Remembering 7/7: Britain’s unlearned lessons

On the morning of July 7, 2005, four bombers struck London’s transport network, killing 52 passengers and injuring over 750. It was the deadliest attack on British soil since the Lockerbie bombing. Twenty years on, the United Kingdom marks this solemn anniversary with memorials, statements of unity, and renewed promises of resilience. 

Amidst the emotional remembrance of the fallen victims, a critical truth, practically denied by successive governments, still hangs unresolved: Intelligence circles have largely regarded the 7/7 attacks as “blowback”, in the words of former Met officer Neil Basu.

“A driver of the 7/7 attacks was foreign policy and Iraq. That does not excuse in any way what they did.”, he added in an interview to the Guardian ahead of the 20th anniversary of the attacks.

This position is not novel and was already articulated publicly by Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, former director-general of MI5, in her damning testimony to the Chilcot inquiry 14 years ago.

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – not a whole generation, a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam", she added.

Warnings were issued ahead of the invasion. The Joint Intelligence Committee, of which Manningham-Buller was a member, advised ministers that war in Iraq would heighten the domestic threat. As US and UK forces were preparing to attack, she had asked her superiors, "Why now?" She said it "as explicitly as I could. I said something like, 'The threat to us would increase because of Iraq,' " she recounted to the Guardian.

These warnings were dismissed or downplayed. Intelligence was politicised. Then PM Tony Blair had already promised: “I will be with you, whatever”, in a secret letter to US President George W Bush.

And the results were, tragically, both predictable and preventable.

The US and UK forces killed an estimated half a million Iraqis, while the world recoiled in horror at the aftermath of chemical attacks on Fallujah and the harrowing images of torture and sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib prison - among them, the 7/7 attackers.

They were not foreign agents; they were British citizens. Their grievances, recorded in chilling martyrdom videos, were framed explicitly in terms of British foreign policy in the Middle East. In line with what MI5 chief had predicted, they were reacting to a geopolitical environment shaped directly by the decisions of their own government.

Yet two decades on, Britain’s political class remains largely unwilling to confront this reality. The official 20th anniversary commemorations strike a tone of unity and resolve. Prime Minister Keir Starmer proclaimed that “those who tried to divide us failed,” emphasising that 
“We stood together then and we stand together now – against hate and for the values that define us of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”

Such rhetoric is expected, but strikingly dissonant with the successive government’s posture toward Britain’s Muslim community. While proclaiming national unity, the government continues to pursue domestic policies that discriminate and securitise Muslim lives, including the ever-expanding Prevent programme, which the UN rapporteur found to be “dividing, stigmatising and alienating segments of the population” - referring to “the spectre of Big Brother” hoovering above Muslims in particular. Meanwhile, numerous Muslim charities and activists have been targeted. 

Perhaps, the cognitive dissonance appears even more noticeable, glancing at Britain’s stance on the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In October 2023, Keir Starmer infamously stated that Israel had a right to impose a siege on Gaza, cutting off water and electricity. 

Starmer’s government also announced moves to delay the ICC’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu, a plan it later dropped. Previously, Foreign Minister David Cameron had threatened “to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court if it issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders”. Most lately, the Home Secretary issued a controversial ban on anti-genocide group Palestine action.

In the eyes of the public, these announcements inevitably position the government as a backer of Israeli occupation and crimes in Gaza.

The contradiction is glaring. How can a government speak of “cohesion” while embracing policies—foreign and domestic—that have repeatedly proven to fragment it?

Keir Starmer’s anniversary statement condemns the 7/7 bombings as an attack on “our values.” But the government’s practical endorsement of the genocide in Gaza, and its crackdowns on British Palestinian solidarity movements, betrays those same values. By stifling dissent and weaponising security discourse against a single community, the state is arguably reinforcing the conditions that led to the deadly 7/7 attacks .

What, then, are the lessons of 7/7 twenty years on?

First, that foreign policy has domestic consequences. This is not speculation; it is the repeated conclusion of Britain’s own intelligence and law enforcement leaders. Second, that resilience cannot be built on denial. Only by acknowledging the role of policy in shaping threats can the UK prevent future cycles of violence. And third, that social cohesion requires consistency—not unity in mourning and division in governance.

If the government is serious about honoring the victims of 7/7, it must do more than remember. It must reflect. And it must reform. That means holding political decisions—past and present—accountable not only for their intentions but for their outcomes. Until then, the war that came home on 7/7 will continue to echo, not only in security briefings but in the social fabric of the nation itself.