To Remember

A £1m permanent memorial to the victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings is to be unveiled in the city's Hyde Park. Fifty-two people were killed and hundreds more injured when suicide bombers detonated backpacks on board three Underground trains and a bus.

What we said and also here and here too

An extract

"It’s a tragic irony of humanity that the statues and memorials for military murderers are almost invariably bigger, better and more splendid than others. Battles – like Trafalgar – are commemorated, whereas anniversaries on the first use of anaesthetic would pass us by unmarked except by ultra-enthusiasts. The glorification of those who die in battle is a near constant of any military society. London is disfigured with a war memorial dedicated ‘To the glorious dead’ – as if there was ever anything glorious about a nineteen-year old boy hanging on the barbed wire. To die nobly is often rewarded with a Victoria Cross. Dying in action is always referred to as sacrifice, a gift from the soldier to the community. The actions, then, of the four young men, three of them from Leeds, in callously slaughtering over fifty fellow humans, are not so alien as some would think at first. Shehad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, Mohammed Sadiq Khan, from Leeds, were all described by their stunned friends and relatives, as perfectly ordinary, nice and polite young men. Not bug-eyed ranting fanatics.

Religion is the heart’s cry of the oppressed, soul of a soulless world, it inspires utopian and thus reactionary politics. It cannot be stopped by suppression, harassment, the silencing of radical preachers – that would only aid and abet the feeling of persecution. It must be defeated by reason, by practical action to demonstrate that there are prospects for taking control of their own lives. This means an open movement desperately needs to be built to create a real prospect of change, not just in the UK but in the world. We cannot rely on military force, or the state, the great and the good bullying moderate Muslims to speak out, it needs to come from the massed ranks of workers, set on using their creative industry to take real control of the world around us. An end to oppression, and an end to ambitious elites using human corpses as stepping stones to wealth and power.