Ken Livingstone On Being Mayor on 7th July 2005

• Tweet

LBC's Tribute to 7/7 Heroes
In Photos

Ken Livingstone says London's plans for how to react during a terror attack saved lives on 7th July 2005.

The LBC presenter was Mayor of London when the terrorist bombs exploded in four locations around the capital. On the 5th anniversary of the attacks, he told Nick Ferrari that the day still hurts, but he was thrilled with the way Londoners coped under pressure.

He told LBC: "Thinking about 7th July is still painful for me, as I’d known this was coming for years, from the moment we had 9/11. We had an earlier scarea year earlier, but we had managed to stop them.

"We had endless planning, with a War Games scenario, where all of us were gathered in a hotel, going through what happened if we had multiple bomb attacks on the London Underground in the Friday rush-hour when most of the government were out of the country – and then there was a second wave of attacks where the mayor was killed and Scotland Yard was demolished. We were trying to create scenarios where, if we lost our leaders, that everyone would still know what to do.

"And that’s what worked so perfectly on the day. Everybody knew what to do. I think we saved a lot of lives because we anticipated everything and almost everything went like clockwork."

Ken was in Singapore on that day, celebrating London's success in beating Paris to become host city of the 2012 Olympics, but he revealed that he was still right in the centre of the decision-making.

"I'd always feared that when I was outside London, then that was when the attack would come," he told LBC's Declan Harvey. "I was desperately trying to get back to the hotel, but there was a queue for cabs like you wouldn't believe. Luckily, a journalist was getting into the first one and said that he'd give me a lift."

"My phone had a special chip to make sure it can work even in an emergency when the mobile network is down, so even though I was in a hotel room in Singapore, I was in constant contact with people in London and it felt like I was in London.

"The big decision I had to make was: Should the Tube run tomorrow, or should we hold it until Monday? That was the only thing that wasn’t already decided. Everything else worked exactly as we had planned."

The former Mayor believes London's reaction to the atrocities has helped restore London to the status of one of the most important cities in the world.

"There was a TV drama featuring bomb attacks in London the year before and it showed everyone panicking, running, screaming. But what was wonderful was how well we coped.

"What Al Qaida wanted after the attack was for some angry white, preferably Christian, Londoners to beat to death some Muslims and those images would go around the world and Osama Bin Laden could say that we have to fight them. But the most amazing thing was that there was absolutely nothing."

"And I think it has helped bring London out of decline. Not only winning the Olympics against the odds, but other cities saw our reaction and thought 'this is a city that works'."

Listen to the full interview with Ken Livingstone

Or listen in our pop-up player