Calm down America, attacks won’t break UK

When I rolled my wheelchair out of my apartment block Sunday morning - mere hours after three attackers killed seven a few hundred yards away in London Bridge and Borough Market - the most striking thing was the sense of calm.

American headlines such as that in the New York Times describing the country as “reeling” are wide off the mark. Indeed, mocking such coverage is itself a coping strategy for us. If anything, London and Manchester in particular - like New York after 9/11 - are showing a muscular, communal self-confidence since coming under attack in recent weeks.

As in World War Two, when London and other cities endured the repeated air raids of the Blitz, people are scared but not prepared to show weakness. There’s a robust, almost savage pride in the armed police response that left all three attackers dead within eight minutes of the first emergency call.

Acts of courage

By the time police arrived, it now appears that the three knife-wielding militants were being pushed back by customers wielding bottles and chairs. A Romanian baker hit one over the head with a crate. Such tales will stick in British mythology for a long time. Knowing that corner of London, I would expect nothing less.

No one doubts the UK is facing a serious problem. With the May 22 Manchester bombing, as well as the vehicle and knife attack in Westminster exactly two months earlier, the tempo of attacks on civilians is now even greater than at the height of Irish Republican Army bombing campaigns in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Britons don’t believe America covered itself in glory after the recent attacks. The ludicrous inability of the US national security infrastructure to keep even the most basic operational detail secret after the Manchester bombing provoked widespread frustration amongst both officials and the public.

President Donald Trump’s tweets have hardly helped, particularly his attacks on London’s first Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan. For all the assumptions that the attacks would inflame communal tensions, the opposite may be happening, most particularly in the affected cities.

Sunday night’s Manchester concert, showcasing a range of local and international artists and attendees from across ethnic communities, was a particularly striking show of solidarity.

Some parts of Britain’s security response worked well, others less so. Gaps have been identified. There is now a genuine and urgent debate on what to do next.

Britain’s police might be under-resourced and mostly unarmed, but they have proved amongst the best in the world when it comes to an immediate response. They have been preparing for situations like these since the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 164 dead, and both their training and efforts in refining command-and-control paid off on Saturday night.

That’s not to say there have not been oversights elsewhere. Government buildings in places like Whitehall have long been surrounded by bollards, but concrete obstacles were not put in place on London’s most important bridges until Monday morning, more than a day after the attacks. That should have happened sooner.

Homegrown solution

In many respects, Britain’s Muslim communities hold the key to stopping assaults claimed by groups like Islamic State, whether carried out by recent British converts, second-generation migrants or anyone else.

No one disputes that there have been problems in integration, even if talk of predominantly Muslim “no go areas” in the UK remains a gross over-exaggeration.

The good news, however, is that it appears friends and relatives of the attackers in both Manchester and London had already expressed concern about them to the authorities. On Sunday, the Muslim Council of Britain announced a new campaign to ensure that happens more often.

That says something reassuring about Britain’s relationship with its Muslim population.

The potent public response to the latest attacks sends a different message. It tells would-be assailants they will be swiftly gunned down and dubbed cowards.

But it also offers them a real option to find their place in a society that welcomes diversity while venerating crate-throwing bakers, concert-goers and armed response officers.

There will almost certainly be more attacks - or attempts at them. But they will bring the country closer together, not the other way around.

Britain has always relished defining itself as under attack. At times that can be toxic - as it may yet prove with Brexit.

But in my grandparents’ time, that dogged determination held off Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and created the Welfare State.

The nation is perfectly capable of producing such greatness again.

Mr Apps is ReutersGlobal Affairs columnist