Life is precious and fragile... live it to the full and let your children do the same
MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS: DEFIANT MESSAGE
After tragedies such as Lockerbie, Hungerford, Dunblane, Omagh and the 7/7 attacks in London, it was said that the horrors were so appalling, Britain would never be the same again... but it was.
And it may well be again after Manchester. Maybe, when the last candle is snuffed out at the last vigil, outside the broken families and the scarred city, mindsets won’t alter.
But maybe not. Because this atrocity feels different. It felt different the second I confronted it on Tuesday morning, when I saw a photo of a friend’s cousin who’d taken her daughters, aged five and seven, to that Ariana Grande concert and posted a picture not long before the bomb went off.
I stared in utter disbelief at the rows of young kids, some in pink bunny ears and holding pink balloons, because it looked like a primary school trip to a panto. After the disbelief came a visceral rage at the thought that someone who lived among us could sink so low as to walk into a crowd of girls enjoying the most exciting night of their short lives and blow them to pieces for the sake of some twisted cause.
When my 13-year-old daughter texted to say her friend’s cousin had died there, it felt like all of our defences were down. As though all our lives were only a text message away from being shattered.
I live in Liverpool. Mass terrorist atrocities aren’t supposed to happen on my doorstep but on those of Londoners and Parisians.
It was a thought I’m sure resonated right across the North this week, as every town and city seemed to know of someone who was either at the concert or had been to that Manchester arena recently. A thought accompanied by the question: If our little girls aren’t safe there, how could any of us be safe, anywhere, ever again?
That’s what the smiling face of eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos asked the world. Her school described her as “simply beautiful”. Which was word-perfect. The contrast with the suicide bomber who took her life so nonchalantly could not have been more stark.
But if it was the week that plunged us into despair, it didn’t push us into defeat.
If anything, the stories of instinctive human kindness – such as cabbies giving lifts for free, homeowners opening doors to strangers, the millions raised for the families on Facebook and Justgiving, the dignity and empathy of Mancunians I witnessed at the Albert Square memorial, that tearfully defiant rendition of Don’t Look Back In Anger sung in St Ann’s Square – only made us stronger and more united.
There’s normally no love lost between Scousers and Mancunians but in Liverpool’s Williamson Square a huge makeshift memorial with flowers, beads and chalked messages has sprung up.
One, referencing Liverpool FC’s anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone, read: “Manchester YNWA.” I doubt that’s been written anywhere in
Stories of instinctive kindness only made us stronger and more united
public before. In the most difficult of times we learn things about ourselves and if we want those 22 deaths to stand for anything, that is what we must do.
We should remember rough sleeper Stephen Jones, who rushed to pull nails out of a girl’s face and, when he was hailed a hero, said: “I’m not a hero. I’m just a person.” Let’s learn that these homeless people on our streets are just people like you and me, who hit hard times. Then help them.
Maybe Theresa May and her colleagues who thought they were saving our country by cutting public spending to the bone could admit they were wrong. How galling is it to hear them trot out that patronising line about our emergency services going beyond the call of duty, as they treat them like dirt?
Our police, ambulance and hospital workers must be sick of being told what great jobs they do by politicians who won’t give them a pay rise and who cut their numbers. If you mean half of what you say about these brilliant, vital public servants, then after atrocities such Manchester, for God’s sake, show them.
If right-wing newspapers mean it too, then maybe they can learn to stop seeing public sector workers as a poisonous drain on middle class taxpayers, rather than what they are – the glue that holds this nation together.
Maybe Prime Ministers will learn that going gung-ho into foreign wars, without any plan for the aftermath, will have consequences our people pay for in the long-term, in blood.
Maybe those tempted to join fascist groups because they believe in their own racial superiority should realise where that kind of extremist ideology ends up. Maybe professional pedlars of bile such as Katie Hopkins, who incite hatred by calling for a “final solution”, now realise the disgust of the decent majority can get you sacked from your LBC radio show.
During a week packed with raw emotion, the moment that most touched me was hearing, on Radio 4, the soft Gaelic tones of a councillor from Barra, reacting to the death of 14-year-old Eilidh MacLeod, who’d travelled with a friend all the way from the remote Hebridean island to Manchester.
“Everyone knew her and loved her,” he said, because “she’s a very vibrant young person, who’s very involved in the community. When we have ceilidhs, she’s a dancer and a piper”. He paused to check his emotions before saying that his island may be cut off from mainland Britain but they don’t hold their young people back. They encourage them to see the wider world and live their lives.
How right they are. We can’t hold back our daughters and sons, and stop them living their lives because of these brainwashed, fanatical narcissists.
The family of 29-year-old bomb victim Martyn Hett said he “just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time”. No, he didn’t. He was in the right place at the right time, living his life. The bastard who killed him was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And if we learn one truth from Manchester this week, let it be that. Life is fragile and precious. Live it to the full and let your kids do the same. Don’t let the murderous haters win.
Choose life.