year I’m sure most of you will remember
where you were I was lying in bed and as
I’m sure many of you do I was staring
blankly into my smartphone I was about
to go to sleep when I noticed a sort of
flurry of messages and tweets start to
pop up about an accident of some kind in
the city center banger collision
something like that with social media
being social media it was mostly just
guesswork and speculation from everybody
no one really knew what was going on I’d
been in the city a few years ago when
the riots had happened and I’d seen the
effects of this kind of guesswork and
speculation when the facts won’t really
know I voiced my opinion and I’ve had it
swearing but what I said was I’d sent a
tweet out saying explosions or bangs of
some kind happening at Victoria Station
idiots were already tweeting
misinformation and conjecture shut up I
hit Send put my phone in silent and went
to sleep and when I woke up I grabbed my
phone to check the time it was about
6:00 in the morning and it became very
obvious straight away that something was
quite wrong I had hundreds and hundreds
of messages and tweets and dozens of
missed calls from numbers I didn’t
recognize and it quickly became apparent
that the worst of the rumors from last
night had been true there had been a
terrorist attack in Manchester and the
reason that I had been bombarded with so
many messages was that my younger
brother Martin had been at the concert
and was missing he’d been at the ariana
grande concert and I initially I was
confused because I will admit fully that
I had never heard of ariana grande I’m
sorry
and for a little while I thought it was
one of his friends called Ariana Grande
and it was like have you tried he was if
he was ariana grande’s why don’t you
ring Gary Hanna
we should we knock at her house like
anything and so what had happened was
that the explosion had happened at the
very end of the concert after had
finished and the last suite the he’d
sent we were both prolific Twitter
abuses
he wrote a tweet about half-past ten
complaining that he’d stuck to the
toilet during a Macy Gray cover and he
was moaning that everybody else had had
the same idea and that was the last we
heard that day for me and so many people
in this city turned into the longest day
I will ever enjoy my family were rushed
with all the other families to the
Etihad football stadium where the police
had set up an emergency zone I stayed at
home sat on the floor surrounded by
computers laptops tablets scouring news
fees for any trace any update had the TV
news on in the background I was sending
out his photograph to everybody we just
it was just a state of complete panic at
the same time my life also became a
rolling battle with fairly aggressive
journalists who swamped me with requests
for information and for interviews and
that sort of thing so we’re going from
nought to maximum intensity very very
quickly a couple turned up my place of
work as if as if I’d be there and one
came to my house and pushed a note under
the door asking if you get him an
interview bear in mind this doesn’t seem
very much now but at the time is any
knock could have been the police or
worse you know by late afternoon we’d
been able to pinpoint his location
fairly well through other people’s
photographs there were just dozens of
photos of him dancing and drinking and
partying we knew kind of where he’d been
but we’d not heard anything official as
evening drew in we my sisters and I were
bundled into a police car and we were
rushed to the entire stadium with blue
lights on sirens blaring the traffic
passing in front of us a few very
difficult hours later and all left the
stadium together as a family
carrying the heartbreaking knowledge
that Martin had been identified as one
of the 22 people who’d been killed that
day the next
few days were unbelievably difficult for
everybody but the way the city rallied
together was completely incredible and I
received more messages of support than I
could possibly ever respond to I stood
with the rest of you and watched Tony
Walsh hold the city at a complete
standstill with that electric reading of
this is the place I stood onstage a few
days later the Deaf Institute sold out
benefit concert trying not to crap cry
in front of the crowd as I sort of
thanks the city in some way from the
bottom of my heart really um I really
feel that the true character of a place
in his people comes out in a crisis and
I can honestly say I’ve never been more
fiercely proud to be from this city now
all of these experiences there’s one
particular one I feel it’s important for
me to tell you about it was a few weeks
after everything happened and the police
reached out to the family to say that we
would be possible to reach so to visit
the arena it was still closed so the
police had control of it and many family
said no and many members of my family
said no to is a very personal decision
ultimately I decided that I had to know
I had to see so a few days later I found
myself with a few members of my family
on a average rainy manchester afternoon
standing in the empty and completely
silent lobby of the Manchester Arena
every surface around me was marked by an
uncountable number of shrapnel impacts
every glass panel was shattered every
stone wall tile cracked every bit of
metal in the place was punctured and
marked on the floor around me Oh in fact
though there was one takeaway image that
will stay with me
completely above me there was a single
security camera looking down at the
center of the room and it’s single s
lens had been shattered by a piece of
shrapnel and the whole experience was
images like that that will just stay
with you around me on the floor were 22
red roses spread out around the center
of the attacker I knelt on the floor and
put my hand on the polished floor tiles
and underneath my hand the floor sort of
gave way to rough recessed stone and I
knew this to be the exact spot that the
bomb had been detonated the 22 red roses
were spread around this point most were
in concentric circles around
tacker one or two works impossibly far
away one of the candles about seven feet
away so perhaps from here so there had a
small candle burning next to it placed
there by the police and I knew the rose
that marks where my brother have been
found now the reason that I’ve described
the scene to you today in such detail is
that it’s important for me to get across
that I’ve seen in a very literal sense
the the devastation that happens when an
attack of this nature happens um it’s
impossible to comprehend the scale and
ferocity of an attack until you’ve stood
in the center of the aftermath and I’d
not consider what it would look like but
it was completely overwhelming well
despite having been witness to this
destruction what I’ve learned through my
experiences since that day is that the
true damage of violent extremism extends
far far beyond why saw that day our
responses as individuals and as
communities are quite literally what
imbues terrorism with its strength and
with his power and this isn’t just
speculation and this isn’t just an
emotional response the Home Office
released statistics last year saying the
hate crimes had risen by 1/3 87 percent
of those hate crimes had race or
religion as a contributing factor
it’s an astonishing number bear in mind
that these were always conservative
