Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Whenever I think of calls for an inquiry into the London Bombings, the first thing that springs to mind is the blog of Rachel North.  She is a survivor of the 7/7 attacks in London and remains a leading voice in the call for a full independent inquiry into what happened.  Sadly I get the feeling that the chance of an inquiry diminishes as time goes on, despite supportive noises from the Conservatives soon after the bombings.  Nafeez Ahmed, the author of this book, was clearly unconvinced by the official ‘narrative’ of what happened on that terrible day.  Having written a fascinating expose of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in terms of the geopolitical significance, historical context and a dissection of the evidence in incredible detail, he put his agile mind to work on the 7/7 bombings, culminating in this book in 2006.  It makes for a very powerful read.

Right from the word go, Nafeez strikes at the very heart of the official narrative that I, and no doubt many others, became accustomed to in the hours, days and weeks after the attacks.  He exposes the inconsistencies in the police reports as well as detailing the evidence that was either ignored or altered by the police.  Even within the first few pages, I was absolutely stunned by what he uncovered.  Amazingly enough, the crooked evidence and subsequent cover-up of numerous events are trumped by the author’s investigation into how much the police and security services knew in advance, providing more shocking revelations.  The relationship between the British security services and Islamist terrorist networks made for uncomfortable reading throughout.  After looking into the bombings themselves, Nafeez devotes considerable time and energy to tracking the bombings back to their true financial and geographical roots, a journey which takes the reader to the Balkans, Africa and not unsurprisingly to the Middle East.  Admittedly the picture that Nafeez paints is complicated but I just about managed to keep up.  By the end of the book, the official story – Al-Qaeda had nothing to do with the attacks, the terrorists used homemade bombs and the whole operation was carried out on a shoestring budget - has been systematically dismantled and a richer, more meaningful and perhaps more disturbing narrative has taken its place.

There are a couple of criticisms that I have of the book.  Firstly, I think Nafeez is too quick to jump to conclusions on occasion.  Sometimes it felt like he declared that ‘x was caused by y’ after nothing more than a few paragraphs of commentary plus a couple of references, which came across as a little hasty.  Secondly, while the book is loaded with astonishing findings and really powerful material, I got a little bogged down with the sheer volume of information being presented.  It felt a bit like a university thesis, such was the density of points and supporting references.  Obviously I wouldn’t want a book on such a sensitive subject to be lacking references or to be stuffed full of baseless assumptions, but the writing style was still a little academic for my liking. 

Purely in terms of enjoyment I wouldn’t class it as one of my favourite reads but it is nonetheless a gripping book in terms of content and has almost completely rewritten my views on the London bombings and a number of related issues.  I would recommend this book to anyone with a keen eye for political detail or anyone who is interested in issues such as our security services, international terrorism and a more open government.  And by the way, we need a full independent inquiry into the London Bombings, trust me.

RATING: 8/10

This is the first of many reviews that I will be doing on my blog.  Every book I review plus the books that I will be reviewing in future are taken from the ‘My Political Bookshelf’ wheel (courtesy of Amazon) that you can see on the right hand side of this blog in the sidebar. Click on any of these books to find out more about them.