Reactions to the 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of suicide attacks carried out by homegrown terrorists on London's public transport network during the morning rush hour. The bombings, three on the London Underground and one on a bus, killed 52 people and prompted a massive response from the emergency services, and in the immediate aftermath the almost-complete shut down of the city's transport system. Over the following hours and days there were several security alerts throughout the United Kingdom, and in some foreign cities. London largely returned to normality in  the following days, though with several further security alerts and a reduced service on the Underground. Media response. The first indication of the attacks came at 9:15 a.m., when Sky News, during its "Sunrise" breakfast show, flashed a report of an explosion at Liverpool Street Station in the City of London. The main UK TV networks (BBC One and ITV) dropped programming and carried news solidly within 30 minutes of the first reports. Initially, the BBC's response was slow. At 9:20 a.m., a graphic appeared on BBC News 24 reporting an explosion in the City of London, only for  it to be removed and go unmentioned by the channel's presenters for a further five minutes. Around this time, BBC One broke into programming with a short news report, and then returned to regular programming, only to have to return to the news studio several minutes later when the gravity of the incident became clearer. The major television channels' coverage continued throughout the day with simulcasts of the channels' respective rolling news services BBC News 24 and the ITV News Channel. The length of this media coverage in the UK was unprecedented: for example it was the single longest  broadcast in ITN's history. There was total blanket coverage on all UK rolling news channels for several days. Radio stations toned down their programming with extended news and information throughout the day. BBC Radio 4 took rolling news programming from BBC Radio 5 Live during the morning. GCap Media's London music radio stations – Capital Radio, Capital Gold, Choice FM and Xfm – simulcast rolling news coverage from the time the first reports came in. This coverage, aimed at Londoners struggling to get home or to work in the aftermath of the attacks, was much acclaimed within the industry and  won the coveted Sony Gold Award. BBC Radio 4 pulled its scheduled Classic Serial without explanation; it was to have been John Buchan's "Greenmantle", about the revolt of Muslims against British interests abroad. ITV cancelled a broadcast of the film "The X-Files" at midnight on 9 July, which featured an explosion at a U.S government building caused by a bomb. Another film, "Stakeout", was shown instead. The following evening, the terrorism-themed action film "The Siege", originally scheduled for a 10:15 p.m. broadcast on ITV1, was replaced by "Gone in 60 Seconds". Similarly, in Denmark "Blown Away" featuring  Tommy Lee Jones as a bomber was replaced on national TV station Danmarks Radio by "Rain Man". Five postponed the showing of the "" fifth-season finale by a week because it featured a suicide bomber. It was replaced with a repeat from an earlier season. Sky One replaced the advertised episode of their documentary series "Conspiracies" on 10 July. The planned episode was due to focus on the Lockerbie bombing. It was replaced with an episode that focused on the Siege of Waco instead. Meanwhile, the network removed references to terrorism when broadcasting an episode of "WWE SmackDown!". The episode  was taped two days before the attacks. (However, this episode, in which The Undertaker was the subject of a mock attack by two Muslim wrestlers, was shown unedited in the United States, to the chagrin of many viewers and critics.) BBC Two's topical news quiz "Mock the Week" was cancelled – the episode had been the last one of the show's first series and was replaced instead by a clip show showing edited highlights and outtakes from previous episodes in the show's run. Channel 4's comic panel game "8 out of 10 Cats" was edited to remove  a section of the show in which the panellists discussed which news stories the public had been discussing that week, and that portion remained absent from most of the rest of the series. BBC Radio 1's programming proceeded as normal throughout the day but with regular reports and updates both from the incumbent DJs and the Newsbeat team generally including listener feedback on the transport situation. Scott Mills at the time usually had an afternoon slot but was standing in that morning for Chris Moyles' Breakfast Show (Moyles was on holiday), with Vernon Kay in turn due to stand  in for Mills in the evening. Due to the transport disruption Kay was unable to make it into the studio and Mills (also unable to travel out from the studio) filled in his usual evening slot. He managed to speak to Kay on the phone, who assured listeners that he was OK