Britain fell silent in tribute to the dead, bereaved, survivors and rescuers on the 10th anniversary of the day 7/7 became shorthand for terror.
At a service on Tuesday morning in St Paul’s Cathedral, the church of national commemoration, the congregation stood with heads bowed as pink, red and white petals fluttered down from the whispering gallery, in a powerful act of remembrance of the 52 murdered.
Across the capital, at 11.30am the one-minute silence was observed on public transport as tube and train announcements were halted, and bus drivers who could safely do so brought their vehicles to a stop.
Earlier, David Cameron and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, walked slowly through the stark thicket of 52 steel pillars of the 7/7 memorial in Hyde Park to lay wreaths at 8.50am – 10 years to the minute after the first three of the four bombs were detonated within quick succession.
Among the official wreaths, a bunch of flowers had been placed with a card that read: “Thinking of each & everyone of you. You are not forgotten,” signed by “a fellow Londoner”.
As people made their way to work, many answered the call to walk together, getting off their tube trains and buses one stop earlier to walk in solidarity with the victims and many hundreds left physically and mentally scarred by mainland Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.
At the St Paul’s service the names of all 52 who died were read aloud. Four candles were brought to the altar, carried by individuals caught in the carnage of that day. On each was written the location of the bombings seared into the public consciousness: Aldgate, Tavistock Square, Edgware Road and Russell Square/King’s Cross.
Four “reflections” on the blast sites were read during the service, attended by survivors, the bereaved, the emergency services, senior politicians and the Duke of York.
Aaron Grant-Brooker, described simply as a young Londoner, told the congregation that these four pieces of London epitomised what is great about this city, “an international crossroads of diversity and ingenuity, tolerance and respect, challenge and opportunity.”
The bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, spoke of “an ocean of pain” caused by the bombings, with the victims, many of them young, coming from all corners of the world and from many religions. “London is an astonishing world in a city,” he told the congregation.
In the aftermath, amid the “unified agonised outcry” over a terrible crime that had robbed so many of family and friends, “there could so easily have been demonstrations of anger,” he said. “But beyond the numbing shock there was solidarity. London had been attacked and there was unity in our grieving.”
He led a pledge by leaders of faith communities, including Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and others. “We stand united in our determination to resist and overcome the evil of terrorism. We belong to different faith traditions but we share a common grief at the suffering which has been inflicted on so many of our fellow men and women, here and abroad.”
A open-air afternoon service at the memorial in Hyde Park brought to a close the day of reflection. In contrast to St Paul’s it had an intensely personal air as more than 200 family members of the bereaved and 154 survivors gathered to lay a carpet of bright yellow gerbera flowers, signifying hope, on the metal plaque bearing names of those lost.
Prince William listened as the haunting strains of The Song of the Doves, written by the stepfather of victim Helen Jones, 28, with music composed by one of the survivors, drifted over the park. There were personal statements from the families, survivors and rescuers, sharing tearful thoughts on the legacy bequeathed to everyone there by the events on that dark summer’s day.
Survivor Emma Craig, just 14 and on her way to work experience when she was caught up in the bombings, struggled to control her emotions as she told those gathered: “People say it didn’t break us. It didn’t break London, but it did break some of us.”
Not for the first time this day, a roll call of the dead was read out.
This was an intimate and uplifting ceremony too, with applause and songs by The Rock Choir, including Both Sides Now and Something Inside So Strong.
It was during rush hour on 7 July 2005 that three bombs were detonated in quick succession from 8.49am on tube trains. A fourth was detonated on the top deck of a No 30 bus at Tavistock Square almost an hour later. Many who died there had already been evacuated from tube stations, some even calling their families to let them know they were safe.
The four suicide bombers – Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Jermaine Lindsay, 19 – had met at Luton and travelled to King’s Cross station where, at 8.30am, they were seen hugging before splitting up.
