We stick together in face of tragedy

The reaction in Manchester following the unspeakable tragedy of Monday night summed up the resilience of the city.

“We’re glue. We stick together when it counts,” said a taxi driver, who’d spent the evening ferrying people to and from the Manchester Arena to hospital.

He could, also, be speaking for the entire country.

We have become used, now, to scenes of vigils, collective mourning, prayers for those in grief in the aftermath of such terrible crimes as the one at the Ariana Grande pop concert.

That towns and cities are moved to hold them, despite a seeming increase in frequency in attacks in European cities, speaks volumes for how people still react to the peculiar threat of terrorism we face right now.

We are unwilling to give up our values and freedoms, our way of life, and we will gather in numbers to show strength of spirit as well that most natural need to remember the deaths of others.

The Manchester attack was particularly distressing, given the age profile of the victims – young, innocent, excited people who’d been to see their favourite pop singer.

Words are not enough to express the suffering Salman Abedi has caused – to families, friends, communities – not simply through the murder of innocents, but also leaving so many others with life-changing physical and emotional injuries.

This was an act beyond comprehension, it’s difficult to come to terms with how, why and what happened. And while those directly affected by the attack may never be able to move on, the rest of the country has to.

It was absolutely correct for the General Election campaign to restart in earnest yesterday, for this is a democracy and a democracy cannot be beaten down by acts of murderous aggression.

And it is also absolutely correct that, as a country, we debate and discuss the best ways to deal with terrorism and ask questions about how we have dealt with it in the past. Such discourse is a healthy reaction to such a barbaric crime.

Meanwhile, the police and intellegence operation continues to investigate the bombing at pace. The work of the emergency services in the hours and days following the Manchester attack has been a staggering inspiration – an example of just why we should better value our underpaid and overworked public servants.

In an editorial this week, our sister newspaper, the Manchester Evening News – which has spearheaded a fantastic fundraising campaign for those affected by the bomb – said: “We will carry on, we will make Greater Manchester an even greater place. We will care about each other and support our neighbours. The terrorists will fail. We will prevail.”

We might never be able to prevent these awful things from happening, we might never be able to root out terrorists.

But we can always prove that as a society we are glue. And we do stick together when it counts. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2014 was 78.5%