Patrick Comerford
Today has marked to the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 bombing attacks in London, four suicide bombings on 7 July 2005, including three at tube stations and a fourth on a bus at Tavistock Square.
I thought of those bombings and the victims as we travelled into London yesterday for Choral Evensong in Southwark Cathedral. Two trains, one after another, were delayed for the best part of an an hour, while trains on other routes were cancelled. The delays were due to a lighting strike on a train further south along the line, we were told. But I thought back to 7 July 2005 and how initial reports that morning suggested the unfolding rail chaos in London had been caused by a power outage.
As we continued our journey yesterday through Euston Station yesterday and on the Underground, I thought – as I think so often in that part of London – of both the bus bombing in Tavistock Square on 7/7 and the gardens in that Bloomsbury square which I always associate with peace and nonviolence campaigns.
The 7/7 London bombings on 7 July 2005 were four co-ordinated suicide attacks that targeted morning rush-hour commuters on public transport. Three suicide bombers, who had travelled together from Luton, separately detonated three home-made bombs in quick succession on underground trains in Inner London; a fourth bomber who travelled with them later detonated another bomb on a bus in Tavistock Square.
The underground bombings were on the Circle Line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road, and on the Piccadilly Line between the Liverpool Street and Russell Square stattions and exploded within 50 seconds of each other. The bomb at Tavistock Square was detonated by 18-year-old Hasib Hussain on a No 30 double-decker bus. The bus had been diverted from its normal route along Euston Road because of traffic disruption caused by the other three bombings at tube stations, and exploded outside the offices of the British Medical Association.
As well as the four bombers, 52 people of 18 different nationalities were killed that fatal day 20 years ago, and almost 800 people were injured in the attacks. Seven of the victims were killed at Aldgate, six at Edgware Road, 26 at King’s Cross and Russell Square, and 13 at Tavistock Square. It was planned and co-ordinated to the finest deatil and it was the deadliest terrorist attack in the UK since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988.
By the end of the day on 7 July 2005, Britain had changed. As Tanjil Rashid says in his column in the current edition of the New Statesman (4-10 July 2025), ‘it was the 7 July bombings, not 9/11, that put Muslims at the centre of terror discourse’ in the UK. ‘London’s multicultural innocence’ was lost, and, he writes, in the feverish aftermath Islamophobia soared.
In contrast, three features have led to Tavistock Square being seen by many peace campaigners as a peace park or garden. These three memorials are the focus of annual ceremonies and I revisited all three twice within the past few weeks.
The centre-piece of the gardens in Tavistock Square is the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) by the Polish-born sculptor Fredda Brilliant (1903-1999). It was unveiled by the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in May 1968. The hollow pedestal is used, as intended, by people leaving e floral tributes to the peace campaigner who led the nonviolent resistance to oppression in South Africa and colonial rule in India.
A cherry tree in memory of the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was planted in the gardens by the Mayor of Camden, Millie Miller, in 1967. That tree inspired my proposal for planting the Hiroshima Cherry Tree in Merrion Square, Dublin, by the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 45 years ago, on 6 August 1980. The 80th anniversaries of those bombings are being commemorated next month on 6 and 9 August.
At the north gate of the square, the Conscientious Objectors’ Commemorative Stone by Hugh Court commemorates ‘all those who have established and are maintaining the right to refuse to kill’ and the ‘men and women conscientious objectors all over the world and in every age’.
The stone was first proposed in 1976 at the funeral of a conscientious objector, Joseph Brett, who had been imprisoned in 1916, and the erection of memorial was co-ordinated by the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). It is the work of Hugh Court of Architects for Peace and the sculptor Paul Wehrle and it was unveiled by the composer Sir Michael Tippett, President of the PPU and a former Conscientious Objector, on 15 May 1994, International Conscientious Objectors’ Day.
The focus of Tavistock Square on peace commemorations is enhanced by its proximity to Friends House on Euston Road, the main offices in London of Quakers who have facilitated and supported so many of peace and nonviolence campaigns.
Tavistock Square takes its name from the courtesy title Marquess of Tavistock, usually used by the eldest sons of the Dukes of Bedford. The square was laid out in 1806 by the property developer James Burton and the builder Thomas Cubitt for Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, and was part of the Bedford Estate. At the same time, Cubitt also developed Gordon Square nearby, so that the two squares form a pair among the many squares and gardens in Bloomsbury.
Tavistock House, once the home of James Burton and then of Charles Dickens, stood on the east side of the square. It was demolished in 1901, and BMA House, headquarters of the British Medical Association, was built originally for the Theosophical Society on the site and was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. The square gives its name to the Tavistock Clinic, founded in 1920 initially to treat shell-shock victims of World War I, although it has since moved to Swiss Cottage.
At the south-east corner of the square is a bust of the writer Virginia Woolf, cast from a sculpture by Stephen Tomlin and unveiled in 2004. She lived at 52 Tavistock Square in 1924-1939, when she and Leonard Woolf ran the Hogarth Press, publishing works by TS Eliot, EM Forster and Katherine Mansfield, as well as translations of Sigmund Freud.
Nearby, in Gordon Square, Shenda Armery’s bronze sculpture of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore was unveiled by Prince Charles (now King Charles) on 7 July 2011 to commemorate Tagore’s 150th birthday.
That date marked the anniversary of the 7/7 bombings, and in his speech Prince Charles referred to the 7/7 anniversary and hoped the sculpture would ‘shine out as a beacon of tolerance, understanding and of unity in diversity.’ He descried Tagore’s work as ‘very relevant for our time, particularly his understanding of a principle which is so dear to me, so much so that I have made it the title of a recently published book – Harmony.’
At that unveiling, Kalyan Kundu, founder and chair of the Tagore Centre UK, also referred to the 7/7 bombings and described ‘the unveiling of a statue of an apostle of peace’ as ‘a significant and timely reminder that a world of resentment and fear benefits no one and only brings with it pain.’
After the 7/7 bombings 20 years ago, 52 people who never came home; countless more are still living with the invisible echoes of that morning. May we hold their memory with care — and never take peace for granted.
At the end of the day, as we returned home from Southwark Cathedral last night, we were conscious that we were travelling on some of the lines and passing through some of the stations hit by the 7/7 bombers 20 years ago, and I remembered the words in the lesser litany and responses at Choral Evensong a few hours earlier:
Give peace in our time O Lord;
because there is none other that fighteth for us,
but only thou, O God.
And once again I prayed the second and third collects at Evensong, for Peace and for Aid against all Perils:
O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed: Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give; that both our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments, and also that by thee,, we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
