by David Steven | Mar 2, 2008 | Conflict and security
Today is the 65th anniversary of the Bethnal Green Tube disaster:
On that day [in 1943], hurrying for shelter from an air raid, 173 people were killed on this staircase without a single bomb falling. In all, 62 children, 84 women and 27 men died with a terrible simplicity: at the enquiry, the magistrate said that “the stairway was, in my opinion, converted from a corridor to a charnel house in from ten to 15 seconds. Death was, in all cases examined, due to suffocation and the vast majority showed signs of intense compression”.
Newspaper reports of the time explain it, baldly. At 8.17pm, the alert sounded and, in the next ten minutes, over 1,500 people went safely down the stairway (the shelter, an unfinished Tube station, held 9,000 people, with bunks for 5,000).
At 8.27pm, a salvo of anti-aircraft rockets a new type, unfamiliar to the public caused a panic surge. At the same time, a woman carrying a baby tripped near the bottom of the 19 steps, starting off a domino effect. People lay, unable to move, their plight invisible to the pressing crowd above because of the blackout. “There was built,” said the official Home Office statement, “an immovable and interlaced mass of bodies five, six or more deep.”
It took until 11.45pm to clear the scene, even in the middle of a war. The disaster was the Hillsborough of its time. The home secretary, Herbert Morrison, urged stoicism. “Shocking as this blow is, it falls upon a people tested and hardened by the experiences of the blitz and as well able to bear loss bravely as any people in the world.”
Full details of the disaster was hushed up until after the war, despite journalists attempting to bribe kids with £5 to tell their stories. Stairs into the station were cleaned of blood overnight and nothing was said even to those who were already sheltering in the station. Survivor, Alf Morris:
We all walked home and then people didn’t arrive. There was a little girl who my mother looked after. She didn’t turn up, so I went to school without her.
When I got to school, there were children missing. In one case, there was seven went to the Tube and only one came up, the whole family was gone.
by Alex Evans | Mar 2, 2008 | Conflict and security
ForeignPolicy.com has an excellent interview with Jack Cloonan, a former FBI interrogator who worked extensively on Al Qaeda. Here’s the part where he’s asked about the proverbial ‘ticking bomb scenario’:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdNhwFqhyU]
by Alex Evans | Mar 2, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
[Last updated: May 30th]
Now that food prices are moving fast up the agenda, you might want to check out some of the wider briefing available on the web. Here are some sources worth a look:
- The hub site for the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis is here; see also their latest update (from 20th May). The task force is currently preparing a ‘Comprehensive Framework for Action’ in time for the UN’s food summit in June.
- The Food and Agriculture Organisation has set up a new portal on the world food situation. It’s got a news feed on news from countries and from FAO itself, plus good links to background briefing including the latest FAO Food Outlook reports, which come out every six months (here’s November 07‘s – next one in June). See also the latest joint FAO / OECD report on the agricultural outlook to 2017: summary here.
- The World Bank has a pretty good selection of material, including a briefing paper for the Spring Meetings in April 2008, a chart showing which policies are in place in which countries, a slideshow on rising food prices and of course the latest World Development Report (2008’s is on agriculture and development). Also worth reading is World Bank President Bob Zoellick’s ten point plan for tackling the food crisis, published in the FT.
- The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (snappy title, no?) published its report through UNESCO on April 15th. Press release here, executive summary here and full report here.
- The Financial Times has been way out in front of the rest of the broadsheet media, as I’ve noted here before. They have a special portal page set up on the issue, including links to key articles as well as slideshows and videos. The New York Times has a similar page here. Reuters has a terrific hub site that includes a clickable map of all food-related instability around the world; and the BBC has a very useful set of graphs and stats.
- The International Food Policy Research Institute published a new World Food Situation report in December last year; more recently, they’ve also produced a ‘What, How and Who of proposed policy actions“. See also this briefing paper from the Overseas Development Institute.
Finally, a couple of plugs on stuff that I’m involved in:
- I’ve published a briefing paper (April 2008) on why prices are rising and what it means for development as part of a joint CIC / Chatham House project that I’m leading on international implications of rising food prices. Chatham House also has a major research project underway on UK food policy in the 21st century, and released a set of scenarios for UK food supply in May.
- And of course, we’ll keep tracking the issue closely here on Global Dashboard – we’ll file everything we do on this under the Food Prices section.
