Martin Henry
WE HAD hardly finished expressing condolences to Britain over the London bombings when blasts went off in Port of Spain. As the London Police Chief and others have frankly stated, it was only a matter of time before an attack of that sort would have taken place.
In the wake of Hurricane Dennis, Leader of the Opposition Bruce Golding has called for a special sitting of Parliament to debate national preparedness for and response to natural disasters. That call now needs to be expanded to debating national preparedness for and response to terrorist attacks.
A couple of things about 'the British response to the London blasts has been particularly impressive': The people are determined to carry on with their lives. "London can take it. We've been through it all before in the 1970s and 1980s with the IRA. We will carry on." The day after the blasts took place during rush hour morning commuting, people were returning to work on the same bus and underground train systems. Seven of 10 underground lines were back in service within 24 hours of the blasts. There is a spirit of determined defiance even though the shadowy enemy was not identified with any certainty by one of the best intelligence and security services in the world days after the blasts.
BEREAVED FAMILIES
The other impressive thing was what Reuters reported as the reluctance of the media to expose bereaved families to the limelight. Jamaican media is more and more thriving on grief. Media microphones and cameras are thrust into grieving people's faces to tell their stories and to capture their raw grief for broadcast and publishing. Most of these poor, pained people don't seem to know that they have no obligation whatsoever to share their grief with aggressive, insensitive journalists and their media audiences and can refuse to be 'interviewed'.
But any insensitive intrusion of the Jamaican media pales into insignificance beside that of the aggressive British tabloids with their swarms of paparazzi poking into the nooks and crannies of people's lives.
DAILY BOMB BLASTS
There is suspicion that those opposed to British support for the war in Iraq may be responsible for the London blasts. There are daily bomb blasts in Iraq with worse casualty figures than London. The Iraqis are people too whose suffering and grief require sensitive public treatment. Latest best estimate is that some 39,000 of them have been killed since the US-led invasion.
But try as we might, proximity, whether in space or cultural connection, will always determine more our response to news events rather than the sheer magnitude of the events themselves. Reuters filed a photograph, which this newspaper carried, of Prince Charles visiting a black Cynthia Bobb-Semple in hospital, one of hundreds injured in the blast. From surname, this woman could well be out of Guyana. There are hundreds of thousands of Jamaican-/Caribbean people in London alone. My first knowledge of the bomb blasts did not come from media but from a telephone call from an anxious sister, a returning resident with several children and grandchildren (my nieces and nephews) in London. Telephone lines would have been jammed. We are connected - to London and to Port of Spain. These are our stories - in a very personal way.
The London attacks came during the Group of 8 meeting in Scotland, a meeting which was to discuss as a high priority agenda item debt relief and poverty reduction for Africa, a discussion rooted in a terrible and destructive historical relationship between several of those rich countries and the African continent.
GOODWILL GAMES
The attacks came the day after Britain was voted the venue for the 2012 Olympics - the 'Goodwill Games', which were bombed in Munich in 1972 as part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and in Atlanta in 1996.
The attacks came soon after the 60th anniversary of World War II. Post-war labour needs opened the door for mass migration from the colonies into the 'Mother Country'. London 'carried on' during the Blitz which killed tens of thousands. German cities were even more devastated later on from the Anglo-American counter-Blitz. The underground train network in London during that war offered shelter and security. The tube turned deadly last Thursday in the war of Terror.
And today is Bastille Day, marking the 216th anniversary of the French Revolution which had its own Reign of Terror. The distinction between 'terrorists' and 'revolutionaries' is hardly just a matter of methods or ideology. Much depends on who provides the distinguishing labels.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
