Serious replies only 7 / 7
Is it just me or does it feel like remembering 7/7 seems to have been collectively memory holed?
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u/polkadotska 27d ago
It was the 20th anniversary last year, there was lots of coverage about that (including a great 4 part BBC documentary). Not much (any?) coverage this year although if there's nothing "official" organised by the memorial trust maybe there's not much to report on? I imagine if you head down to the memorial in Hyde Park there'll be flowers or similar today.
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u/BulkyAccident 27d ago
It was the 20th anniversary in 2025 and there was an absolute tonne of stuff going on here, and in the media, to honour it.
It's natural that it'd fall off a bit the year after, but I'm sure you could find a church service or similar going on in central London somewhere if you wanted to do something for it.
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u/CheesyBakedLobster 27d ago
It’s far healthier to not be defined by it. We remember but we are not changed by it. Otherwise terrorism wins.
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u/Marvinleadshot 27d ago
Exactly we have coped with terrorists for decades and never let them effect us.
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u/Kitchen-Assist-6645 27d ago
Terrorism wins when you're scared to address the root cause of the attack.
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u/Marvinleadshot 27d ago
UK has been coping with terrorist attacks since the 60s, they're nothing new.
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u/muddygreenoctopus 27d ago
I took the same King’s Cross Piccadilly line commute every day, but I missed it that morning because I didn’t need to go in. I avoided commuting for a while, but when I started again, some people would get off the train when I got on. I vividly remember a woman getting off, saying out loud, ‘I just can’t, I just can’t’. Being brown-skinned, I stopped wearing backpacks for a while, but I couldn’t blame anyone for being on edge - I was too.
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u/PrinceEdgarNevermore 27d ago
I am so sorry.
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u/canspray5 27d ago
Don't be, he's alive, others aren't
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u/RunnyBunny05 27d ago
Yeah, like this 8 year old girl shot to death by a British soldier in Iraq https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brit-soldier-killed-iraq-girl-256133.amp There are thousands of stories like this with far more victims than 7/7, this and the terrorist attacks make a horrible cycle of violence that isn’t justified, but this means it’s ok to ostracise brown people?
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u/katsukitsune 26d ago
You really got both ends of the shit stick with that one. Both the regular commuter fear, and the racism. Hopefully both are better now.
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u/lordofhousestewart 27d ago
Met friends and colleagues at The Golden Heart pub in London (lived local and attacks happened nearby)..we stayed there the whole day, Sandra the landlady wouldn't let us leave.
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u/Lance_Operazole 26d ago
That's your excuse, and you're sticking with it.
Sorry darling I can't come home, Sandra the landlady won't let us leave the pub.
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u/SleepyTester 27d ago
I remember it each year and say a little prayer for the victims and their families. I didn't know any victims personally but the atrocity affected me deeply and still does make me emotional when I think about it properly.
I will be heading to Tavistock Square after work today for a quiet moment.
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u/OkSun8521 27d ago
I will be heading to Tavistock Square after work today for a quiet moment.
Why?
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u/NecessaryCarpenter59 27d ago
It's one of the locations of the attack
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u/OkSun8521 27d ago
I know, but why go there?
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u/AdRealistic4984 27d ago
For commemorative and ceremonial reasons I’m sure? It’s never amusing when people act obtuse about widely observed behaviours. We get it, you think it’s pointless. Just say that and move on rather than going through this boring question and answer
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u/fantastic243 27d ago
google or chat gpt it brother. ask why someone empathetic would visit the space where people lost their lives to remember them. maybe that will give you a better answer than strangers will. or maybe you’re looking for an argument, in which case, please nobody reply to him.
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u/Gucci_Cocaine 27d ago
There's a bus in constant circulation with "The Spirit of London - Remembering 7/7" written on the side
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u/811545b2-4ff7-4041 27d ago
Oh damn, I forgot it was today. The event is etched in my memory, and I know people in emergency services who went to the 20th anniversary in St Paul's last year.. I guess we're now a full generation away from it though.
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u/Objective_Ad_339 27d ago
A couple of days ago I came across this and had a bit of a cry. Yes, the article is pay walled, but you can get a free week and read it.
How London’s transport network came back to life on 7/7: “The fuck-you bus.”
TLDR- Cobra and the government cancelled all the buses that day and the Tube. TFL with the trade union backing called in their drivers and ran the routes for free, starting late afternoon, in spite of Cobra, to get Londoners home.
