7/7: Une Question
25 April 2011
Progress is being made on a followup film to 7/7: Seeds of
Deconstruction and among the discoveries that will be detailed in the sequel is
the fact that July 7th 2005 was not the first time London had suffered a suicide
bombing. To many people familiar with the 7/7 issues this may seem like it is a
point that has already been made. As we know, within days of the explosions the
police had already identified the supposed culprits and were describing the
attacks as suicide bombings. This BBC report from the 12th July 2005 sums it up:
Police knowing whodunnit? Check. Suicide bombers? Check.
Encouraging of Racial/Cultural/Religious disharmony? Check. Tedious Muslim
analyst cowing to the media, being all apologetic, and failing to talk about the
real questions? Check. The piece even says that this was the first suicide
bombing in Western Europe, thus making the attacks a categorical game-changer or
paradigm-shifter, and of course presuming the West vs Islam Clash of
Civilisations idea. Indeed, if you're looking for a 4 minute summary of
everything that's wrong about how the conversation on 7/7 progressed, this
little video has it all.
But hang on a minute. A little over a year
before 7/7 we had the Atocha bombings in Madrid, carried out by a bunch of
crackpot Islaminformantists, killing nearly 200 people. On the 11th of March
2004 they attacked the Madrid public transport system early in the morning - in
many ways identical to the 7/7 bombings. A few weeks later, so we're told,
several of the suspects blew
themselves up when cornered by the authorities, killing themselves and one
special forces agent and wounding about a dozen other police. So, presuming that
time didn't go backwards between April 2004 and July 2005, then the April 2004
incident was Western Europe's first suicide bombing? Right?
Wrong. The
first suicide bombing took place over a century earlier, in 1894. In the period
1870-1930 the Western world fought a 'war on terror' against the first red
menace - the radical and/or militant aspects of the labour movement, communism
and anarchism. The anarchists in particular seemed to like bombing stuff -
indeed, the first fatal bombing on the London underground was the work of
anarchists, though it seems at the time they blamed the Irish. But their
violence was in many ways the product of infiltrators and provocateurs. The head
of the Russian secret police in Paris, Peter
Rachkovsky, and senior members of the British
Special Branch ran numerous double agents.
As with so many other
stories of this kind throughout history, this process did not only produce
violence including the death of random citizens, it also produced some woeful
miscarriages of justice. The way justice systems deal with the fallout from
covert operations will be the main underlying topic of the sequel to 7/7: Seeds
of Deconstruction but the best example from the Victorian period is that of the
Walsall Anarchists. They were six men arrested in 1892 who were accused of
manufacturing bombs and running a bomb factory. Four were convicted and received
sentences of up to ten years in prison.
The whole thing was a set up.
The key evidence at the trial were letters from members of the group to an
police provocateur called Auguste Coulon. Coulon was an unemployed dreamer who
was obsessed with dynamite and explosions who was recruited by Special Branch
man William Melville. Melville went on to head up the forerunner to MI5. The
letter included diagrams of possible bomb cases that Coulon provided advice on
and encouraged the group to make. They never actually made any cases, though
that didn't stop the police making some to be used as evidence at the trial. The
judge supported the detectives who testified at the trial when they refused to
answer any questions about Coulon, who of course was never arrested and got paid
a large sum of money for his role in the plot. A nice summary of the case can be
downloaded here,
in the form of a fact sheet provided by the museum of Walsall.
A couple
of years later, in February 1894, a young French anarchist called Martial
Bourdin blew himself up in Greenwich Park, not far from the Royal Observatory.
The explosion blasted off one of his hands and caused a large injury to his
stomach but he was found moments after, still alive. He was taken to hospital
and died about half an hour later. So what the hell was Bourdin doing? Various
theories have been put forward. One is that the anarchists were targeting the
Observatory, which the global meridian line runs through. As a symbol of
modernity and global organisation, two things anarchists didn't like very much,
it isn't a bad target. This became the basis for Joseph Conrad's fictional
adaptation of the Bourdin story in his book The Secret Agent.
According
to this version, Bourdin's brother-in-law HB Samuels, who was then-editor of the
anarchist journal The Commonweal, gave the bomb to Bourdin so that he could go
and throw it at the Observatory. Bourdin presumably tripped up or had some other
accident and so the bomb went off prematurely, killing him. Another similar
intepretation is that Bourdin was supposed to be delivering the bomb to other
anarchists who were to use it overseas, perhaps in France or Russia, and again
that Bourdin died in an accident. This account was put forward by Patrick
McIntyre, another Special Branch officer who had fallen out with Melville over
his role in setting up the Walsall Anarchists. McIntyre found himself demoted
for his protests, so he quit the police and published his memoirs in the
newspaper, blowing the whistle on the infiltration operations.
When
writing about Auguste Coulon he commented:
This same description could of course be applied to numerous such
provocateurs. On the basis of what informants had told him, McIntyre offered
this summary of the Bourdin plot:
A further alternative is that Bourdin did not know he was even
carrying a bomb and thought he was delivering something else. This is the
interpretation/adaptation of the story that appears in Alfred Hitchcock's film
version Sabotage.
