The Sigla Blog

Today London deploys thousands of extra police to its tube stations today to mark the four week anniversary of the July 7th bombs. Undoubtedly the amount of people using public transport has lessened in the last month while suspicions of other passengers have escalated. A couple of friends living in London tell me that they’ve involuntarily started paying more attention to other passengers - sadly - even more closely if they’re Asian and carrying a large bag. While the suspicion may be a new thing for some, the disregarded bag on a train or bus is not new. When I lived in London in the early 90s, I was evacuated from countless tubes due to security alerts. (In fact years later, I’d be the cause of one when my now husband mistakenly left a bag on the platform of Victoria Station. If it was worrying for the staff, it was disastrous for him as it was carrying an engagement ring for me that I didn’t know about and he had to tell me. We got it back and all that was missing was the element of surprise, but not the ring).

While those days a bag on its own was cause for concern, at least the IRA never went in for letting their members blow themselves up. Nowsadays, its the abandoned bags people are worried about. I read the following story in The Guardian and felt mostly shock and a minute shred of understanding. The piece is written under a pseudonym by a woman who tried to help a man who was stabbed on a London bus recently. After hearing a woman screaming for help, it didn’t register with her that something bad was happening on the upper deck. If if did, she didn’t react. It was only when the injured stab victim staggered down the stairs that the real horror started - no one helped the man who was bleeding and slipping into shock and unconsciousness. The author of the piece stepped in and asked people to assist her in moving the man and for clothing to cover him. Everyone looked the other way.

I can understand the fear and vulnerability Londoners feel at the moment but I don’t think this is a new thing. I remember one Sunday back in the 90s when I witnessed something that annoyed me and reinforced that aloof view of Londoners. Every Sunday when Camden market was on, one of the escalators in the tube station would close so everyone had to descend the static escalator. I had reached the bottom and turned around when I heard a shout behind me. An elderly woman and fallen and hurt her ankle. She was sitting on a step, crying and in pain. No one batted an eyelid. I remember trying to get back up the escalator and people shouted at me for getting in their way.

In these situations, individual reactions will vary. I once stopped to ask a woman at Christchurch who was getting beaten up by the man she was with if she was ok. I got a kick in the stomach for my trouble. From the woman.

Dublin in many ways, I feel, has gotten a like like London with this clinical, “not my problem” attitude of just turning away. Half a go heroes often get more than they bargain for, but how could someone on a bus not help a man who had been stabbed? The Guardian story reports that the man stabbed on the London bus later died that day. If someone had have intervened earlier or responded to initial cries of the woman who witnessed it, maybe that man would still be alive. There has been so much talk of late of Londons stoical resolve in the face of “terror” and anecdotal tales of the city’s inhabitants bonding and pulling together. Based on this story, it seems in very short supply.