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May 05, 2007

Grief, anxiety, and the politics of remembering the 7/7 attacks

With new information emerging about the 7/7 London bombings, there have been new calls for an independent inquiry. I'm particularly interested in what Blair had to say about this in the UK Parliament: "We have to be clear about the reason why people want another inquiry. I totally understand both the grief of the victims of 7/7 and their anxiety to have another inquiry, but the reason why people want another inquiry is for it to reach a different conclusion." Blair appears to be using the understandable grief of victims and their families as a reason why their calls for an independent inquiry should not be taken entirely 'seriously'.

I'd be very concerned by such tactics: a politics of remembering/commeration needs to take account of emotional responses to what went wrong in the past. One might note, for example, the way that the anti-war Vietnam veterans were able to use their experiences of and responses to conflict - and in some cases the trauma resulting from this...what came to be called PTSD - as part of their political action.

Grief and anxiety resulting from the events of 7/7, and from the wider conflict of the 'war on terror', should play a part in our political responses to it. When politicians try to exclude these emotions - perhaps in order to construct a 'rational' position - this should be treated with considerable caution.

Posted by jon_mendel at May 5, 2007 10:19 PM

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