It was closed to the public in the 1970s after an attempt by the IRA to blow it up (that's the IRA which was generously funded for many years by the Good Ole US of A. Staunch anti-terror state that it is...).
Today, as well as continuing to be a major communications centre, BT uses the tower as a meeting venue for itself, and also lets those charities it sponsors have access to it for events. Thus it was that I spent an evening there as the guest of Freedom from Torture.
The guest speaker was John McCarthy, the journalist who was held hostage in Lebanon for five years. He talked for half an hour or so, in a speech that was extraordinarily light of touch for a subject matter so vile, easily leavening the horror he experienced with self-deprecating jokes which did not disguise the misery of his plight or that of his fellow hostages.
The real star, of course, was London itself, laid out before us for miles around (above you can see the bulk of University College Hospital in the foreground, with St Pancras and its new extension in the middle).
Here's the Bloomsbury headquarters of the University of London (the giant, white tower, which Hitler had apparently decided would be the headquarters of his Governor following the successful invasion of England), with the enormous roof of the British Museum to its right, and the towers of The City in the distance):
As you'll have gathered, it's impossible to photograph up here without getting reflections bouncing around the images. But here's a jolly shot looking south, via Centre Point and on to the London Eye on the river, as dusk turns into night:
Interestingly, while I was taking these photographs there were, according to the media, all-consuming riots engulfing London. Strange: it all looks so peaceful from up there.
3 comments:
I well remember the Irish Republican Army terrorist bombing of London the 1970s; indiscriminate destruction of life and property funded by the USA. Shameful then, and shameful now.
To say the USA sponsored and supported the IRA is wrong and ignorant. The US government did NOT fund the IRA. Individual Americans of Irish ancestry did.
This was, of course, despicable, but it is completely different from holding the US government accountable. Do you deny there are private organizations and donors in the UK who fund Islamic terrorists? Probably many. Do you also, then, believe the UK government funds and supports Islamic terrorits because these people live in the UK and are UK citizens?
Hey John R: You're an idiot and you're wrong.
The British Government asked the US Government, time and again, to refuse to grant visas to the IRA fundraisers who, year after year, made the rounds of all those Oirish Americans. But those nice anti-terrorism people in the US Government told the British Government to fuck off -- the Americans believed that the IRA were brave, freedom-fighting patriots struggling against the tyrannical oppression of the evil British state, so they were given their US visas again and again. Is that not the US Government supporting and facilitating terrorism?
Interestingly, the US Government today, post-9/11, believes that such action is indeed one of the definitions of state-sponsored terrorism. It's about governments knowing what these creatures do but, far from stopping them, positively facilitating them.
I suggest you learn something about the US's history rather than spouting off lies, deceit and bollocks to try to sanitise the evil past of your own country.
(Which is not to argue that my country doesn't have an evil past, of course...)
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