Letters 2

If the first letter I had published in the Grauniad was in response to the Wannacry incident, the second, also in May 2017, was a response to the London Bridge terror attack.

Part of me still thinks they were only published because of the decline of print media, and the press in particular, so there is less competition to get on the letters page.

Here it is. Another true story:-

On 7 July, 2005 I was working in central London, at the British Museum. From my office I heard the Tavistock Square bus bomb go off. Much of the rest of the day was eerily quiet. The heart of London was sealed off. No traffic hum. After we’d helped the visitors leave, the museum was closed and we walked away, going home with no public transport.

A day or so later, I came in by train to Victoria, and took the bus across the centre of town to work. Everyone seemed tense. We all had rucksacks, and suspicious, worried looks were shared in silence. Then a grey-haired woman stood up at the front of the bus, and started chatting. She said hello to everyone as she walked down the aisle, asking how people were and sometimes resting her hand gently on people’s shoulders. After a second, we started to smile, and chat back. She was so warm and relaxed. She wanted to put people at ease, and she succeeded. It may have been just my imagination, but I felt the anxiety drain away.

It was Betty Boothroyd. Baroness Boothroyd, ex-Labour MP, ex-Speaker of the House of Commons, and then-chancellor of the Open University (and ex-Tiller girl). She’d just seen the right thing to do, and acted. Calming anxieties, building a sense of common humanity. We need some of that now.