Twenty years after 7/7, remembering calls for peace and nonviolence in Bloomsbury sculptures

The memorial honouring the 7/7 victims in Tavistock Square Gardens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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.

The centre-piece of the gardens in Tavistock Square is the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi by Fredda Brilliant (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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.

The cherry tree in Tavistock Square in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs in 1945 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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.

The Conscientious Objectors Commemorative Stone by Hugh Court and Paul Wehrle by the north gate in Tavistock Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Easter 1822 and memories of the Massacre of Chios 200 years ago

‘Scenes from the Massacres at Chios’, Eugène Delacroix (1824), in the Louvre in Paris … the massacre began 200 years ago on Easter Day 1822

Patrick Comerford

I visited the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford a few times this weekend to see the Orthodox celebrations of Good Friday (22 April 2022), and the celebrations of Easter last night (23 April).

Today is Easter Day in the Greek calendar in the calendar of all Orthodox churches.

But it is difficult today not to be reminded that Easter Day in Greece 200 years ago was marked by the Massacre of Chios in April 1822.

The Massacre of Chios is one of the many horrific events during the Greek War of Independence. The details of this massacre continue to shock and to horrify people as they learn about it.

The island of Chios is an Aegean island that is often counted as one of the Dodecanese islands, and it is just 8 km off the main Anatolian coast of Turkey.

The Chians or Chiots -- the islanders of Chios – never joined in the Greek War of Independence, and enjoyed many privileges under Ottoman rule, including a degree of autonomy, religious freedom, property rights, and exemptions from many taxes on houses, vineyards, orchards and trade.

The islanders had avoided threats of forced conversion to Islam experienced on so many Greek islands, and they were exempt from the devshirme, in which the fittest and strongest boys in families were captured or conscripted and sent to Constantinople, where they were trained as janissaries, an elite and brutal corps.

The island was known for the production of mastic, silk and citrus fruits, and for its sea trade. Many merchant families from Chios dealt in banking, insurance and shipping and founded merchant houses in England, Italy and the Netherlands. Traders from Chios settled in Smyrna, Constantinople, Odessa and other Black Sea ports.

It is easy to understand why the people of Chios rebutted an appeal to support a naval assault on the Ottoman Empire in April 1821. But, a year later, in April 1822, a small number of people from Chios joined a small band from the neighbouring island of Samos who attacked the small Turkish garrison on Chios.

A small number of soldiers were killed. But the response was swift, brutal and merciless.

The bloodbath began on Easter Day 1822 and continued for several months. In a revenge attack in June 1822, Greek insurgents from the neighbouring island of Psara attacked a flagship of the Ottoman navy anchored in the harbour of Chios while its sailors were marking the end of Ramadan. In all, 2,000 men were killed in one assault.

A second wave of savagery was unleashed against the people of Chios.

The original population of the island was 100,000 to 120,000. At least 30,000 were murdered or executed or died by suicide or disease, and another 45,000 people were sold into slavery. Whole villages were wiped out. Of the survivors, about 20,000 people managed to flee to safety on islands under Greek rule.

Richard Calvocoressi, a descendant of one such family from Chios, wrote recently in the New Statesman: ‘For months afterwards the slave markets of the Levant were glutted with Chian boys, girls and young women, for sale at knock-down prices; and for many, slavery meant sexual slavery.’

The massacre inspired Eugène Delacroix’s Scenes from the Massacres at Chios or Scènes des massacres de Scio, completed in 1824. It is an enormous painting in the Louvre seen by millions of visitors each year.

The massacre caused an outcry throughout Europe. Reports of the massacre, Delacroix’s painting and Byron’s writings encouraged Philhellenes to redouble their efforts in support of Greek independence from Ottoman oppression. But Ottoman continued for another 90 years, and Chios did not become part of the modern Greek state until 1912.

Although the composer Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021) is popularly identified with Crete and was buried there when he died last year, he was born on the island of Chios.

Today, Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, and is one of the Aegean islands that have become a centre for asylum seekers and refugees seeking to arrive in Europe.

Two hundred years after the Massacre of Chios, it is hard not to think of those merchants in Odessa and the brutality in Ukraine today; it is hard not to think of the refugees and slaves created by the massacre and not to think of the refugees and asylum seekers who arrive in Chios and other Greek islands in the hope of finding freedom today.