and just stuck somewhere. Finally due to high listener demand (he claimed) Mills rounded off this show with "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba. The lyrics ""I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down"" were meant to represent the defiant attitude of  the tuned-in listeners. The bbc.co.uk website recorded an all time bandwidth peak of 11Gbit/s at 12:00 on 7 July. BBC News received some 1 billion total hits on the day of the event (including all images, text and HTML), serving some 5.5 terabytes of data. Press photographs of a victim of the attacks being assisted by former firefighter Paul Dadge became iconic of the attacks. R.E.M.'s concert in Hyde Park, scheduled for 9 July, was postponed until 16 July. Queens of the Stone Age were also obliged to call off their 7 July show at Somerset House . Opinion and reaction. In "The Guardian" Tariq Ali and Robert Fisk in "The Independent", echoing earlier comments by George Galloway in parliament, claimed that the Iraq War was the cause of the attacks, though both also ran opinion pages and letters responding that such claims were too oversimplified, and the general mood of the press was that Britain was always a terrorist target and at most the war made Britain a more prominent target. The American Fox News network was criticised for its response to the news. Brian Kilmeade claimed that the attacks worked to the advantage of conservatives, putting  terrorism back on the political agenda at a time when the G8 were discussing climate change and poverty. Washington managing editor, Brit Hume, claimed his first response to the news was that it was "time to buy", referring to the stock market, and host John Gibson quipped that if the International Olympic Committee "picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn't worry about terrorism. [Terrorists would] blow up Paris, and who cares?" Legislative reaction. On 19 July 2005, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke  announced in parliament the fast-tracking of a trimmed-down anti-terror bill, for which cross-party support had been secured, to become law by the end of the year. The new law would make criminal 'acts preparatory to terrorism' (possibly to include the accessing of any websites offering knowledge of terror tactics and bomb-making information), seeking or providing terrorist training domestically or overseas, and 'indirect incitement to terrorism'. This law became the Terrorism Act 2006, which despite broad cross-party support for many of the new offences legislated, created controversy due to the governments desire to introduce 90 -day detention, though this was later reduced to 28 days. Community responses and remembrance services. Within hours of the explosions, several websites were established including You Will Fail, which celebrated Mayor of London Ken Livingstone's and We're Not Afraid, inviting all people to express their resolution not to be 'afraid, intimidated or cowed by the cowardly act of terrorism'. The theme of the latter site was to post a picture of individuals or groups holding a note with the words 'We are not afraid'. While initially intended for Londoners, the site was soon receiving supporting messages worldwide. On  Sunday 17 July around 1,000 people joined a 'peace' vigil in Russell Square called by the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) and the Muslim Association of Britain. Speaking at the rally the StWC national convenor Lindsey German condemned the bombings but added that “"The only way to end the bombings is to withdraw from Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. When we have justice around the world we will have peace as well"”. The StWC also participated in vigils across the country. Speeches and offerings of condolence. Political forces. Organisations such as the Stop the War Campaign take the view that the  fault for the bombings lies with the foreign policy decisions of Tony Blair, and particularly his decision to send troops to Iraq to attack the régime of Saddam Hussein, which he claimed harboured weapons of mass destruction. Journalist John Pilger in a column published in the "New Statesman" on 25 July 2005, ascribed blame to Blair, whose decision to support the invasion of Iraq, and the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, generated the rage that he claimed precipitated those bombings. 21 July 2005 London bombings. United Kingdom. Tony Blair and Home Secretary Charles Clarke, among other ministers and key  officials from government and the emergency services attended a meeting in COBR after the second wave of attacks occurred. Blair also interrupted a meeting with Prime Minister of Australia John Howard to attend a COBR meeting, although he and Howard would later gave a joint news conference in response to the attacks on both the London Underground and Bethnal Green (Howard was also in Washington, D.C., at the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks.)