10 years on: How 7/7 terror attacks led to changes in policing for Shropshire

Detective Chief Inspector Tom Harding said people in Shropshire have to remain vigilant to the threat of terror.

He said West Mercia Police worked closely with other organisations to safeguard communities from the threat.

Mr Harding said: "The events of 7/7, and the need to counter the present-day threat of terrorism, has of course influenced policing over the last 10 years, with all officers and police community support officers trained to be vigilant to this risk.

"We advise the public to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious behaviour or activity to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321 or in an emergency the public should always call 999."

See www.preventtragedies.co.uk for further advice and guidance.

It was an attack that shook our nation – and the threat continues today for us all. Mark Andrews reports.

Philip Dunne had only been an MP for two months when the bombers struck.

"I was sitting in the House of Commons, and I remember hearing a noise outside the chamber," he says.

"There was an audible gasp when the news of what happened arrived, and my first thoughts were about whether anybody's friends or family had been injured.

"When the news emerged, the scale of the destruction and loss of life was appalling. It is particularly poignant 10 years on that we are now witnessing increasing terror threats right around the world, with British citizens coming under attack through the attacks in Tunisia."

Mr Dunne, who is a defence minister, said the anniversary reminded us all about how the terror threat continues to grow.

"I think the police and intelligence agencies have developed, and they area a great deal more capable of seeking out and monitoring terrorist activity," he says.

"They have succeeded in foiling a large number of terrorist plots, particularly in London, but elsewhere as well, we have got to be very vigilant. The attacks in Paris have shown that a single individual can create a great deal of damage, as did the attack in Woolwich on Lee Rigby."

Mr Dunne says it would also be wrong to assume such attacks were confined to big cities.

"I think it could happen anywhere," he says.

"There have been attacks around the world, and terrorists have not always attacked big cities. I don't think we can assume that just because we are in leafy Shropshire that there isn't a risk.

"I don't want to be scaremongering, and I don't think we are facing a direct threat, but the security services and police need to be alert."

Telford MP Lucy Allan remembers how the news shattered the jubilation surrounding the announcement that London was to host the 2012 Olympic Games. "I was in London, and the city was euphoric," she says.

"It was a glorious summer day. I had dropped my son at school and was walking to work. I caught sight of a news report on a television screen in a shop window. I stopped and stared. My first thought as the news sank in was to call my husband who worked near Aldgate tube station. I couldn't get through at first.

"The targets were so everyday: a London bus, tube trains in the morning rush hour. Yet the planning and scale of the attack so precise, so calculated. It seemed unreal.

We live in a less innocent age now. We recognise our vulnerability. The reality is, we face serious threats to our security and I welcome the Government's measures to tackle extremism."

Montgomeryshire MP Glyn Davies was at a sitting of the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff when he heard about the bombings.

"Somebody told me about it, and we watched the news to find out what was happening," he recalls. "No-one understood the scale of what had happened to start with, but then it began to unfold." He says the atrocity made the people of Britain realise that there was a very real threat to safety in this country.

"It wasn't the only thing, but it marked the start of a realisation in our country that we are up against dreadful forces that we have to be in a state of constant vigilance against."

North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson said the last 10 years had seen a major change in the threat facing the UK.

"I think some of the organisations which were threatening us at that time are very much reduced," he said. "Al-Qaeda were a big threat at that time, and that has subsequently reduced, but the world is still a dangerous place.

"We have these other new groups which appear to have taken over, there are still several groups fighting in parts of Iraq, and there was the terrible outrage in Tunisia. We should not be complacent."

Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard, a member of the parliamentary national security strategy committee, said: "I was having breakfast in the House of Commons when reports came in that there was a major incident on the underground. Soon it was clear it was a terrorist incident. Whilst terrible, London's indomitable spirit has overcome."

It had never happened before and has never happened again, although the threat is as real now as it was 10 years ago.

A bunch of home-grown jihadists from the industrial north took a one-way trip down to London with home-made bombs packed in rucksacks on their backs to embark on the first co-ordinated suicide attack ever in Britain.

London was no stranger to terrorism, bearing the scars of many IRA bombs down the years. What it had never seen was a bombing blitz in which the terrorists were Britons who were turning against their own country, and gloried in sacrificing their own lives in the name of Islam.

A new Britain was born on that day, Thursday, July 7, 2005. It saw the advent of the British suicide bomber. And as they rejected the West and Western values, this was terrorism in which there could be no negotiation or accommodation of the sort which had defused the IRA threat. It was a declaration of war.

The death toll was 52, plus the four bombers. Almost 800 were injured.

In the aftermath it was easy to see the culprits as deluded no-hopers. But 10 years on, events in the last few days in Tunisia underline that their ideology not only endures, but flourishes. How to counter the threat of radicalisation of young people within Britain is one of the greatest challenges of modern times.

