No public inquiry into London's Transport Attacks

Should there be a public investigation into the 7/7 attacks?

According to the Government there shouldn't. According to the victims' families there should.

Yesterday, the Home Office confirmed that there would be no public investigations into the attacks in London where 52 people were killed and hundreds more injured. Tony Blair said: "I do accept that people of course want to know exactly what happened, and we will make sure that they do.

"We will bring together all the evidence that we have, and we will publish it so that people, the victims and others, can see exactly what happened.

"But I really believe that at the present time, if we ended up having a full-scale public inquiry when actually we do essentially know what happened on July 7, we would end up diverting a massive amount of police and security service time, and I don't think it would be sensible."

We wonder at what time it would be sensible? Is there ever going to be a good time to do these investigations? The Home Secretary apparently consulted Scotland Yard on the implications of issuing the file to the public, possibly in an edited form.

Any report published by the Home Office would be the first official overview of the atrocities, which killed 52 innocent people on the London Underground at Aldgate, Edgware Road, Russell Square and King's Cross, and on a bus at Tavistock Square. So as usual, it's left to rumours and speculation and more mystery over what happened. The words "cover up" "Nanny state" "we know best" "You only need to know what we want to tell you" and "Blair is a fooking idiot" easily spring to mind.

In the meantime, the families of the victims and the survivors themselves are demanding answers. BBC News interviewed a number of survivors and family members of people who were killed. As regular readers know, blogger Rachel was on the King's Cross carriage when the bomb went off and her moving account of her survival and the aftermath has kept us all enthralled. In the interview she said, that ordinary people need to know the answers to their questions

"Apparently it will take too long, be too expensive and only tell us things we already know.

We have spent a thousand days in Iraq and £3.1bn. Is that too long? Is that too expensive? Is the link between Iraq and 7 July what we already know? Of course it is.

Ordinary people, not politicians take the buses and tubes each day. Ordinary people pay the price for wars and policies politicians implement.

We have questions, we deserve public answers."

Fortunately Rachel is not going to keep quiet about this and on her blog she says:

"Even if you don't like the questions, don't like the answers, think you know the answers already, Mr Blair, it is us, not you, who are paying the cost for this, every single bloody day. If the cost of answering questions makes you squirm, then too bad. We voted you in, we pay for you and your wars and your policies to be implemented and you say you act 'in our name'. We run the risks on the trains, the buses, the streets each day. You answer to us, the public and if I could shame you into answering us now, my God, I would."

SIGN THE LONDON 7/7 PUBLIC INQUIRY PETITION

In the meantime Rachel has set up a petition which she urges you to sign a petition to show our support. If you believe that we should have public inquiry, please sign and also publicise on your own website or blog too.

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Thursday, December 15, 2005 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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