A yet further version is that Samuels set up Bourdin in a sting
operation and that police were waiting nearby to arrest Bourdin in possession of
a bomb. This is suggested by a contemporary NY
Times article that details how police had seen Bourdin and another man
leaving a house near the Autonomie Club (the London anarchist hub) earlier in
the day.
So, what happened? For even more on the problems with the Bourdin
story I recommend this paper, but
there is some key information largely overlooked by the existing discussion. For
one, confirming suspicion at the time, Bourdin's brother-in-law HB
Samuels was an associate of Auguste Coulon and a police agent of some kind.
Author Alex Butterworth used the FOIA to obtain a copy of a police ledger of
informants that substantiates not only McIntyre's claims but many more.
Perhaps more importantly, there was political pressure for Bourdin's
death to be ruled a suicide. From Hansard,
the only mention of Bourdin is from Charles Darling (the 1st Baron Darling) who
said:
MR DARLING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department a question of which I have given him private notice. It is whether his attention has been called to the statement that the coroner for Greenwich has been asked to deliver up the body of Martial Bourdin, and that the Anarchists of London propose to make it the occasion of a public funeral; whether there is not reason to suppose that Martial Bourdin came by his death in the course of a felonious act; and whether his own death, resulting from this, would not properly be found to be felo de se? In that case, does not the law provide for the disposal of the body? I wish further to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman will interfere in this matter, having regard to the action which the French Government found it necessary to take in the case of the Anarchist Vaillant?
The reason was that at the time suicide was still a crime (felo de se, to be a felon against oneself, a self-murderer). If Bourdin's death were ruled a suicide then the State could confiscate his possessions and decide how to dispose of his body. Darling was concerned that a public funeral for Bourdin would provide a means for public demonstration by anarchists, hence he wanted the Home Secretary to 'interfere in this matter'. In the event, the Home Secretary refused the request, saying:
MR. ASQUITH: That would certainly be a most extraordinary proceeding, considering that the jury have not yet found a verdict of felo de se. I do not know whether the hon. Member proposes that either I or the coroner should keep the body above ground until the jury has found a verdict.
MR. DARLING: Yes.
MR. ASQUITH: I certainly decline to do anything of the kind
The funeral took place a few days later, and there was a large
demonstration by anarchists who clashed with police. The New York Times reported
that when one senior anarchist tried to deliver an oration when Bourdin's coffin
was being lowered, he was seized by police and removed from the cemetery.
So what was the inquest verdict? From The
Mercury:
Despite virtually no evidence showing that Bourdin had any
intention of dying (and large amounts of money in his pockets suggesting he
actively intended to live), the verdict was suicide. That's right, over a
hundred years ago Britain suffered its first suicide bombing. Bizarrely,
historian David Rooney denied this, saying in a 2009
podcast that 'It wasn't a suicide bomb, it had gone off by mistake'. One
wonders if he would have said that before 7/7, or whether he is actually aware
of the inquest verdict in Bourdin's case.
So, we have a supposedly
radical movement heavily infiltrated by provocateurs and spies. We have a man in
London blown to pieces by a bomb, who never explained what had happened and died
shortly after the explosion. We have political pressure for a verdict of suicide
that is born out at the inquest, and we have widespread ignorance/denial from
both academics and the mainstream media. Even though Bourdin almost certainly
did not intend to kill himself, by the official record he was Europe's first
terrorist suicide bomber.
There is one other possibility, not explored
above. Bourdin could have been what the IRA called a 'human bomb' or 'proxy
bomb'. Typically, a man's family would be kidnapped and he would be threated
with their torture or death and be forced to drive a car-bomb into a military
checkpoint or other installation. Along with the 'real' suicide bomber there is
the 'unwitting' suicide bomber and the 'unintentional' suicide bomber and the
'unwilling' suicide bomber. To the naked eye, after the explosion, it is
virtually impossible to tell the difference which has occurred. Yet, as the
video at the top of this article shows, it was only a matter of days before the
police had decided not only who was responsible for 7/7, but that it was
Britain's 'first' (to the very forgetful/ignorant) suicide bombing. We have to
wonder: did they even consider any other possibility?
In a couple of
weeks we will have the verdict from the inquests into the 52 certain victims of
the 7/7 bombings, at which point Lady Justice Hallett will decide whether to
hold inquests in the deaths of the four alleged bombers. The J7 group posted a
lengthy
explanation of the reason why inquests into the four should take place,
indeed, must take place. They submitted the same to Hallett, who now has no
excuses for deciding against holding them. If the last few months are anything
to go by then what we'll get is more gameshow-style inquests where everyone in
the audience knows what the answer is but for some reason none of the
contestants, I mean witnesses and evidence, seem to be able to remember it.
To finish this time, another little extract from McIntyre's memoirs. He
was a very early whistleblower into this sort of police/security service
corruption, and therefore is of far more historical significance than he is
recognised as being. This is his impression of the actual spirit of the
anarchists and the danger they posed (or rather, didn't pose):
