It is, of course, the 10th anniversary of the horror that we soon came to call 9\/11.<\/p>\n
In the autumn of 2001, I was working as Head of Research for the Communication Workers Union and I was due to spend the second week of September as a member of the CWU delegation to the annual Trades Union Congress.\u00a0 That year, the TUC was held in Brighton and I travelled there from my home in London on the Sunday for the start of the Congress on Monday.\u00a0 My diary for Tuesday contains the following record:<\/p>\n
“Towards 3 pm, I was waiting for the address by Tony Blair on the private funding of public services and speaking to a trainee called Paul Adams about running one’s web site. Then Paul told me that Bill Morris [chair of the Congress] had just announced that an aircraft had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. At 3.10 pm, the Prime Minister gravely made a short statement about the attack in the USA, abandoned his planned speech, and left for Downing Street – there was a standing ovation.<\/p>\n
Like many others, I went to the AEEU stall to watch the BBC News 24. I learned that a second aircraft had hit the South Tower and saw incredible film of the tower collapsing. Later I saw shots of the North Tower collapsing and of the Pentagon on fire. At 3.45 pm, Congress was suspended.<\/p>\n
The events in America are outside all our experience and, to cope with the news, Tony Young [CWU Deputy General Secretary] & I walked back to Hove and went to a cafe. In my hotel room, I watched the 6 pm BBC news and my jaw literally dropped at the awful scenes.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I had twice visited the World Trade Center and then had (and to this day have) a picture in my study showing the New York skyline with the Twin Towers very prominent.<\/p>\n
So, where were you on 9\/11?\u00a0 How did you first learn of the attacks?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is, of course, the 10th anniversary of the horror that we soon came to call 9\/11. In the autumn of 2001, I was working as Head of Research for the Communication Workers Union and I was due to spend the second week of September as a member of the CWU delegation to the annual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6631"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6643,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631\/revisions\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}