Beverley Martin – The Guardian July 4, 2006
As one of the editors of the July 7 Truth Campaign website, I would like to thank Mark Honigsbaum for listening to our concerns and for presenting a balanced view (
Seeing isn't believing, June 27). Our website is not a "conspiracy" site with a theory to promote and, as Mr Honigsbaum himself saw, we have taken the time to outline all the proposed theories in our search for the truth; we do not subscribe to any one of them. We are not affiliated to any political or religious movement, and our only agenda is to establish the facts of the events of July 7 2005.
We all feel very strongly that we needed to raise awareness of exactly how riddled with anomalies and flaws the reports of this event are.
When referring to the 7.40 train from Luton to London that was cancelled on the morning of July 7, the article reported Rachel North, who stated: "Train timetables rarely bear any relation to real life. Where conspiracy theorists go with this is that the train never ran ... They just take these small anomalies ... and make it into evidence of a conspiracy."
The purpose of our site is not just to highlight the inconsistencies and errors in the media reporting of the London bombings, but also in the report of the official account of the London bombings - the narrative - from the Home Office, which was supposed to offer a definitive account of the events of that day.
In the case of this train, which the narrative stated the four suspects caught, the cancellation was confirmed by the communications manager for Thameslink Rail,
who supplied the actual times the trains ran that morning. This information was not obtained from a train schedule, which, of course, would be unlikely to be accurate on any given day. This is merely one of numerous oddities in the narrative that we have documented on the website.
It should also be made clear that we do not endorse the "vitriolic abuse" of survivors; I acknowledge that there have been some quite outlandish accusations against Rachel North by a few people unconnected to our campaign, but we at J7 Truth have never suggested that Ms North is anything other than a genuine survivor. We have certainly never entered into speculation regarding Paul Dadge or Davinia Turrell. With an issue such as this, there will be different approaches by all who are questioning it, but the views expressed by a few should not be taken to represent the whole.
We would like to see an independent public inquiry into the London bombings of July 7, in line with the campaign by Amnesty International, the Law Society of England and Wales, the Finucane Family Campaign, and many other legal, human and civil rights organisations. They all oppose the Inquiries Act 2005 - a piece of legislation that renders all public inquiries subject to state approval and, therefore, not independent. The public have so far been denied any kind of inquiry and the narrative only served to raise more questions than it attempted to answer in the first place. There should not be this level of discrepancy and incongruity in the official account almost a year on from this terrible event.