We have just moved back to London. At the moment we are in Fulham, which as you can imagine this morning was a bit like a war zone. Helicopters buzzed above us, ambulances whizzed through the streets and there were police everywhere. It made me feel fiercely protective of this city and livid that yet again it is under attack.
I have just written the speech I wish London mayor Sadiq Khan had given rather than trotting out the same old tiresome platitudes. It seems to me that what we need is a Winston Churchill to take charge…
This morning at 8.20am there was an attack on a tube as it pulled up at Parson’s Green. A home-made bomb caught fire. Thankfully the perpetrators were too inept to make it explode. But still, it went up in flames, hurling a fireball down the carriage into the faces of people going to work and children going to school. Among the injured was a 10-year-old boy. If the bomb had actually blown up he, as well as countless other, would now be dead.
London is one of the world’s great cities. It has always welcomed people from all countries and religions. Walk down any street in London and I guarantee you will hear people talking in foreign languages. They will be different colours, different religions, they will even support different football teams.
But they will have one thing in common. Their home. London.
An attack on London, as my predecessor Boris Johnson said, is an attack on the world. It is an indiscriminate attack on whatever religion, culture or creed happens to be in the wrong place as the wrong time. It is also an attack on our way of life. And we are no longer prepared to put up with this kind of assault.
If you want to live in London, make a life here for your family, have a career and exist peacefully in this great city, you are welcome.
But if you attack us, if you try to kill and maim our children in the name of some spurious utopia that takes us back to the Middle Ages then you are not welcome. In fact, anyone who posts allegiance to Isis or any extremist organisations, or declares our way of life abhorrent, is not welcome.
If you don’t like the way we live, then leave. Just as Londoners have let millions who differ from them live alongside them for centuries without bothering them or trying to impose their own beliefs on them, let us live how we want to live without fear of attack. We will not be hounded in our own home. Londoners are famously stoical and patient. You only have to spend a winter here to see that. But enough is enough.
From today, anyone swearing allegiance to any extremist organisation that threatens our way of life, or who goes abroad to fight for a foreign enemy will have their residence revoked. Living in London is a privilege, not a right. It is a privilege that too many have come by too easily. And maybe that’s why they don’t respect it.
We are not prepared to see our children injured, innocent people maimed or frightened to leave their homes. The time has come to take action. London will survive this era. You cowards will not.
Dear Helena, You have clearly been away too long to realise all those decent foreigners who love London aren’t loved by our ‘little englander’ government dictatorship. They have sent over 5,000 EU citizens back to their countries of origin this year alone. This government and its hated brexit policies are driving wedges between families with the government forcibly separating husband and wife and their children if for example, the wife is Chinese, she is sent back to China and the Home Office tells the Brtish husband he should leave with her.
The first duty of a Government is to protect its citizens.This failed government demonstrably can’t-do so but it can attack them itself with policies that owe much to race hatred.
This is not the time nor place for arguments about Brexit policies. I support 100% what Helena has written. This country allows many to live here who have no love for this country, nor its people. They declare allegiance to an ideology bent on the destruction of the West and all our dearly held – and dare I say it hard fought for -democratic principles. These people should be rooted out and sent back to where they came from or placed in jail when they posse a threat to our freedoms. We allow too many to disrespect our country- burning our flag, demonstrating against our troops etc. It has to stop. A good speech Helena. How I wish a policiiticain had the guts to utter it!