The whole transcript....couldn't edit the above.
Commissioner and Mayor hold press conference
8-7-2005 iod87
At the press conference held on Friday 8th July 2005 3.15pm, Ken Livingstone made the following statement.
'These seven days in London have been a seven days that no one will ever forget.
Winston Churchill in his history of the Second World War titled the final volume triumph and tragedy, I think that typifies these seven days in a way like no other sentence could. We saw the incredible spectacle last Saturday, over quarter of a million people assembled peacefully to do their bit to try and ease the poverty and the burdens that afflict the people on the other side of the planet. We had the remarkable triumph of persuading the International Olympic Committee to award London the Olympic games and one of the strongest cards that Seb Coe and myself were able to point out was that in this city 300 languages are spoken and the people that speak them live side by side in harmony.
This city typifies what I believe is the future of the human race and a future where we grow together and we share and we learn from each other.
Then we had the tragedy of this attack, as I said in Singapore an attack that sought not the powerful and the famous but just indiscriminately slaughtered Londoners irrespective of race, culture, religion or age. There can be no way that anyone can say that there can be a ideology or faith that underpins this act, it is simply a criminal attempt at mass murder.
I want to congratulate the emergency services and the transport staff for the incredible effort they have made over the last few hours. There have been so many acts of heroism and courage and selfless dedication that they would fill many volumes of a book and they have shown people at their absolute best. Everything that we had planned for this day we knew would come worked like clockwork.
I have spent, as has the commissioner, so many hours at so many meetings since September the 11th looking at every eventuality planning for it, as I mentioned in Singapore we actually even one day ran an exercise based on multiple explosions on the public transport system for a Friday evening rush hour and the lessons we learnt from that underpinned the operation yesterday which was flawless. We can not think of a single thing that failed to work as we had planned and that is and undoubtedly will have been responsible for saving many lives in deed by the speed with which the emergency services were able to get those who needed our assistance.
I would also like to congratulate Londoners. There was no panic but an incredible response of stoicism, of discipline and order that also contributed to minimising casualties.
We will on Monday at City Hall open a book of condolence and next week in coordination with the Red Cross will open the London Bombings Relief Fund to raise the funds to assist those who have suffered dreadful loss and injury in these terrible attacks.
I myself will use the underground as normal and that is the advice I give to every Londoner, that we carry on in this city working and enjoying our city like we do every other day of the year. We have largely got the tube back to a substantial service. There may be some delays in some areas, which are still crime scenes but the whole transport system will rapidly return to normal and we urge and encourage people to use it.
I echo the Commissioner in his call that anyone who has any information to let the police know. It might be something that is a memory from weeks ago, something that was odd that was out of place something that registered then was forgotten. Don’t feel shy, come forward, let us have that information now. It might be decisive in catching the people who did these terrible crimes.
I want finally to thank Londoners for their solidarity. There are some places in the world where such an incident would have unleashed internal strife and physical violence. London has stood together, we haven’t had any problems of the sort you might see in other parts of the world and I think it says everything about what is right about this city. It is everything about what led the IOC I think to select us because as I said this city is the future.
If you go back a couple of hundred years to when the European cities really started to grow and peasants left the land to seek their future in the cities there was a saying that “city air makes you free” and the people who have come to London all races, creeds and colours have come for that. This is a city that you can be yourself as long as you don’t harm anyone else. You can live your life as you chose to do rather than as somebody else tells you to do. It is a city in which you can achieve your potential. It is our strength and that is what the bombers seek to destroy. They fear they freedom, they fear a world in which the individual makes their own life choices and their own moral value judgements and that is what they seek to snuff out. But they will fail.
This year for the first time in human history a majority of people live in cities. London continues to grow and I say to those who planned this dreadful attack whether they are still here in hiding or somewhere abroad, watch next week as we bury our dead and mourn them, but see also in those same days new people coming to this city to make it their home to call themselves Londoners and doing it because of that freedom to be themselves, thank you.'
