London's explosions: interpretations. posted by Richard Seymour

One interpretation of the tragedy yesterday is to see it as an extraordinary opportunity for increased profitability. After 9/11, Americans were bombarded with messages urging them to go shopping "otherwise the terrorists win". This morning, the BBC reports that hotels in London are putting their prices up in response to the attacks. Other businesses are seeing it as a moment for staunch resolution: despite advice issued by the Metropolitan police not to travel into the city, some firms are urging their workers to treat it as 'business as usual' and show up for work.

Another interpretation is to see it as a reason for reducing civil liberties. Charles Clarke darkly hinted on the news yesterday of some exceptional measures which may have to be taken to curb the threat to us - these 'exceptional' measures have been accruing and fossilising as permanent law for some years now. Some one suggested to me yesterday that Clarke might lock people up without trial or hand them over to other states for torture. When I pointed out that this is already happening, the response was an exasperated shrug and "Well, you think of something, then!"

We know what the Prime Minister's interpretation was - it was a deliberate attempt to undermine the ersatz credibility he might receive from any minute move toward discharging the debt our governments owe to Africa. Then again, one could interpret it as retroactively providing a cassus belli. Aussie PM John Howard thinks that it's an excellent reason to keep troops in Iraq . And the BBC are taking the opportunity to coopt Londoners for the Olympics - "we were all overjoyed" by winning the Olympics, apparently. News for them: I wasn't.

Ken Livingston's view, in an admirable speech, was that this was not an attack on the leaders, the warmongers or the G8, but on ordinary, working class Londoners going about their day - and that it would never succeed.

The interpretation of Labour Against the War, Socialist Worker, Mike Marqusee and George Galloway was that this is the catastrophic blow-back from Blair's foreign policy, that Londoners are paying the price for a policy that they didn't implement and by and large didn't even support. The difference between this and all previous interpretations, in my view, is that it is manifestly , obviously , the case - which is exactly why the point is being strenuously avoided by most commentators. Charles Clarke insisted on television last night, against his own intelligence services, that this had nothing to do with it. The terrorists were opposed to our freedom, our parliamentary democracy etc etc. How many times do we have to be insulted with this nonsense? Naturally, some feel entitled to appropriate the outrage and grief to browbeat anyone who says otherwise: following Galloway's speech in parliament yesterday, Adam Ingram accused him of having dipped his poisonous tongue in blood: a turn of phrase worthy of Galloway himself, if it weren't deployed by a despicable warmonger with the blood of 100,000 people dripping from his tongue.

It's becoming hackneyed to say so - in fact, it was hackneyed long before anyone said it - but the response of Londoners does indeed appear to have been remarkable. Calm, resolute, taking no shit from anyone. After 9/11, flags popped up everywhere, and credulity swelled. The first thing that was aroused by the murder of approximately 3,000 people was a defiant sense of American nationalism - understandably, but also unfortunately. None of this appears to pertain to Britain, and certainly not to London. People are just getting on with it. This is a perfectly apt response to such a situation. Britons indeed appear to be asking intelligent questions, certainly if last night's Question Time is anything to go by. That's the way: since when was it healthy to simply scuttle behind the government, accept whatever bullshit they come out with, and hope to lawd that they defeat the evil-doers in whatever way they deem necessary? Take shit from no one, I say: neither the bastards who bombed us, nor the bastards who are bombing Iraq. Fuck em.

Finally, this blogger's eye-witness account is well worth a read. It offers no interpretation: it is simply the experience of someone who has been through hell before discussion of it was clotted with media cliché.