Dame Tessa Jowell: London’s resilience and humanity make this city what it is

It was a normal Wednesday, until my son rang to ask if I was all right; he had heard about something happening at Westminster on the news. The terrorist attack took place while I was in the House of Lords. There, it was only gradually that the horror of the attack became evident. We peers were “held” in the Chamber, with no one allowed to leave. Then we were taken to Speaker’s Court, where the bodies of two of the dead were still in situ.

We then gathered in Westminster Hall and the terrible news began to filter through: that a woman had died, a police officer had been murdered, the assailant had been shot, and there was mayhem on the bridge.

From Westminster Hall, parliamentarians and others were taken to Westminster Abbey, where we waited, more than 1,000 of us, for the next two hours. There was something characteristically defiant in the young woman from the abbey who came up and asked if she brought a tray of tea would it be welcome? (It was.) The staff at the abbey did everything they could to make it a place of sanctuary and safety.

And as I looked at the faces of the paramedics and the rescue personnel in Westminster Abbey with us, they reminded me in so many ways of the hot days after the 7/7 London bombings when I visited each of the Tube stations that had been attacked. In the aftermath of the attack I had been privileged to be asked by the then Prime Minister to co-ordinate the Government’s support and response to those who were bereaved and hundreds of survivors.

Every event of this kind is unique and the suffering that binds people together is specific to each tragedy but there were so many resonances on Wednesday that reminded me powerfully of 7/7. I recalled the Underground staff who emerged from the tunnels in the days after 7/7, their faces ashen and expressionless. Those who cared for the wounded this week have had to absorb unimaginable horror, just as those servicing the Underground after the July bombings had to.

Of course all of us still remember 7/7 and its impact on London, and before that the 9/11 attack in New York. In the London attacks, 54 people died on their way to work and countless hundreds of the survivors saw their lives changed for ever, unable to travel by bus again or to take the Tube, carrying deep trauma into their lives. The trauma will be similar in the case of the victims of this week’s terrorism; there are many, as yet untellable, stories from the scores of people who were caught up in the horror of Westminster on Wednesday.

And, as with 7/7, some good things emerged from the awful events. There was, as I found, a palpable sense of community that develops from the shared experience of spending two hours with more than 1,000 people in Westminster Abbey — united across the party divides. A resilience of spirit meant people organised themselves in little groups, keeping seats for each other, discovering the way to the toilets and sharing the tea and biscuits. Amid the mundanity of all this we were scouring Twitter and news sites to find out what was happening.

In these circumstances we were very quickly sharing information, and throughout this whole process we could see what used to seem the irritating ritual of everyday security becoming life-saving. The procedures to do with visitors and security passes and the professionalism of doorkeepers and police in the Palace of Westminster created calm and oversaw a process that extended no special favours to anyone. Anyone who thought they’d be allowed out learned that the same rules applied to everyone.

Then there were the qualities it revealed in London. There are so many clichés about London: that we are together, we are a diverse, open and tolerant city — actually, it turns out that they’re not clichés. They’re the values by which all of us as Londoners live every day. On the way to the Tube after we left the abbey I heard a young man on his phone talking abusively about Muslims who had done this.

But he was an exception. We shall not be divided by some fanatic who decides to destroy the lives of a countless number of people. That responsibility to maintain unity sits on all of us.

Over the days ahead, the memories of this will settle and the immediate trauma will recede — but not for those who are bereaved, not for those children on Westminster Bridge who will never forget the horrors they encountered when they came to London.

And there are things that have to be done by government. Learning from 7/7, we must ensure that counselling and support is available for those affected, that there is a memorial service to remember the dead and to reflect on what happened. There should be a lasting memorial to those who died and to the emergency staff who, like PC Keith Palmer, showed such courage.

London genuinely is resilient. On the Underground to work this morning I was struck by the way the Tube was as crowded as usual, with young women putting on make-up or checking their phones. So much has changed for London, and so much remained the same. That’s what we have to be proud of. We were neither cowed nor intimidated and all of us, even if we were unharmed, received messages of love.

After 7/7, the people of London showed resilience and humanity. There has never been a better demonstration of the tolerance and openness that makes this city what is. But we showed our essential humanity on Wednesday, too. Think of the heroic efforts of rescue teams and the police, not to mention the acts of kindness of the strangers on the street who helped the wounded.

When I was the minister for humanitarian assistance I heard the Queen read from The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” That sense of concern, of solidarity for the people whose lives have changed for ever, lives on in London.