On the eastbound Circle line train at Aldgate, seven people died and 171 were injured. At Edgware Road, a bomb was detonated on the westbound Circle line train, killing seven, including the bomber, and injuring 163. Between King’s Cross and Russell Square, 26 victims were killed and more than 340 injured.
At 9.47am, Hussain, who had walked out of King’s Cross underground station and tried unsuccessfully to contact the other three, detonated his bomb on board the bus. Fourteen people, including Hussain, died and more than 110 were injured.
On Tuesday dozens gathered at Tavistock Square as the time approached 9.47am. During a roadside service the names of the 13 innocent victims were read aloud and a candle of remembrance lit by Dr Peter Holden, one of the doctors attending a nearby British Medical Association conference on the day who rushed to help.
With the other bomb blasts underground, the appalling images of the twisted and tangled bus indelibly symbolised the damage inflicted. Among those gathered was the driver of that bus, George Psaradakis, who brought his own floral tribute. Flowers were also laid at each of the other sites as people stood in silence, visibly moved.
Cameron said it was a day to “recall the incredible resolve and resolution of Londoners and the United Kingdom, a day when we remember the threat that we still face, but, above all it’s a day when we think of the grace and the dignity of the victims’ families for all they have been through and we honour the memory of those victims and all those that were lost 10 years ago today.”
Johnson said: “On the 10th anniversary of the attacks we honour the victims, we remember the sufferings of their families and we pay tribute to the actions of our emergency services on that appalling day.”
The 7/7 killers had “failed in their aim” and “didn’t in any way change the fundamentals of London and what makes this city great”, he said, adding: “Indeed, it’s gone from strength to strength in the 10 years since.”
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said: “Today, the survivors and families of the 7/7 London attacks continue the journey that those of Tunisia have just begun. Our hearts grieve with those who lost loved ones 10 years ago, and with those so suddenly and cruelly bereaved less than a fortnight ago. We hold them all before God and our spirits call out to Christ to strengthen them.”
The 7/7 attacks came the day after a buoyant London had succeeded in its bid for the 2012 Olympics.
Esther Hyman, whose sister Miriam was killed on 7/7, said the 10th anniversary was not a sad day for herself or her mother, Mavis.
“We’re too busy to be miserable. We’re channelling all our energies into constructive work,” she said of the family’s anti-extremism resource for schools, which they hope will be part of Miriam’s legacy. In addition, she said, they considered the “living” memorial to the 31-year-old artist to be not the steel pillars in Hyde Park, but a children’s eye hospital in India set up in Miriam’s memory.
Esther said she had dreaded the first anniversary, but mutual support got the family through. “Since then, I’ve never dreaded it, in fact it’s a funny thing but I almost look forward to it because it’s an uplifting day. She’s gone every day, but the anniversary is always a day that we spend in mutual love and support.”
Three of the bombers had strong connections to the Beeston area of Leeds. At a non-denominational ceremony at Leeds Civic Hall, Hanif Malik, chief executive of the Hamara Centre in Beeston, said the actions of the men were in “complete contradiction” to the values of the Muslim faith, and had left the community shocked.
British mosques hosted “peace iftars” – the meal eaten at sunset during Ramadan to end the day’s fast – before the anniversary, and many were due to hold remembrance events on Tuesday night.
At a national iftar at the Islamic Cultural Centre, Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The best way to defy the terrorist is to increase our bonds of unity, not to single out any one group of people for blame or opprobrium, especially if they had nothing to do with such carnage and have actively spoken out against it.”
Eliza Manningham-Buller, the MI5 director general at the time, spoke on Tuesday of the pressures she faced over the security service’s failure to prevent the incident. “You know you can’t foresee and prevent everything, but you still feel, as we all did – and I think later, when there was time for reflection, we thought it probably quite acutely – the sadness we hadn’t prevented it. But at the time we were really focused on doing our job.
“I can remember when I went home at one or two in the morning, unwinding and no longer at work, I can remember feeling pretty emotional about it,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.