Kerre Woodham: Terrorists will never prevail

I was working on the radio when reports came through at 9pm last Thursday of an incident on the London Underground. An explosion, apparently caused by a power surge, had disrupted the Tube.

Incident is a neutral word - it didn't sound too ominous. And then all hell broke loose. Within the hour, news came in that there had been six explosions, including a double-decker bus that had blown apart.

The wounded were being ferried to nearby hospitals, fatalities were expected and even before the official confirmation, everyone knew this was the work of terrorists.

What should have been a week of rejoicing for Londoners, celebrating their successful bid for the 2012 Olympics, has turned into a time of pain and anger. The reaction of the British officials was swift and well-rehearsed. Although no one is ever prepared for a terrorist attack, the Brits have lived with terrorists since the days when the Provisional IRA were public enemy number one, and in the years that followed September 11, 2001, the authorities have always known that one day, Britain's time would come.

And of course, the timing was no coincidence. The meeting of the G8 leaders in Gleneagles had focused attention on Britain and guaranteed an immediate global response. Tony Blair whipped back to London to get a first-hand briefing from his officials and then returned to Gleneagles, shocked and furious.

The world leaders issued a joint statement condemning the killings and insisting that violence would not change their societies or values. They, the leaders of the G8, would prevail and the terrorists would not.

And it seems unlikely that this attack will bring Britain to her knees.

If anything, it will swing the British population in behind Tony Blair's hitherto unpopular war on terror. The Brits, and the English in particular, have suffered, absorbed and ultimately prevailed over far worse attacks than this.

Nonetheless, these terrorist attacks bring the war on terror closer to home. Many of us have friends and family in London, and this attack has a resonance that the Madrid bombings didn't have.

And I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for those British and Irish Lions fans touring the country. Many of them will have loved ones in London and to be on the other side of the world must be frightening and frustrating.

In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel P. Huntington rejected Francis Fukuyama's thesis that the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy and modernity would ultimately lead to a peaceful world. There isn't the space here to do either his arguments, or those of Fukuyama for that matter, justice. They're both excellent books, and required reading in this day and age. Basically, Huntington claimed that all human beings require an identity and that they acquire that identity through the enemies they choose.

Post-Cold War, the world would cleave along religious and cultural lines, and he predicted, among other things, that the Western world would find itself engaged in violent clashes with Muslim fundamentalists who would attack Western cultural icons. This book was published in 1996, so his predictions appear remarkably astute. It is also human to hate, he argued, and here is where I would diverge and become one of those flabby liberals he so disdains. It may well be human to hate, but it is also human to work for peace.

There are many, many more good people in this world than there are bad, and so ultimately, the G8 leaders are right. Whoever the enemy and whatever the method, the terrorists will never prevail.