though a tragic accident, certainly resulting in some loss of life and injuries, had taken place, but not something that needed to detain international intention for too long. Setting out for lunch under the clear blue skies of leafy Bloomsbury, I met up with a friend who then worked at BMA House, just across the square from my offices at Woburn House.

We chatted about the usual things - life, the universe and everything. We briefly mentioned that aircraft strike on one of the towers in New York and speculated in a vague way about the threat of terrorism and recalled the earlier light aircraft crash in the grounds of the White House on 11 September 1994, in which an intoxicated man attempted to crash a Cessna into the White House as an attention seeking suicide stunt. The damage to the World Trade Centre exactly seven years later appeared to us, at that time, to be not hugely more serious than the impact on the South Lawn of the White House.

Returning to my desk after lunch there was a considerable amount of hubbub, the usual "have you heard?" conversations, all just tea room chat. But when one colleague looked a little more serious in response to my "yes, I know a small plane crashed in Manhattan", I stopped dead in my tracks as she pulled up the BBC News website on her PC. The sight of a huge fire, billowing smoke and BOTH towers having signs of commercial airliners have struck them made me feel sick and not a little scared.

Our office had a conference room with a screen and video projector and quickly the whole building seemed to be gathered just watching the unfolding events, trying to piece together the events, grappling to come to terms with the evidence before our eyes. The second plane strike, the attack on the Pentagon and the downed fourth plane (flight 93) in woodland in Pennsylvania, seemingly en route for another major target in DC, made us all realise that accidents, technical failure, the acts of lone lunatics or drunks could not explain what we were witnessing.

Once it became clear that a coordinated terrorist attack on the world's most powerful capital city had been executed with such devastating success, the feelings of fear, anxiety and concern for loved ones and friends took hold. Whilst not knowing what to run from, the instinctive nature of the primal brain takes over in moments like these and the desire for a bolt hole, to be far from any sources of danger and to be with people who could provide comfort, kicks in. It was soon decided that employees would be able to leave for home, should they wish, given the exceptionally distressing nature of the incident. I, too, took the decision to leave work and get home.

Living in London, the sound of aircraft overhead is never far away. However, during the afternoon and evening of 11 September 2001, the eerie silence that hung over London was really noticeable. The absence of vapour trails from higher altitude aircraft and the drone and whining of planes on final approach to Heathrow was both welcome and unnerving. It was certainly the right decision to ground aircraft and close UK airspace, but it was also a sign that the situation seemed out of control and that the security services had been defeated. The fear that things could never be the same started to dawn on me. The debate about our civil liberties, as a trade off against security, was already beginning.

Jumping forward four years to 7 July 2005, I was by then living in Swansea. The feelings I had on the day that suicide bombers killed 52 innocent people in strikes on the tube and a bus in London, were perhaps more personal, more tangible, than when I had watched via television the attacks of 9/11 on a nation I have never visited and on locations I had only ever seen in films. I was watching the attacks from my office in Swansea and held my mobile, nervously waiting to hear back from friends in the capital who I had texted and called to check that they were ok. When the Number 30 double-decker bus exploded, it took me straight back to my feelings on 9/11 and of course to my former colleagues, many of whom were still working in my old office in Tavistock Square. Fortunately none were hurt, although shaken and unable to leave the building for some time whilst the emergency services attended the horrific scene across the road outside BMA House.

I was due to be in London the next day, Friday 8 July, for a friend's birthday party weekend. At no point did I feel worried about going to London, in fact I wanted to rush there, to show solidarity with the Londoners who had stoically walked home that Thursday evening and had come into work the next morning, on trains, on tubes and on buses. The feelings of running and hiding that had swept over me on 9/11 were replaced by a determination to defy those who wanted to destroy our free and open society.