Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Corbyn: The war on terror isn’t working.. we have to be honest
Tattoo tribute to our lost girl Olivia Teenager relives terror blast and gives thanks to good samaritan
JEREMY Corbyn’s rivals pounced on him yesterday after he blamed the UK’S foreign wars for terror attacks at home. Speaking four days after the Manchester bombing, the Labour leader said the “war on terror” had failed, and Western intervention in the Middle East had made us less safe. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the remarks were “absolutely monstrous” – despite making similar points after the
London bombings in 2005. He wrote at the time: “The Iraq war did not introduce the poison into our bloodstream but, yes, the war did help to potentiate that poison.” PM Theresa May tried to twist Mr Corbyn’s words by claiming he “said terror attacks in Britain are our own fault”. And Lib Dem leader Tim Farron accused him of “putting politics before people”. But Mr Corbyn insisted he did not want to exploit Manchester to make “a narrow political point”. He said in his speech: “The blame is with the terrorists, but if we are to protect our people we must be honest about what threatens our security.” He added members of security services supported his view of a link between “wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home”.
THERE was a terrifyingly loud explosion which blew her to the floor.
Ella Mcgovern could not hear properly, or see the people who had been standing in front of her just seconds before. Instead she felt intense pain in her legs and was covered in other people’s blood. Ella, 14, now knows she was two footsteps from being the 23rd innocent victim of bomber Salman Abedi. Mum Louise, 39, still visibly shaken at the thought, says sadly: “We’ve heard that people two steps in front of Ella didn’t make it.” Ella suffered six shrapnel injuries to her legs. She will make a full recovery but the mental scars could take much longer to heal. She says: “I’ve been sleeping in my mum and dad’s room because I want company. I am struggling to walk but I feel very, very lucky.” Speaking at home in Rossendale, Lancs, Ella relives the bombing. She says: “Me and my friend like Ariana Grande’s music so we stayed until after the encore. “We walked into the foyer and there was a massive bang. We fell on the floor. “As I looked up, there were bodies everywhere and body parts. My friend started to help me up and, as we looked at each other, we realised we were covered in other
people’s blood. I didn’t realise at the time but I had shielded my friend and she didn’t have any injuries.” Terrified, Ella rang her dad. “I said, ‘Daddy, daddy, I can’t move my legs. There’s blood everywhere. There’s been an explosion’.” But her ears were so damaged from the blast, she couldn’t hear his reply. She adds: “My ears are still ringing from the explosion.” Somehow, the girls staggered out of the arena and were spotted by good samaritan Jenny Lee, 24. She sat Ella down, tried to calm her and rang receptionist Louise to assure her that her only daughter was safe. Ella says: “Jenny rang my mum to tell her she was with me and I was OK. She rang the ambulance as well, she just took control.” Yesterday Ella had a happy reunion with Jenny, of Ramsbottom, Gtr Manchester. Jenny says: “I saw Ella covered in blood and I knew I had to help her. I just treated her as if she was my sister. I couldn’t help her physically, all I could do was talk to her.” Mum Louise says of first seeing Ella: “There was skin, flesh, blood all over her, in her hair. It was horrendous.” Like dozens of victims, Ella was taken to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. She says: “I could hear a child crying ‘Oh my God, it hurts’, and I saw a girl with loads of bandages around her head. “I have two wounds that could be stitched. Doctors had to pull a piece of shrapnel out of another wound that they haven’t been able to stitch.” Ella adds: “I want to take flowers to Manchester to pay my respects but it’s going to take me time to do normal stuff.” The caring teenager has also had to shelve a planned fundraising climb of Ben Nevis this weekend aimed at helping her local Rossendale Hospice. She spoke to us in return for a donation to the hospice, as it is counselling youngsters caught up in the bombing. See www.justgiving.com/teams/ bennevis2017 ■ The 22nd victim was officially named as Megan Hurley, 15, from Merseyside.
After tragedies such as Lockerbie, Hungerford, Dunblane, Omagh and the 7/7 attacks in London, it was said that the horrors were so appalling, the UK 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
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.
Stories of instinctive kindness only made us stronger and more united