I awoke Thursday morning to an announcement on the radio that there were bombings in London.  No sooner than that had been said they moved on to the weather.  Immediately, I turned on my TV to the Fox News Channel and then my heart sank.

I was now fully awake.

London was my home for nearly half of 1995.  It was my last year as an undergraduate at Carleton University.  I had traveled to London to work as a Parliamentary Intern and ended up serving two Labour Members of Parliament (MP).  First, I worked for Tessa Jowell, a MP for Dulwich, which is situated in the southern part of London.  She is now Secretary of State of Culture, Media & Sport in the Blair government.  I later moved on to Jimmy Wray, a MP from Glasgow who retired from politics prior to this year’s general election.

While in London, I lived in a hostel on Great Portland Street directly across from Tube (the nickname for the London Underground) station of the same name, only a few stops away from King’s Cross -- one of the Underground stations that was hit.  To the left of the hostel, Great Portland Street was met by Marylebone Road on the left and Euston Road on the right.  I was only a few steps away from Regents Park.  If you walked the length of Regents Park, you would hit the London Zoo.  On the corner of Marylebone and Baker Street was Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.  Walk to the other end of Great Portland Street and you hit Oxford Street, one of London’s busiest shopping districts.   If you took a right on Oxford and then a left one would end up in Piccadilly Circus.  Not far from Piccadilly Circus, there was Leceister Square -- the heart of the entertainment district.  I remember seeing both Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables there.  The movie theaters were also interesting.  There was assigned seating.  No movie would commence without the seal of approval from the British Board of Film Classification.  Leceister Square, too, was hit.

On a Sunday, I would usually end up walking to Hyde Park and watch the activities at Speaker’s Corner or amble further down to the Serpentine, sometimes via Oxford or Baker or even in a round about way around Edgware Road.  Of course, one was immediately struck by how many Muslims were out and about, especially Pakistanis.  Edgware Road, too, was hit.

I have not been back to London since 1995 but I will not soon forget my time there.  While I was there, Great Britain commemorated the 50th anniversary of V-E Day.  The thoughts of many people were not so much on the liberation of Europe from the Nazis but how Londoners (including the Royal Family) soldiered on after getting hit by the Germans night after night, and having to endure the rationing of food, clothing and other goods.    Yet they were determined not to see Britain fall to the Nazis.   

I then saw London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone come on TV and speak live from Singapore via Sky News (a sister station of the Fox News Channel).  His remarks were stern, direct and to the point:

Livingstone’s remarks may have provided some reassurance as Rudy Giuliani did for New York City (and indeed for the rest of America) on 9/11.  But Ken Livingstone is no Rudy Giuliani.    Livingstone was the Leader of the Greater London Council between 1981 and 1986 and was a vociferous critic of Margaret Thatcher.  The Greater London Council would print the unemployment rate on banners that could be seen from Westminster.  In 1986, Thatcher would abolish the Greater London Council.  Livingstone was elected to the House of Commons in 1987 and was part of the Socialist Caucus (as was Jimmy Wray).  He served in the Commons until he ran for mayor of London in 2000 and won resoundingly.  Livingstone would be expelled from the Labour Party because he ran against the Labour Party candidate, Frank Dobson.  Livingstone was re-elected in 2004, this time with the blessing of Labour.  This is the same Ken Livingstone who said of President Bush in May 2003:

It is worth considering two other points.   During his statement from Singapore he said:

So is Livingstone saying it would have been all right if the attack had been directed at “the mighty and the powerful?”  Would he be down with an assassination of Bush and Blair?

It is a question worth asking because of this second point.   Livingstone has a friendly relationship with Yusuf al Qaradawi, a Muslim scholar in Qatar who has a show on al-Jazeera.  When al Qardawi visited London in July 2004, Livingstone described him as a “moderate.”  This despite the fact that al Qardawi said he considered Palestinian suicide bombers as “an evidence of G-d’s justice.”  Livingstone himself acknowledges as much and yet praises al Qaradawi as one “who has no personal involvement in violence of any kind,” and then proceeds to rip Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, without naming him.  In a pamphlet titled, “Why the Mayor of London will maintain dialogues with all of London’s faiths and communities: a reply to the dossier against the Mayor’s meeting with Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi,” Livingstone argues:

Can you believe this garbage was paid for by the taxpayers who live under the Greater London Authority?  Evidently it is all right to praise suicide bombers as long as one does not engage in it oneself.  And why would al Qaradawi?  He would have no platform.  No television show on al-Jazeera.

Livingstone likens Israeli soldiers who in the course of defending human life accidentally kill civilians as far worse than Palestinian suicide bombers who seek to kill as many civilians as possible.   For good measure, Livingstone declares that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian lands.  Even UN Resolutions 242 and 338 do not specifically identify what “territories” are to be returned to the Palestinians and they will only do so when Israel’s borders are secure.  If that is not enough, Livingstone insinuates that Ariel Sharon was responsible for the killing of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese Druze sympathetic to Israel.  Yet Livingstone said nothing of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.  He said nothing of Palestinian state run television that incites violence against Jews.    Why was Livingstone allowed to rejoin the Labour Party last year?

Not surprisingly, Livingstone dismissed criticism of al Qaradawi, blaming it on the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).  Livingstone described MEMRI as “very well funded” and having been “set up by a former senior officer in Israel’s military intelligence service.”  London’s mayor described MEMRI’s approach as being “reminiscent of the various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories” while engaging in anti-Semitism himself by insinuating that the Jews control MEMRI and therefore its information cannot be trusted.

I suspect that Livingstone will keep his distance from the likes of al-Qaradawi for the time being.  Or at the very least he will be more circumspect with his audiences.  Livingstone had to say what he said.  He is not in a position to be foolish like the newly returned MP George Galloway, who blamed the attacks on Tony Blair.  (Incidentally, I was introduced to Galloway by Jimmy Wray one night.  Of course, this was long before I was aware of Galloway’s association with Saddam Hussein).  Livingstone is in a position where he must govern a city and now that the city he is governing has been attacked cannot afford to make such reckless statements.  At least for now.

In time, Livingstone will go back to blaming Israel for the world’s ills.  He will slander President Bush.  He will call for British withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq.  Rudy Giuliani, on the other hand, has supported our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, has stood with President Bush and does not blame Israel for the ills of the world.  One would think that this would not be a popular position to take in Britain.  Yet it did not prevent the Royal Family from knighting Giuliani.  Hopefully, the Royal Family will not contemplate a similar ceremony for Livingstone.

Aaron Goldstein, a former member of the socialist New Democratic Party, writes poetry and has a chapbook titled Oysters and the Newborn Child: Melancholy and Dead Musicians. His poetry can be viewed on www.poetsforthewar.org.