ABSTRACT
The day after news of the London winning the Olympic and Paralympic 2012 bid, four passengers blew themselves up on 7 July 2005 in an act of terror on the infrastructure of London’s public transport. The four separate blasts at different places across London killed 52 people of multifaith, multiethnic and multinational profiles. In the following days, two reflections upon the events were notable in what the attacks ‘meant’ for British identity. Prime Minister Tony Blair at the time described the event as symbolising the strength of Britishness – that our cosmopolitan victims and our determinism against extremism show British values of inclusion and freedom. At the same time, a counternarrative from the Mayor of London, Ken Livingston, was somewhat dismissive of nationalism in favour of London as a cosmopolis, which was more connected to the rest of the world than to the rest of Britain (Graham, 2011).
