Around Town

Do you think you’ll ever see a year as momentous as this again?

KL You say year, but it was three weeks – Live 8 through to July 21. The Great Fire, the Black Death or The Blitz – they were all greater than that July was, but I can’t think of any time when I’ve had this tremendous sense of triumph and then tragedy. It was such a switchback of confusing emotions. It was an amazing time. I’d always known we would be attacked, it was only a question of when, but because we’d got away with it for four years, I was beginning to dream perhaps we might keep on getting away with it.

Was your immediate reaction to the bombs a disciplined one or did your emotions take hold?

KL Remember, I spent four years in preparation for it. After 9/11 we went through every aspect of life in London that could be a target, and how we would respond. We had a working party that asked ‘Suppose 10,000 people are killed – where would you have a mortuary for 10,000 people? If it’s a gas or biological attack, how much more will need decontamination and where will that be? If Canary Wharf is demolished, where does the rubble go?’ Feature continues

We spent four years focusing on this morbid detail, so it was almost part of my life. I’d be weeding in the garden, but my thoughts would be about rubble sites. I’d be swimming and my thoughts would be about what to tell people at that first immediate point when there could be panic. I was thinking about the part played in America by Mayor Giuliani, particularly while George Bush was not to be found anywhere. I knew there would be a real focus on that. I also thought Londoners would respond in a much more disciplined way than we saw in some other places simply because we’ve had a war, the IRA, and we’ve got a very good system – the police turn up and they tell you what to do and that’s what you do. On top of that you’ve got 24-hour news from radio.

All the international media were just amazed at the discipline, the lack of panic. It slotted into place perfectly. We planned for every possible scenario. One was multiple bomb attacks on the transport system on a Friday-evening rush-hour with myself dead in the first wave of attacks, Scotland Yard destroyed and the government either dead or out of London.

In that scenario would you be dead because City Hall had been blown up?

KL Yes. We actually tried to ensure that whatever form the attack took, if the political and police leadership were taken out in the first strike, further down the command chain it would all still work. And it did.