On the 7th of July 2005, I was working for the NHS on Teesside as the Chief Executive of a Primary Care Trust. That mostly meant commissioning healthcare and managing primary care services. We were a bit unusual in that we directly ran three small community hospitals — complete with beds, minor injuries units, and a rather lovely, if mothballed, operating theatre.
That morning, my then-wife and baby son were on a train heading to London. So was my dad. Early reports started trickling in — vague stories online and on the news about problems on the London Underground.
At 9am, my pager went off with a codeword I didn’t recognise. Back then, we had an “on-call” case — a solid metal pilot’s briefcase containing everything you’d need for a major incident, including a book of codewords. It was there in case we ever had to work out whether Hartlepool nuclear power station had blown up, and which primary school gyms would be turned into temporary mortuaries.
Our Director of Public Health received the same codeword and didn’t recognise it either. I asked her to bring the incident case and kit to my office — just in case we had to respond.
Before she arrived, the CEO of James Cook University Hospital — the big tertiary centre in Middlesbrough — called me. He did know what the codeword meant. He’d taken part in a secret emergency exercise. That’s when I found out why the codeword wasn’t in the NHS manual.
It was military.
There was a contingency plan: if there were mass casualties from a terrorism or war, James Cook would convert into a military hospital. Teesside Airport would become a military airbase to fly casualties in. I won’t give away all the operational details, but let’s just say the positioning of an underused civilian airport near Darlington, a massive NHS hospital in Middlesbrough, and Catterick Garrison wasn’t a coincidence.
Our hospitals would take all the non-critical NHS cases so James Cook could focus on military triage.
It turned out that if central London hospitals were overwhelmed, it was faster to airlift casualties from City Airport to Teesside than divert them to Watford or Luton.
I texted my wife and told her to get off the train. I couldn’t reach my dad — he carried on trying to get to London until the police turned him back.
Why was I so shaken? Because nine years earlier, I’d been in Manchester on Saturday 15th June 1996 — the day of the IRA bombing.
I was newly married. My wife was doing a medical course in Manchester, and Euro ’96 was in full swing. The night before, I’d gone drinking with a bunch of jubilant Czech fans celebrating their victory over Italy. I was a bit foggy the next morning, but I headed off to the Paul Smith sale at the Arndale Centre.
Just before I got there, I remembered through the beery haze I’d promised to pick up the latest New England Journal of Medicine from the medical school bookshop. I got off the bus, walked back a stop, and started rummaging through the medical journals.
Then it all went oddly quiet.
The assistant and I stepped outside. The streets were empty. Then a massive metallic bang — like someone dropping a manhole cover on concrete. No crowds. No noise. Just eerie silence. I paid and walked back towards the Arndale.
Around the corner, I saw a chip shop with its windows blown out. People were bleeding. My first thought: which daft bastard has bombed a chippie?
Then I realised the whole shopping centre was gone.
Somehow the bookshop had been missed in the evacuation, and I was one of a few hundred trapped inside the blast zone. Troops in black battle dress marched us into a column. We were told to avoid plate glass — there might be secondary devices. Easier said than done in a city centre full of shopfronts.
After a short march under armed guard, we were left to find our own way home. No phones, no buses, no taxis.
So I did the sensible thing: found an open pub, had a couple of pints, and watched the football.
Later, I made it back to the hotel. My wife’s course had been cancelled, and she had no idea where I was — only that I’d been heading for the Arndale. When she saw the room key still at reception, she feared the worst. She wandered the hotel in shock — until she heard a suspiciously loud roar from one of the rooms.
There I was: covered in brick dust, still drinking with the same Czech fans — right at the moment Paul Gascoigne skipped past Hendry and slammed the ball into the net.
I suffered the after-effects for months — but it never once occurred to me to blame Christians, or Catholics, or the Irish.
And it never occurred to me to blame Muslims — or my Muslim friends, or Asians more generally — for 7/7.
But every time something awful happens, the same reflex kicks in: blame Muslims. Or blame immigrants. Or blame immigrant Muslims. Or non-white people, full stop.
Britain used to be famous for being calm in a crisis — cool heads, stiff upper lips, blitz spirit. In Manchester 29 years ago, that still held. Less so after 7/7, when the Metropolitan Police tragically shot Jean Charles de Menezes for the crime of looking the wrong way.
I shudder to think how we’d react now in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack — with social media amplifying the loudest, angriest voices, and spreading misinformation faster than facts. We’re losing that calm, collective strength we used to pride ourselves on. And we’ll be worse off without it.