measures as well because an enormous
number of hate crimes go unreported
within this data there were clear spiked
in hate crimes that correspond exactly
with attacks in London this is thousands
of retaliations perpetrated upon a
peaceful Muslim population in direct
response to isolated extremist acts I’ve
learned that those who respond to
violence with more violence are in fact
doing the least constructive and most
damage and thing they could possibly do
when a gang Gotham folks smash up a
mosque when a Muslim family is attacked
in their own home this is actually just
further damage from extremism the damage
is immeasurably wide-ranging and
destructive it’s not just about the bomb
the damage carries on far beyond the
person who carried out this attack was
the son of Libyan immigrants he grew up
on the same street did the same
situation my brother did my brother and
I are in fact the sons of a Turk
immigrant my mother sounds from bro and
my dad is British
now the similarities between us we’re
striking even at the very very start
because although we led very similar
lives in the same city at some point his
paths diverged into radicalization and
extremism and this similarity showed me
one thing very clearly that if you use
the actions of an extremists to demonize
Islam or all immigrants you demonize me
and my family too and worse you demonize
thousands and thousands of innocent
people whose only crime is to share a
birthplace or a faith or a culture and
this is why I spoke out now let me say
very very clearly for those of the back
of my thoughts on this if you use the
actions of extremists to validate your
prejudice against an inch high an entire
section of our society that is racism
now stop me if you’ve heard this one
before I can’t be racist because Islam
is not a race I’ve heard this a lot and
I think you’re splitting hairs is point
really the net result of all this is
that Islamophobia is become almost
completely normalized for so many now
let’s look at the other side of the
extremism spectrum in June 2016 Joe Cox
was murdered by a right-wing far-right
neo-nazi extremist on the streets of the
constituency she served the the
right-wing newspaper that has used his
pages for decades to demonize Islam and
immigration didn’t report the same in
this case instead choosing to describe
the attacker as a loner with a history
of mental illness I’m sure you’ve read
this kind of thing before a few weeks
later when he was sentenced to life in
prison they pushed the story back to
page 30 instead of accurately reporting
the Jews own verdict this attack was
carried out to further a white
supremacist ideology now as a citizen
I don’t have the power to stop a
terrorist attack but as citizens we
absolutely hold the power to affect
change within ourselves in our
communities we can fix this my idea
under I say this my dear we’re spreading
I suppose is that we all have the power
to change things but we’re speaking to
the wrong people about extremism now let
me explain since the attack in
particular list is taking such a public
stance as I’m doing now I have spent a
long time reading any moments of
weakness responding to some of the most
unbelievable abuse and aggressive
commentary let’s say that you can
imagine and it’s I very very quickly
realized that attempting to meaningfully
engage with these people is completely
impossible it is time wasted trying to
offer counterpoint or argument to a
viewpoint and it’s just utterly
entrenched in racism and xenophobia is
impossible and this isn’t just online I
was there that night when a prominent
far-right right commentator chose to
launch his self-published Islamophobic
book on the streets of Manchester he
chose this city our city my city for one
reason alone and was the attacks I was
there at the counter protest and I heard
the same abuse screamed at my face in
real life and that kind of thing it
really really stays with you now this
hostile defense of Britishness is
something that pervades a lot of the
argument put forth by the far-right you
know taking our country back that kind
of your kind of deal but I question what
it is that they’re defending because I
don’t think it exists for me British
through Britishness is built on a
foundation of multicultural then
multiculturalism from our music to our
food to our British at eccentricity we
are a multicultural society and I feel
that genuine national pride is actually
a fine thing but this distorted hostile
nationalism is not that and those who
disagree are labelled as traitors and
I’ve been called this too recently I
would say that surely the real traitors
to this country are those that seek to
misappropriate subvert or weaponize our
values against one another
so we’re thinking about so if this is
not where the conversation happens
and it clearly isn’t than we’re well to
fix a problem as big as extremism I
believe that a real deep cultural change
is needed and in order to do that we
need to speak to the next generation of
citizens recently I became a founder
member of survivors against terror an
antique extremism working group formed
by Brendan Cox and a diverse group of
others we’ve all been affected by
violent extremism and we aim to use our
collective voice and experience to
affect proper tangible change in our
communities our policies and our support
networks discussing these issues openly
with young people is a really really
fundamental part of our work and when I
go into these places so schools colleges
I’ve spent a long time doing this now
and when I go into these places I don’t
have slides I don’t have a script
I converse with students I don’t talk at
students and this is an incredibly
important distinction that so many are
not making I found without fail that
these students are just surprised to not
be spoken down to discount young people
at your peril and and they’re just happy
to be engaged in what’s quite a frank
and honest discussion about these issues
which is something that often they don’t
get and I found that they’re hungry for
information for context and for balanced
insight from other resources because
quite often people young people in
particular are receiving their info from
singular sources which is either the
press you have their own agenda or from
those in the argument that shout the
loudest which is not the right balance
whatsoever and when a person receives
all their information from just from
single sources then in the worst cases
that’s where extremism comes from and in
their enthusiasm to engage with what is
an extremely difficult thing to talk
openly about I see one thing I see
change those potential there or put this
another way and if you take anything
away today make it this bit imagine a
scenario in which the radicalize young
man who carried out this attack on this
city had been exposed to voices other
than those that led him from the path
what happened in this city was a tragedy
of unimaginable proportions for so many
of us and we cannot let this legacy be
more hatred and division between us we
just can’t
it’s losing someone for me to realize
that we all have a stake in this and
that we all have the ability to change
things really change things my brother’s
name was mine and he seized every moment
and my tribute to him will absolutely be
to do the same Thank You Manchester [Applause]