The Anniversary of the Manchester Arena jihad bombing

May 23, 2023

comes hard on the heels of the jihad murder of Lee Rigby. One serving soldier followed by the deaths of 22 civilians, mostly (and targeted deliberately) girls and women.

I have posted this song before, last July when Morrissey introduced it into his set in Las Vegas. He sang it again in Manchester (his home city) in October last year. Listen to the cheers it received from the Mancunian audience; read the comments.

Then, if you are not angry enough, read this about the lack of support and counselling available to the girls who survived.

When the following month (Manchester 22nd May 2017, Grenfell 14th June 2017, one an act of vile murder the other a tragic accident albeit one that should have been prevented) the Grenfell Tower block in London caught light the authorities rushed to succour and support the survivors (who were mostly Muslim) to the extent that fraudulent claims from people who didn’t live in the flats are still being prosecuted. I thought that at last the lessons of Hillsborough had been learnt. It took the survivors and bereaved of Liverpool 25 years to struggle to get an inquiry about how that completely avoidable disaster happened. For non UK readers this was a incident at a football match when 92 Liverpool FC supporters were crushed to death. Certain senior police officers made poor decisions in supervising the crowd and lied to cover up. Hence the 25 years struggle.

Sadly the initiative to support survivors and the bereaved didn’t extend as far as the Manchester deaths. The Manchester Arena enquiry took place more quickly, which is good, but these two articles in the Telegraph and Sky News made uneasy reading last night.

One of the less sympathetic comments suggests that modern children lack resilience and ponders how they would have coped with the Blitz. I wasn’t born until after the Blitz, but I was born into a London still pock-marked by bombing surrounded by people to whom it was a recent and very real experience. I would say that the difference is the neighbourliness and community spirit which still existed then. Family and neighbours held each other up through trouble. And they knew who their enemy was. The Axis powers were a definite entity. They knew who the bombs were coming from and that the government had an active defence and attack.