Paris and the rush to remember the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings
A call for any memorial event following the Paris attacks to be ‘more sensitively handled’ than the official response to the 2005 London bombings has been made by Dr Matthew Allen, Lecturer in Culture and Political Economy in the School of Management.
Dr Allen has carried out extensive studies into the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings. He suggests that a rush to commemorate the attacks could be distressing for survivors and bereaved relatives - and that the memorial response to the Paris attacks should be more sensitively managed than the response to 7/7.
Dr Allen said the issue of compensation for the victims and survivors was also a highly controversial subject and, in the case of the London bombings had garnered much media attention. A government report stated that survivors found the compensation process bureaucratic, slow and distressing.
He said: “At the time of the bombings, the process involved submitting a standard form with police and medical reports, the Authority then determines the sum paid according to a table of compensation awards.
“The problem with this bureaucratic process is that grief and trauma are deeply subjective experiences. In contrast the compensation process involved distressingly objectifying tools for thinking about, remembering and communicating a painful relationship to the past."
Dr Allen will be presenting his findings on the memorial response to the 2005 London bombings on 10 December in Sydney at the 2015 conference for Asia Pacific Researchers in Organisation Studies.
- His book The labour of memory: Memorial culture and 7/7 is available now and can be ordered from the University's Bookshop