We must hold on

LIKE so many of us yesterday when we heard the shocking news from London, Canon John Young's first thought was for his family.

His sister Glynis, a teacher based in Hampshire, was due to be travelling through London on the way to visit her mother Kathleen in Suffolk. In the event, she never set out, but Canon Young wasn't to know that

"So the first thing I thought was, 'my sister'," Canon Young says.

His second thought was for the victims themselves, and their families and friends. His heart went out to them, as all our hearts did and do.

Then he thought about what it must be like for ordinary Londoners, whose city had been so suddenly and brutally disrupted, the joy and euphoria over the previous day's news about the 2012 Olympics replaced by shock, dismay and disbelief.

It was a human thought process, one that probably all of us went through.

It was only then, after he had passed through this gamut of emotions and was still struggling, like everyone, to come to terms with the shock of what had happened, that he began to think about the deeper implications of the London bombings for society and our way of life.

Tony Blair, in an emotional and moving speech delivered from the Gleneagles Hotel at midday yesterday, said in reference to the terrorists responsible for the bombings: "Whatever they do it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and other civilised nations in the world."

Later, in a more rehearsed speech delivered with the other G8 leaders behind him, he added: "Today's bombings will not weaken in any way our resolve to uphold the most deeply-held principles of our societies and to defeat those who would impose their fanaticism and extremism on all of us. We shall prevail and they shall not."

There isn't a single person in this country today who won't echo those feelings. After the shock, and the expressions of sympathy for victims and their families, it was the sheer determination to protect our way of life and the freedoms that have been so hard-fought-for that came through most clearly in almost every interview and conversation.

But there is a fundamental question. How does a free, democratic nation protect itself against atrocity sparked by fanaticism?

The danger we face as a society is that, in the process of closing ranks to protect ourselves from the threat of terrorism, we begin to lose the very freedoms, the love of liberty and the respect for individual rights, that we are fighting to save.

What Canon Young fears above all is a backlash - against Muslims, against tolerance, and against justice.

It is for the Muslim community that he fears most and he is desperate that ordinary, law-abiding Muslim people should not be blamed for acts of atrocity that were nothing to do with them.

"Just as during the Troubles, it must have been very hard to carry an Irish accent around with you, now to be seen as Islamic could be a problem," he said.

"We must keep that in perspective. There is a tiny, tiny group of fanatics, but they do not speak for or represent in any way the wider Muslim community, who simply want to get on with their lives like the rest of us do.

"Absolutely, we need to be rigorous in seeking to bring to justice those responsible. But we need to make sure it is those responsible that we bring to justice, not just people who may look like them or come from the same cultural background."

He also fears a repressive tightening up of security as a result of yesterday's atrocity - a road down which, as a nation, we had already begun to travel since September 11, with the detention without charge of terrorist suspects, and the talk of introducing ID cards and suspending the right to trial by jury in certain special circumstances.

Now more than ever it is important that, as we act against terrorists and terrorist suspects, we are seen to act justly, Canon Young says. Every act of perceived injustice - such as the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay - will simply aid the terrorists in their recruitment of new fanatics.

"There are an awful lot of children in the Arab world called Osama," he said. "For many he is seen as a great hero against the wicked west.

"If, as George Bush says, we really are trying to spread democracy through the world, we need to ensure that we act justly. I think in Britain quite a lot of us felt that the Government was over-reacting with its talk of ID cards and all that. My worry now is that there will be an immense swing in the debate. I'm all for a debate, but we do need to count to ten before making tough decisions on things like ID cards and jury trial."

Ryedale MP John Greenway agrees that it is far too soon for a big security clampdown.

Already, talk has begun in some quarters about the need to tighten up on border controls to prevent illegal immigrants who might be potential terrorists getting into the country. That, for example, is the view of veteran Ted Griffiths, the 85-year-old president of the York branch of the Royal British Legion, who served as an artilleryman in the Second World War.

"Terrorists have come into this country, and nobody has bothered to check them," he said. "We've got to have security."

It is not yet the time to start talking like that, Mr Greenway insists.

"We need to be taking sensible precautions, yes - but we've also got to go on living our lives," he said. There may come a time when we need to look again at our security measures, he concedes. "But first we need to find out much more clearly what happened."

He is not impressed by talk of the need for a return to a wartime spirit. It's that spirit that was invoked yesterday by veteran George Martin, a wartime air-gunner who was in London during part of the blitz. Mr Martin, now a steward at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, took part yesterday in a reunion of air gunners at Elvington.

Recalling the blitz, he said the people of London in 1941 and 1942 "just carried on". "We've got to do the same," he said.

Fair enough, Mr Greenway agreed, but to talk of the war is to get things out of proportion.

"I don't want to give the terrorists the benefit of being taken so seriously," he said.

Many, since the events of yesterday morning, have spoken of the "British spirit". Yes, says Vale Of York MP Anne McIntosh, we probably are all going to have to be more vigilant as a result of yesterday's events. "We've got to look out for each other, we've got to be alert, on the Tube, on the buses, on the trains coming to London from York and North Yorkshire.

"But we've also got to go about our everyday lives as much as possible. I think that the British people will pull together and show that we are extremely resourceful. I think we will see the British spirit at its best."

Let's hope so. One way of showing that spirit, Canon Young says, is for us not to lose sight of what the G8 conference - which the terrorists tried to disrupt - was all about.

Yesterday's deaths and injuries were tragic, Canon Young says. But no less tragic are the preventable deaths of thousands of children around the world every week from malnutrition and disease.

The G8, however imperfectly, was trying to do something about that. It is vital, he says, that as the terrorists try to disrupt our lives, we don't lose sight of that - and that we allow our leaders to continue their democratic efforts to make the world a better place for those less well off than us.

That really would show the British spirit at its best.

Dangers of too much vigilance

THE worst thing that could happen as a result of yesterday's atrocities is that we could lurch towards a police state, says York University's professor of politics, Haleh Afshar.

She accepts we are going to have to be more vigilant. But it is vital we don't allow vigilance to turn into hysteria or unreasonable suspicion and that we resist demonising others.

During the war, she says, the British people were "magnificent at being vigilant, and yet not losing their sense of identity and who they were". We need to draw on that spirit now.

The danger is of allowing ourselves to become a police state through the gradual erosion of our civil liberties because of fear. She knows from experience - from her early years in Iran - just how brutalising that can be.

"You live in a continual state of fear, because you have no protection," she said.

"When I lived in Iran, you could not ever have a political conversation because anything you said could be taken as being a plot against the state and the security services rounded you up. So people became either completely blank, or they joined very revolutionary groups. Both were ghastly."

Updated: 09:47 Friday, July 08, 2005