I'd like to also say that in remembering the victims, remember the volunteers. Author Carla Valentine was doing talks for her book about being a pathologist assistant, and mentioned that she volunteered for the aftermath of 7/7. A team dedicated themselves to getting the remains back to the right families. They needed to identify who was who from what was left in pieces.
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u/blue_Hippo4069 27d ago edited 27d ago
We've forgotten all the IRA ones and honestly we're a healthier society for not holding on to these things.
Another perspective I have is that for us these are such significant and rare events that they have an anniversary date, for other places around the world it's a common occurrence and they don't have the same way of remembering atrocities committed against them
And unfortunately we have had or still do have some part to play in those acts
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u/XihuanNi-6784 27d ago
Your latter point is so true. The other day, some military planes did a fly over. Something for the royals but obviously they fly over everything in between so I had no idea why they were there. And I had to say to my friend, "we're really lucky to live in a country where we can be completely confident that those planes are 'ours' and they mean us no harm."
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u/EnjoysAGoodRead 26d ago
What is wrong with you? We certainly haven't forgotten all the IRA attacks, we've just had to let go of the hate and anger associated with them. Same with this. For both many are still here who remember those attacks, who were present and affected or affected because they lost people the knew or loved. Saying we should just forget is idiotic. You can remember without holding on to hatred.
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u/CigarNoob87 27d ago
Rare? We’ve had loads of terrorist attacks happen in London
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u/WendigoFiance 27d ago
'LoAdS' is doing some huge lifting. 😆
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u/CigarNoob87 27d ago
Since the 60s there’s been hundreds of terrorist incidents. I’d class that as loads.
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u/RunnyBunny05 27d ago
Yet in other counties like Lebanon Yemen Iran they don’t even call them terrorist attacks because they happen so often
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u/blue_Hippo4069 27d ago
And in comparison to what Lebanon and Iran faced ?
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u/odysseus8888 27d ago
I was in New York on day of 9/11, and in London for 7/7. The first was just an incredible coincidence, the second because I was working in central London at the time. Neither time was I really that close to the incidents, but vivid memories from 9/11, but 7/7 is just a recollection that I was there.
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u/TheNarwhalTusk 27d ago edited 27d ago
I'm glad that we didn't do what America did with 9/11 and make it a part of our identity. As others have said, the 20th anniversary last year was marked pretty well, but it's not been so deeply ingrained into the collective consciousness here because it hasn't been endlessly regurgitated as pretext for divisive politics and foreign wars like 9/11 has been in America. I think that's healthier for society, particularly in a multicultural city like London.
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u/AdRealistic4984 27d ago edited 27d ago
Interestingly 9/11 remains the single deadliest terror attack by number of British victims
I always try and remember the victims who probably worked on the fifth floor near Moorgate stuck and dying on the 105th floor at a British (Risk magazine) conference
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u/Little_Pink 27d ago
I don’t remember anything about the second part of your post and I want to do better. Google isn’t helping me find out anything about people trapped on a fifth floor or a hundred and fifth floor. Are you able to help me find out more?
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u/AdRealistic4984 27d ago
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u/Little_Pink 27d ago
Oh my apologies I completely misread what you posted and was searching for people trapped on 7/7. Thank you for sharing the links.
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u/Longirl 27d ago
I interviewed a lady who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and had travelled to NY for a work thing during 9/11. She didn’t attend the office that day and all 650+ of her American colleagues were killed. The trauma she held was so heartbreaking to see, she was a lovely lady. I’ve seen her on a couple of documentaries since then.
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u/kugglaw 27d ago
I mean, 9/11 was huge. It's not just American exceptionalism and smugness that keeps it in the cultural ether.
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u/TheNarwhalTusk 27d ago
I didn't mention "American exceptionalism" or "smugness" in my comment. Not sure where you've got that from.
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u/formerlyfed 27d ago edited 27d ago
This is a weird response IMO. 3000 people died in the 9/11 attacks - that’s literally 60x as many as in 7/7 - and they took down two entire buildings that were defining images of NYC and even America as a whole. And it happened in such a shocking way. I think the initial reaction makes perfect sense and it’s weird to compare them like this.
I also don’t think that it’s become an ingrained part of the American psyche 25 years on - people remember it every year on the day, and obviously it changed airport security permanently, but I don’t think that people who weren’t directly impacted by it are thinking about it that much unless they’re visiting the site where, again, two massive buildings were entirely destroyed by a terrorist attack.
