While the world blew up, the TUC carried on with its composite motion
PETER OBORNE
Iwas sitting with a group of political journalists in the Brighton conference centre waiting for Tony Blair to deliver his speech to the TUC when word spread about the attacks on America. We had been discussing the Prime Minister's forthcoming speech with keen, almost ghoulish, interest. I still have the copy of this speech, which was issued well in advance for the benefit of the evening papers. One day, for sure, Tony Blair's never-delivered argument for public-service reform will become a sad little collector's item. The lobby was expecting the Prime Minister to run into trouble, though, as one tabloid political editor ruefully confided, -It won't be a story for us unless he's actually heckled.'
Then somebody got a phone call and turned on the television. We all watched. There was a very long silence. Journalists pride themselves on being hard-bitten and taking a casual, relaxed, seen-it-all-before attitude. Often this is appropriate, for instance from a battle-hardened war correspondent under fire. Sometimes it misses the point, or worse. I will not name the well-known left-wing columnist whose response was, 'What I want to know is how they knew that Tony Blair was coming to speak here at Brighton today.' Or the journalist who turned to me and simply said, 'Great pictures.'
After a short while the buzz went round that the Prime Minister was rewriting his speech. Bill Morris, the TGWU boss who was chairing the conference, stood up and announced that a calamity had occurred and that the Prime Minister's speech had been delayed. The delegates took it all in their stride, remained in their seats and listened to yet more details about composite motions. I did not see one trade unionist leave the chamber to seek more information.
There was a lot more milling around in the press room, and by now plenty of journalists were making the same ghastly, sick comment about how Blair was lucky that the bombing had eclipsed his TUC speech. President Bush came up on the screen with his first response, and afterwards he was criticised by one BBC journalist, who works for a current affairs programme, for failing to set the right 'tone'. The BBC journalist compared Bush's performance unfavourably with Tony Blair who, he said, had risen to the occasion after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. 'Wish we had Clinton now rather than Bush,' said the same journalist. He would negotiate, not retaliate.'
I went into the chamber to listen to Blair. One of the problems with the Prime Minister is that he has so often given his strangulated, highly charged expressions of sympathy for victims of every passing tragedy that he cannot easily rise to an occasion like the one that confronted him on Tuesday. He apologised for returning to London, and then the delegates gave him a standing ovation. After the Prime Minister had left the hall they sat down again and, to my amazement. carried on with the business of the day. Again, I did not see a single soul leave the room.
The Prime Minister left the hall and, followed by a tight group of aides, security people, press men and television cameras, marched swiftly out to the back entrance where his car was waiting. I only got to the back of this mêlée and could not see, but I was told later that an anti-smoking bore was positioned outside. The man accosted Tony Blair and subjected him to a lecture about the government's failure to ban tobacco advertising — an interesting moment to choose as the defences of the West were being triumphantly breached.
After that I went back to the press room, got my things and watched more of the horror on television. It made you physically ill, and miserable inside. There was concern about a BBC correspondent who had been inside one of the buildings. Then it was known that he was OK. In due course a spokesman from the TUC came by and announced that the proceedings had been suspended for the remainder of the day. I left the centre, walked up to the railway station and sat down in a first-class carriage.
I had that morning's newspapers with me and tried to read them but could not, because they had suddenly become irrele vant. The world had changed. After a while it chanced that a group including two Cabinet ministers, some officials and others came down the carriage and sat beside me. There was the usual semi-friendly, semihostile banter that happens when journalists meet politicians. For some of the journey back, to my surprise, they talked about public-service reform. Perhaps it was like Drake carrying on playing bowls as the Armada sailed up the Channel. Perhaps it was easier to talk about the peacetime problems of the world we had just left behind than the bleak, murderous future.
But after a while we did talk about it. They were cautious with me, and properly so. Often they were interrupted by calls and officials whispering messages about Cobra and evacuations and so forth. We agreed that there would be more security, and one minister wondered whether all the security in the world would solve this problem. I got the feeling that ID cards are now inevitable, and everyone agreed that attitudes will now change sharply to the asylum-seekers, many of them fundamentalist Muslims, coming from across the Channel.
These politicians really did not have a clue. How could they? They are ordinary men and women, who have a background in honestly trying, but miserably failing, to improve schools, hospitals and public transport. Now they are up against something quite different.
Out there — no one knows where — there is a well-funded, highly organised, utterly committed intelligence with a single purpose: to destroy the West, It shares none of our values, and hates everything we love. It perceives, very accurately, that we are a selfish, materialistic society. It has at its command an ideology shared by hundreds of millions that the West is evil. This intelligence knows where we are. We do not know where it is, except that it will strike again, and yesterday was just a beginning. For those of us born in the postwar era there have been two big dates. The fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to augur freedom and prosperity. This week's attack on the US opens an era of darkness, confusion and death.
But the train was slowing down at Victoria station. The entourage of politicians, in all their ignorance and bafflement, strode off to waiting cars. The fact that London Underground was closed down did not, for the moment, concern them.
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