Attack On Democracy
Attack on our Liberty and Culture
It may be too soon to write anything particularly deep and meaningful, but it’s a good time to try. The specifics are changing by the minute still, so I will focus on the main arc of this afternoon’s events, which began at 14:40 UK time.
The most obvious thing to point out is that we learned of the terrorist attack on Twitter. Our first reaction was to turn on the TV news, followed by a lot more Twitter, both incoming and outgoing. This is the new way to consume and disseminate news.
Contrast this to 2005 when we were told all kinds of nonsense about a power surge on the Underground system. None of that disinformation today. It was less than 20 minutes after it happened that we saw what was going on, registered it was very serious, and stopped what we were doing to watch.
In the three hours or so since that, the situation is still not fully closed down. Parliament is still locked down, with very many MPs inside the estate at Westminster Abbey. Everyone was impressed at the speed of the police response, but Nick Robinson has already started asking the key question: how on earth did the assailant get into the gardens in front of Westminster? This should be the most locked down of all the royal palaces, with the possible exception of Buckingham Palace when the Queen is home.
This makes a mockery of early outrage at the pointless and futile laptop on planes ban. At the very moment MPs were debating this senseless change in airline security, a knife attacker was running rampant outside the window.
It will not change anything in the short or long run. Life will get back to normal. London will learn, change and get on with things. But for the families and friends of those killed and injured, today will never be forgotten. And nor should it.
We must take the view that every single attack is preventable. But more importantly, these attacks can be prevented without losing our sense of who we are, and without curbs on our liberty. The challenge now will be to maintain our freedoms while preventing such attacks in the future.