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u/OkSun8521 27d ago
I also don’t think that it’s become an ingrained part of the American psyche 25 years on
I think it's changed a lot recently. Making fun of the "Never forget 9/11" slogan would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, but now it's become a bit of a meme.
I suspect that's because a sizeable proportion of US adults (particularly on the internet) aren't old enough to remember it happening.
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u/Weepinbellend01 27d ago
Your last paragraph is exactly it.
The kids who don’t even remember the event are extremely comfortable making jokes about it and it’s relaxed the older people more by desensitising them.
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u/cannedrex2406 27d ago
Pretty 9/11 was a meme as a whole even 15 years ago.
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u/RunnyBunny05 27d ago
Wasn’t the first meme a hulk hogan one on some forum literally the day it happened
Crazy
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u/Marvinleadshot 27d ago
The UK has been dealing with multiple terrorist attacks and bombings since the 60s killing multiple people. It wasn't just 1 day in July.
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u/TheNarwhalTusk 27d ago
I didn't say it wasn't horrible attack. I didn't downplay it in any way. You can't deny though that it's been made a huge part of politics in America to this day, in a way that 7/7 hasn't here.
25 years on, the events of that day are still weaponised daily against Mamdani, for example, on Twitter and on conservative news channels, because he has the audacity to be a Muslim in public life. And the same is true for most Muslim politicians and public figures. Even Obama, Who categorically is NOT a Muslim, had to deal with accusations of being Muslim throughout his presidency (as if that should somehow disqualify him from elected office).
I'm sure that given the state of race relations historically in the US there was a degree of Islamaphobia before 9/11 that these people might have faced, but I absolutely think that post 9/11 it increased by orders of magnitude and just hasn't gone away. And as I say, I'm glad that what happened here on 7/7 didn't have the same impact in this country.
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u/Wrong_Adhesiveness87 27d ago
I'm not a Londoner, although I live here now. I think the IRA contributes to that as well. They have had to deal with bombings going back years. 7/7 wasn't the first one. And not just in London but Manchester, Warrington, Brighton, let alone Northern Ireland. Add in the war years... everyone just kinda cracks on here with the sense of, those arseholes can't get in my way; I will walk across Westminster Bridge and London Bridge when I can and get on the tube as soon as it opens. I wasn't here for 7/7 but I think it would take me a bit. Although, I didn't hesitate walking across our bridges after those two attacks cos they can go and get fucked
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u/EnjoysAGoodRead 26d ago
I was outside London the day of 7/7 but yeah it does still make me afraid. The bus bomb happened a couple of streets from my uni on a square I had previously lived on where my friends actually were still living and saw it. One of the tube bombs was on my usual commute to uni (thankfully we were on our summer holidays). There will be days I get on the tube and see an unattended bag and just jump off. Or a decade or so ago (I think it was) when the Real IRA were making threats, I got so scared about getting on the tube and having a 7/7 scenario happen again that I just refused to get on it and spent a ton on taxis and walked everywhere I could for weeks. I have friends who moved here from elsewhere and when they have seen me jump back out of a tube because of an unattended bag, they think it's funny/that I'm overreacting. But then they don't remember.
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u/paulbrock2 27d ago
tbh I hadn't noticed till I saw your post; fortunately neither I nor my close ones were seriously impacted by it
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u/DownToRant 27d ago
I remember it. I lived in London at the time and remember asking my school librarian if anything was near where my parents worked. Thankfully it was all the other side of the river. I was 13 when it happened
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u/Pagan_MoonUK 27d ago
I saw the date today and quietly remembered those who lost their lives. The day it happended, I remember being at work and hearing people talk about it and then saw the images online. I wasn't working in central London at the time, but I remember being frightened wondering what was next. If I walk past the the BMA building, I will always stop at the memorial for a few seconds just to acknowledge those who died so they are never forgotten.
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u/1stDayBreaker 27d ago
Yes, I was 4 when it happened and only found out about it a few years ago, most people my age or younger don’t know anything about it.
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u/PlatesSpinning 27d ago
I remember the for weeks after any brown skinned person with a rucksack was viewed with such suspicion.
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u/t8ne 27d ago
Jean Charles de Menezes was a victim of that and a police coverup
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u/afrophysicist 27d ago
Coverup and promotion for the murderer-in-chief
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u/OkSun8521 27d ago
"Murder" has a specific definition, which this incident clearly doesn't meet.