At Passover, the bread of affliction and bitter herbs are reminders of the call for freedom and liberty

Patrick Comerford

Passover begins this evening (15 April 2022), and continues until Shabbat next week (23 April 2022).

The Seder is a fascinating mix. On one hand, people recline and drink wine, demonstrating how free we are. Yet, people also eat matzah, the ‘bread of affliction,’ and bitter herbs, stark reminders that our freedom and liberty are not complete.

As Jewish families and friends gather this evening, some for the first time in two years, there may be much to be grateful for. At the same time, many people are acutely aware that this Passover comes at a very challenging time for people from Ukraine, both those who have fled and those who remain.

So, as people lift their glasses in praise, it is time this evening to pray for the day when the process that began at the Exodus will climax in the moment when ‘nations will not lift their swords against another’ and ‘all will know Me.’

Kevin Martin, part of my extended family and an active member of the Spanish and Portuguese or Sephardi community in London, sent me Passover greetings earlier this week in the form of a YouTube link to Vanessa Paloma singing Una Cabrito, a Sephardic Passover song.


Yalda Hakim is an Afghan-born broadcast journalist, news presenter and documentary maker. She predominantly presents on BBC World News.

In a recent Lviv Diary in the New Stateman, she recalls how she first became intrigued by Lviv when she read Philippe Sandss’ remarkable book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (2016).

This is a compelling family memoir that also tells the story of the Jewish legal minds that sowed the seeds for human rights law at the Nuremberg trials. Once a major cultural centre of Europe, Lviv changed hands at least eight times between 1914 and 1945. She says, ‘It is a heartbreakingly beautiful city of shifting borders and identities: throughout its history it has been known as Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov or Lviv, depending on who controlled it.’

In the current edition of New Statesman, the French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, a leading Jewish imtellectual from a north African Sephardic family, recalls Benya Krik, one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature, in The Odessa Tales, by Isaac Babel (1894-1940). Babel was born in Odessa to Jewish parents; he is acclaimed by many critics as ‘the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry,’ and he was murdered in a Stalinist purge.

Lévy also describes a recent meeting with Professor Alexander Garachuk of the Odessa Mechnikov National University ‘under the blue and white tent through which a stream of refugees pass.’

Professor Garachuk, with his mischievous look and tousled white mane, introduced ‘himself by saying that he has never known for sure whether he was Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, German or French,’ and Lévy says this ‘embodies the spirit of Odessa, which Pushkin defined as a happy blend of cosmopolitanism, libertarian ¬humour and irony.’

Lévy asserts that antisemitism is a burning question in Ukraine, and is ‘particularly salient’ in Odessa, where, before World War II, Jews made up half the population but now number no more than 40,000.

The Holocaust Memorial on Prokhorovka Street is in the old Jewish quarter of Moldavanka. ‘It is a strange monument composed of five skeletal silhouettes whose feet are caught up in a ring of barbed wire and who appear to be engaged in a danse macabre. Leading up to it is a path of silver birches, each symbolising one of the Righteous among Nations who sheltered Jews during the Holocaust.’

There Lévy met Roman Shvartsman, one of the last remaining survivors of Stalin’s ‘Holocaust by Bullets.’ Shvartsman asks Lévy and his companions whether they are ‘aware that Ukraine is, according to the records of Yad Vashem, one of the top four countries in terms of its numbers of the Righteous? He says this softly. Sadly.’

In the middle of recounting the massacres that followed the arrival of Romanian troops in October 1941, an old man begins to cry. Referring to Putin, he asks, ‘Is he weeping for the Righteous over whom he stands watch? For the dead whom he serves as a living tomb? Or for the madness of men taking up again with a ghost of Hitler, a doppelgänger who, while pretending to be “denazifying Ukraine” has the temerity to cloak himself in the memory of the victims? I do not know.’

The people of Ukraine truly are eating the ‘bread of affliction’ and bitter herbs this Passover, stark reminders that our freedom and liberty are not complete until all are free and are guaranteed thier liberty.

Shabbat Shalom

Chag Pesach Sameach