Reacting to atrocities

Thirty-five people are killed and many more injured in Brussels, and we react, rightly, with revulsion. Nothing justified their deaths: they were wholly random victims. They were killed by men who claimed to speak in the name of Islam but, though their victims might have been dedicated enemies of Islam, it would have made absolutely no difference had they all been devout Muslims, leading lives wholly in keeping with Islamic teaching – they would have been killed or hurt anyway.

We react, first, emotionally. Monuments across Europe are lit in the colours of the Belgian flag. Crowds attend vigils or simply express their sadness and horror. And that’s perfectly commendable if, sometimes, a little excessive. After all, far more people are killed or injured on the roads, with nothing like the reaction; but as Simon Jenkins pointed out in the Guardian, we aren’t talking about rational but emotional responses. We feel, correctly or incorrectly, that we have control over whether we’re involved in a car crash; we have no control over whether a pitiless bomber chooses us as his next, random victim.

Next we react politically. But, in fact, our political reaction is emotional too. In Britain, the outrage in Brussels is informing the debate about whether we should leave the EU (in the hope that this would erect a barrier against these vile persons) or stay (in the belief that this would enhance cooperation between security services against such attacks). It also inspires a still more sinister discourse, which would have us give up more liberties in the name of security, sacrificing privacy, for instance, to allow government to spy on our e-mails or internet browsing. That argument is made though the security is against an extremely unlikely and probably temporary threat, while the loss of freedom is massive and likely to prove long term.

Then we learn of another outrage. Seventy people killed this time, as well as hundreds injured, in a park in Lahore. And our reaction is interesting. It’s nothing like as intense. The deaths matter far less to us when they happen in Pakistan. No monuments are lit up in the green and gold colours of that country’s flag. When we’re shocked at the senseless loss of human life, we really mean the loss of life among humans who look a bit more like us, and don’t live that far away. Remoteness and difference lessens the feel of shock.

That’s true even though the bombers deliberately chose to blow themselves up in an area where large numbers of children were gathered and would inevitably suffer.

And how about another example? Several hundred killed in London, and many more injured. Again, by merciless bombers who felt they were doing good work for an excellent cause. Again, the victims were random, depending on where they were at the time a bomb struck. And again, many were women or children.

Why aren’t we horror-struck by this devastation? The answer is once more remoteness. Not in space, on this occasion, but in time. That particular bombing outrage took place during the night of 7 to 8 September 1940, the first day of Hitler’s air campaign that Britain came to know as the Blitz.

That, of course, is just history, as Lahore’s just geography. But curiously, there’s a lesson to learn from it. British spirits weren’t broken by the terror that fell from the sky – any more than German spirits were broken by the same treatment, in Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin or Dresden. The raids on that last sad city claimed up to 25,000 lives in just three days. A single night’s bombing of Hamburg took 42,000 lives, against a total of 40,000 killed in London in all 57 raids of the Blitz.

But whether in Britain or in Germany, whether inflicted by the Nazis or the Allies, what all these attacks have in common is that they were far more extensive than anything we’re seeing today.

An image of the London Blitz
And of the spirit that saw people through it. Which we need to rediscover

Eventually, though, our countries emerged from those terrible experiences and built far better structures for the defence of liberties and human rights than had ever existed before.

Wouldn’t it be a pity if, in our responses to the current wave of outrages, we were to sacrifice them all again?

The bulldog spirit: is it a match for a disrupted train?

The British are at their best in adversity, we are constantly assured.

Or, at least, we assure ourselves.

That, we all reckon, was the Dunkirk spirit. When things are as bad as they can be, the dogged British character comes to the surface and sees us through: little boats depart from the Channel ports and bring the troops back from under the mouths of the German guns. Powerful stuff. Even though, as Churchill pointed out, “wars are not won by evacuations.” However well executed.

The doggedness was at its most truly admirable during the Blitz. London and other cities weathered the bombs. The population refused to be panicked or even cowed.

On a much smaller scale, within my own lifetime, Londoners just kept living their lives right through the IRA campaign of the 1980s. Incidentally, the memories of that time always leave me smiling when I hear Americans denouncing terrorism as the most heinous of crimes – the IRA was kept going with funds from the US, and there was plenty of self-righteous resistance from across the Atlantic whenever the British authorities tried to extradite a known terrorist.

Funny how being attacked yourself changes your viewpoint – it somehow relativises everything, even in a country that likes to despise moral relativism.

On a far smaller scale still, I had the opportunity to watch the British soul in adversity the other night when my train home was delayed two hours, on a forty-minute journey. The cause was a suicide on the line ahead.

First of all, it was curious to see how our attitudes – my own included – altered towards the suicide. At first, I felt bad about his death. What drove him to such despair? What a lamentable fate.

That was good for half an hour. The compassion started to wear thin after that, so by the time we reached the hour mark, nerves were being rubbed thin. None of us said it in so many words, but from our comments, more and more of us were beginning to harbour feelings along the lines of “inconsiderate bastard. Why didn’t he choose some other method? Or at least, top himself outside the rush hour?”

The ice had, by then, been broken between us. The reserve that keeps British train travellers firmly locked in their own concerns, focused on their phone or their tablet, had dissolved, and the conversation had become general. Ah, yes, I thought to myself, now we shall see that grand old thing, the British sense of humour, or at least British stoicism, sustaining us in our hour of need.

“What a shambles,” someone remarked.

“They’re all complete incompetents,” replied another. 

“Look at their Twitter feed!” added a third, pointing at his phone, “it reckons there may be delays on lines out of St Pancras. Might be? What a shower. Why don’t they do something about it instead of making fatuous comments?”

Right. So that was the shape of things. Patience growing a little threadbare.

I wasn’t quite sure what anyone felt the executives of Thameslink trains should have done. Foreseen the suicide and warned us before we caught the train? Cancelled all the trains? I could imagine how well that would have gone down. Perhaps they should have parked the inconsolable guy on a siding somewhere, and maybe offered to shoot him themselves, in a decent and humane manner, somewhere no services would have been disrupted?

We were in the foremost carriage. One passenger started shouting through the door to the driver’s compartment, demanding information about what was happening.

“Other trains keep shooting past us. Why didn’t you tell us this was going to happen and let us get another train?”

The driver came out and looked at him, completely nonplussed.

“I told you whatever I could, as soon as I got told myself. How could I have known it was going to be this bad?”

“It’s hopeless,” replied the passenger, apparently building up quite a head of anger, “you’ve told us nothing useful. You’ve just left us sitting here without information.”

“You want me to tell you each time I’m at a red light?”

Red light at night. No passenger's delight
But not a lot anyone can do about it

A few minutes later, when we stopped again in the middle of nowhere, he cranked up the public address system again.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced helpfully, “we are stopped at a red signal. I don’t know how long we’ll be here.”

The passenger who’d been complaining cursed under his breath.

Another train went whizzing by on the track next to ours, making that wonderful and inspiring sound we all associate with railway travel at its best.

“Look, look!” cried several passengers, “it’s happening again. Other trains keep going past. Practically empty.”

I’m not quite sure what they wanted the driver to do. Flag the other train down? Hitch our train to it? Or just decide to ignore the red signal?

Eventually we got to my station and I left the train. I paused to wish the remaining passengers good luck. There were a few wry smiles, but mostly just groans.

Alas. Not quite so phlegmatic, these particular Brits, as their reputation suggests. Not quite so undaunted in adversity. Hardy the spirit of the Blitz.

How have the mighty fallen.