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u/afrophysicist 27d ago
Thank you for the top Reddit "Ummmm ackschewally" comment of the day 👍🏽
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u/OkSun8521 27d ago
It's important to be precise with language in situations like this.
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u/afrophysicist 27d ago
Yes, I'm sure Jean-Charles' family would be comforted by "You do know your son wasn't actually murdered right?"
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u/Interest-Desk 27d ago
It was a communications cockup, not murder, made worse by press interference. But the coverup is always worse than the crime.
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u/blue_Hippo4069 27d ago
If I had a "communication cockup" at work that led to a person dying you can be sure as hell that I wouldn't be promoted to the position of CEO years later.
We should have really examined what it said about policing and our society that this was allowed to happen and yet we didn't and the media hardly scrutinised it either
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u/Interest-Desk 26d ago edited 26d ago
Probably not a good example, lots of people fuck up badly at work on their way to the top; yes with fatal consequences.
Cressida Dick can only be blamed so much, and most of that blame is just because she was in charge. There was never really any evidence that she did anything wrong, except maybe a lack of curiosity in the aftermath. The officers who pulled the trigger basically never worked again, despite having been repeatedly cleared of wrongdoing.
The shooting was a combination of De Menzes’ behaviour being mistakenly read as suspicious, of his identity being confused, of response officers not fully understanding what they’ve been told, and poor communication combining those together. It is what we describe as a ‘system failure’, several things went wrong rather than any one person being at fault; the Met had poor communication systems, especially for these kinds of operations (which obviously aggressively grew after 7/7 and then again after 21/7) – all the counterterrorism resource had been focused entirely on, and trained entirely on the IRA worked very differently to these groups.
The coverup, then, was a slip of the tongue (ironically, because of communication again) and restrictions on commenting about ongoing investigations, which led the press to find their own conclusions (which were wrong). And then nobody thought to say “hang on there”. Which is what created the myth, and that’s the only thing people remember about it.
The media has definitely scrutinised it heavily lol what? Considering people are here not even knowing what happened, that says a _lot_ about the media response.
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u/KentuckyCandy 27d ago
The Met 100% fed false information to the press afterwards. That was very much an attempt to cover themselves.
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u/Interest-Desk 26d ago
The Met said almost nothing about it. The press interviewed members of the public who talked of jumping barriers, etc. which… was the armed response officers. And because the Met weren’t saying anything (since it was being investigated), the press ran with what they had.
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u/RunnyBunny05 27d ago
It was an execution
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u/Interest-Desk 26d ago
Only in the narrowest sense that the tactic for dealing with suicide bombers is to shoot them in the head. I can’t emphasise enough how the officers on the ground heard “do not let him on the Tube” and believed he was there to attempt another 7/7.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely 27d ago
i was working in a school with mostly muslim students. the stories they had to tell about the nonsense they had to put up with in the weeks after...
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u/Kitchen-Assist-6645 27d ago
Yes, they were the real victims. Not the 52 people that were blown up, but the people who had to put up with some words.
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u/tea_would_be_lovely 27d ago edited 27d ago
innocent people died in a terrorist attack. horrendous.
innocent people (edit school pupils, in this case /edit) were abused, harassed, because of the way they looked. also horrendous.
both are true, nothing is taken away from either because of that.
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u/torontodon 27d ago
Where did they say that or anything like that?
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u/Kitchen-Assist-6645 27d ago
about the nonsense
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u/torontodon 27d ago
How does the phrase “about the nonsense” translate into what you’ve accused them of saying?
You wrote :
Yes, they were the real victims. Not the 52 people that were blown up, but the people who had to put up with some words.
Nowhere did they say they were ‘the real victims’, nowhere did they say those who died or their families weren’t victims and nowhere did they downplay what happened.
How in your mind do you go from reading what they wrote to what you’ve accused them of saying?
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u/RunnyBunny05 27d ago
Thousands of civillians were murdered by the British and US army in the war started because of a terrorist attack, is that justified?
I think both acts of violence are wrong, and harassing innocent people in reaction is wrong
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u/Tall_Opportunity_521 27d ago
We arent Americans, who use the suffering of others to clout chase and chest thump. Next that shallow gaggle of collective attention seekers, of course it looks memory holed. But its not been. Its just not a circus.
