Society must unite to extinguish flame of radicalisation

‘We have saved thousands of lives ...but we cannot always succeed’

- Patrick O’Flynn

THERE are very few events that cause such tremors that almost all of us can remember where we were when we heard about them.

The assassination of US President John F Kennedy would be one and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon another.

But in the 21st century, there is one that stands way out on its own as an epoch-making event – the terrorist attacks on America on Tuesday, September 11, 2001: what has become known simply as 9/11.

Today we mark the 20th anniversary of an intricately planned mass murder, which killed almost 3,000 people, injured many thousands more, and led to global aftershocks that are still being felt.

I was covering the TUC conference in Brighton for this newspaper when news broke of a plane, possibly a “light aircraft”, going into one of the World Trade Centre towers in New York. Soon the giant TV in the media room was switched to rolling coverage. Then the second plane struck and everything changed.

Instantly everyone knew the first crash was no accident and that a terrorist assault different in scale to anything the free world had ever known was in full swing.