Here, within British communities, were young men who gave their hearts and souls – and ultimately their very lives – to ideas promoted abroad with bloody results in places as far afield as Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

On the day it happened, the mood was upbeat. Only the day before London had celebrated with the announcement that the city had been awarded the 2012 Olympic Games. A few days earlier there had been Live 8 concerts, and on July 7 itself G8 leaders were meeting in Gleneagles.

Four young men were to shatter the calm. On the face of things there was nothing about them to make them remarkable. Three of them were second generation British citizens whose parents were of Pakistani origin. They had grown up in Beeston and the neighbouring district of Holbeck on the outskirts of Leeds.

Oldest in the group was 30-year-old Mohammad Sidique Khan who was believed to be the ringleader. Hasib Hussain was 18, and Shehzad Tanweer was 22.

The outsider of the group was Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, who was 19 at the time of the attack. He had converted to Islam around 2000 and taken the name Jamal. He hailed from Huddersfield but moved to Aylesbury, where he worked for a time as a carpet fitter, although he continued to spend time in and around Huddersfield.

They struck during the rush hour. CCTV footage captured them looking happy, and hugging, before they split up to embark on their deadly missions.

Around 8.50am there were three almost simultaneous explosions on the London Underground.

The first was in a Circle Line tunnel between Liverpool Street and Aldgate Stations. Tanweer's bomb killed eight – including himself – and injured 171.

The second was on the Circle Line just outside Edgware Road. Here the death toll including the bomber Khan was seven, and 163 were injured. The third was in a Piccadilly Line tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square. This train was so crowded that there were 127 people in the first carriage alone. Twenty-seven died, including Lindsay. Over 340 were injured.

All was confusion. There were reports of "power surges" in the Underground. Nobody was sure what exactly had happened, only that it was big. By 9.30am the Metropolitan Police were declaring that there had been a "major incident".

In the minutes following the triple blasts, Hussain was trying to contact his accomplices on his mobile phone. At 9am he went into W H Smith's on the concourse of King's Cross station to buy a 9v battery. It is speculated that he needed a new battery to detonate his bomb. At some stage he got on a No 30 bus travelling to Marble Arch. It was crowded because by this time there were closures on the Underground. He sat on the upper deck, towards the back.

His bomb killed himself and 13 others, and over 110 were injured. Pictures of the shattered London bus in Tavistock Square were to become among the defining images of that terrible day. By chance, this blast had happened outside the headquarters of the British Medical Association. Doctors rushed out to help.

The scale of the disaster became clear as more and more bloodied and maimed victims emerged from tube stations.

After hours of chaos and uncertainty, it was only to be at noon, when Prime Minister Tony Blair made a statement at Gleneagles, that the worst fears were confirmed.

"It is reasonably clear there have been a series of terrorist attacks in London," he said.

But why had they done it? Khan had made a video statement, which was broadcast by Al Jazeera on September 1.

"Our religion is Islam . . . Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world . . . Until we feel security, you will be our targets," he said.

Stories began to emerge of the terror, including from Salopians who were caught up in it. The Mayor of Oakengates, Steve Molyneux, was at King's Cross Station when one bomb went off.

"I was in King's Cross getting a cup of coffee when the blast occurred. The first thing we heard was a loud bang and then this dust came up from the vents where you go down to the tube. People were stunned. I saw people come out of the tube covered in soot and black.

"We had no idea anything had happened anywhere else and we didn't know where to go."

Beth Douglas, 23, a nurse at a London hospital and former pupil of William Brookes School in Much Wenlock, was heading for the shops in central London on her day off and had just bought a drink from a corner shop.

"All of a sudden a hysterical woman came in screaming and shouting. It took a while to understand what she was saying.

"She said that the entire Underground had been blown up. I was dazed. I couldn't quite take it in. It was the most frightening thing I had ever heard."

Businessman Graham Holding, 45, head of Bridgnorth-based firm Novelis, was on one of the trains and only survived because he chose a carriage which was away from the main impact of the explosion. He said that just moments after pulling out of the station "an almighty bang" rocked the train, showering commuters with tiny shards of glass.

"Just a moment before the explosion another train had passed going into the station and my immediate thought was that there had been some sort of collision.

"The smoke was everywhere and was starting to get thicker, so people were desperately trying to get the sliding doors open, but they wouldn't budge.

"People were starting to panic. I could hear a few screams, but we didn't understand what was going on."

Those who died that day were ordinary Londoners, Christians, Muslims, Jews, those of other religions, and those of none. It was an act of indiscriminate terror.

In the years since July 7, 2005, there have been attempts at other terrorist outrages which might have eclipsed even those 2005 bombings. They have been foiled by diligent work by the security services and those behind them jailed for lengthy periods.

But while there remain young Britons of the mindset of the four killers of that day, it can only be an uneasy, uncertain, peace.