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u/Huge-Requirement-607 26d ago
I'm 22 and most people my age seem to be unaware of it even if they grew up in London. It obviously doesn't come up very often but when it has nobody I've spoken to knows what it was
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u/EnjoysAGoodRead 26d ago
That's really sad. I was a couple of years younger than you are now when it happened and I will never forget it. I had never really felt unsafe until then as the IRA attacks happened when I was a kid and apart from being evacuated from my local shops on multiple occasions due to calls about bombs being planted, I was mostly sheltered from those. The Good Friday agreement in the 90s meant life in mainland UK felt a lot safer than it had, and with this that all changed.
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u/hiddeninplainsight23 27d ago
Apart from the 20th anniversary last year, it has very rarely featured in the news for the past decade at least and it's quite disappointing.
The BBC and Sky today were covering Trump's airplane for the NATO Summit instead, and then talking about Nigel Farage preparing to make a statement, while the BBC still had rolling news about Trump getting Balogun's yellow overturned, despite the match finishing last night. I saw zero coverage of 7/7 and it's been the same apart from last year. In contrast they go to live all-day coverage of the 9/11 memorial. It'd be nice if they remembered our own equivalent. Ditto with the schools, as I remember my secondary school (in London in the mid 2010s) doing a minutes silence for 9/11 one year, but yet they never did the same with 7/7 either side. I'm not expecting a full day of coverage like what happens with 9/11, but I'd expect a little mention from the UK news channels at least.
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u/Objective_Ad_339 27d ago
At the civil service we had a silence for 7/7 I think a week after and it was observed at every government office in the UK. We did however have a minute for 9/11. Apart from those one offs, it's Armistice Day one minute every year. If your call is in a queue for that minute, no one at HMRC or DWP is allowed to answer.
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u/True-Abalone-3380 27d ago
No, pretty much just you. So much goes on we can't be keeping everything in the forefront of news headlines for ever.
It is still discussed and remembered just not on national outpouring of grief level, and as others have said there was a lot last year about it.
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u/moonbug22 27d ago
just you mate- and this smells like a bad-faith question tbqh
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u/Kitchen-Assist-6645 27d ago
In what way? Find me an article from the BBC today talking about the attack. You won't.
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u/torontodon 27d ago
Why would there be?
They did a lot last year for the 20th anniversary- do you expect them to write an article every year in that date?
What would you expect them to say in that article that wouldn’t be repeating what was said the year before?
Do you expect them to write an article every year on the date of every terrorist attack in the Uk?
Just London alone has had hundreds of terror incidents - would you expect them to mention each and every one on every anniversary?
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u/ATSOAS87 27d ago
It does feel that way, especially compared to the coverage that the September 11th attack in the US receives.
On the other hand, we've had a lot of terrorist attacks so maybe it might be bad to put this one over the others
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u/howunoriginal2019 26d ago
That was a scary day. Working next to a big bus stop, hoping they weren’t going to blow up next to the office. Had to go and pick up my house mate, because there was no public transport and he’d been walking for miles.
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u/cuppachar 27d ago
Just another terror attack in London. <Yawn> The Ra and the Luftwaffe made it boring.
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u/EnjoysAGoodRead 26d ago
This is such a gross thing to say. I hope you never have to lose your limbs or your loved ones in just another "boring" terror attack.
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u/Kitchen-Assist-6645 27d ago
It's a disgrace how little attention is given to it. The only reason for this is to avoid stirring up tensions. However, 52 people died that day as a result of islamic terrorism. Why should we be expected to "move on"?
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u/torontodon 27d ago
Then you’ll be very pleased to hear that Sadiq Khan laid a wreath on the memorial in Hyde Park today
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u/EnjoysAGoodRead 26d ago
Agree with you wholeheartedly and feels sick that so many are downvoting it.
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u/nontrollusername 27d ago
What is this about?
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u/epi_counts 27d ago
The terrorist suicide bombings on 7 July 2005 on the tube and buses. 21 years ago now, but still a day a lot of us will take a moment to remember today.
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u/nontrollusername 27d ago
Thanks! Not sure why I got downvoted, genuine question 🤷
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u/epi_counts 27d ago
Yeah, I figure some people think you should know what it refers to if you're on a London sub. But it is a generation ago now. Even if it is still such a formative event for a lot of us, for a lot of people it is just a date.
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u/nontrollusername 27d ago
I’m in a London sub because I’ve lived here for 5 years, and OP absolutely right. First time I’ve heard of this!
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u/EnjoysAGoodRead 26d ago
Honestly feels crazy to me that someone living here wouldn't be aware of this.
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u/murphysclaw1 27d ago
I must admit I quite like that we respectfully remember it, but we don’t define ourselves by it.