Manchester Attack Newsnight

Images that that have become depressingly familiar.

But this time with a terrible twist - a bomber with

Good evening from Albert Square in Manchester.

In the last hour the terror alert has been raised to critical.

Is it a sign of worse things to come?

This means that their assessment is not only that an attack remains

highly likely but that a further attack may be imminent.

Thousands gathered tonight to remember the victims

This is a city that's determined not to be divided

by what took place half a mile from here at the Manchester Arena.

But there's a huge amount of anger too.

I feel so much for the parents who have gone through what they have

That was not a military target, that's not even a

government target, that was just kids.

Whenever you've got to say, they were children.

Half of them probably don't even know where Raqqa

We're here with a survivor and one of the people

who know this city best, its former mayor.

How will this city - and the country, react?

So many questions arise out of these atrocities; not least,

how we should respond to these attacks.

And strike the right balance between liberty and security?

I would anyway be very surprised indeed to find that this

In fact the idea of a lone wolf, it is an attractive concept,

an attractive label, but it is very, very rare

We'll ask if it's possible to create a society,

safer and more resilient in the face of these increasingly

We'll be with Emily in Manchester this evening,

But we start here, as it was from Downing Street

at quarter to ten tonight, that the Prime Minister made

She said the investigations in Manchester raised the possibility

that there are those who were working with last night's

bomber who are at large; and that the terror threat needs

to be raised because another attack may be imminent.

The threat level is, I should say, set by an independent body.

She also proposed elevated security measures.

Armed police officers responsible for duties like guarding key sites

will be replaced by members of the Armed Forces,

which will allow the police to significantly increase the number

of armed officers on patrol in key locations.

You might also see military personnel deployed at certain

events, such as concerts and sports matches, helping the police

In all circumstances, members of the Armed Forces

who are deployed in this way will be under the command

That was Theresa May at about quarter to ten, I am joined by Mark

Urban, the threat level is critical, is that the first time? It has been

done twice before for short periods in 2006 and 2007. It is not

unprecedented. But it suggests our belief amongst intelligence experts

are further attack could be imminent. Talk us through the logic

which will have led to this view? If you look at the possibility that a

person in their early 20s as this bomber was could put together

something of this nature that could kill so many people, have such

devastating effect, it's not too likely that one individual would

have two master skills of perhaps making home-made explosives,

constructing the bomb and finding the target, motivating themselves to

take their own life, all of these things. Because of all the of

enquiry which are being actively looked into by the police, there is

a belief there could be a wider group of people around them. If you

come to the conclusion that this person may not have been able to

make the bomb you ask who did make it and might they be prepared to

make and deploy others in the coming days? Then you will see the reason

why intelligence and security experts might error on the side of

caution and raised the threat level. Troops at public events and things

like that under the command of police, that is what we had at the

Olympics? It has been seen once or twice before, the procedure that

this will happen under, Operation Tempora, it was put in place a

couple of years ago as a result of a couple of things, ever since Mumbai

but also the events in Paris and Brussels, that if there was a major

attack involving firearms on the streets of Britain there could be

places with particular vulnerabilities. My understanding

has always been they are not especially worried about London,

where there are lots of armed police. But you go to some of our

big cities outside London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle,

Bristol, other cities where the firearms units might be small in

part due to cuts in the police, the fuelling a couple of years ago was

they had to be worked out contingency plans to backfill the

police with Army troops which is what has been talked about now.

Inevitably there are people on social media, we are only 45 minutes

on from the announcement saying it is an overreaction and playing

politics, what other checks and balances in the system that if you

like it did the Prime Minister's hand? It is headed by a senior

intelligence officer, the Prime Minister emphasising this was a

result as a request from the police, that is very much the complexion

being put in by Downing Street. A lot of people are concerned, troops

on the street, is Theresa May milking the situation? Some people

are saying that tonight on the Internet. Exploiting it. This comes

down to a judgment by security professionals and as a former Home

Secretary she is very comfortable dealing with them. We will hear your

report later. All of this comes after

last night's bombing - and a day of sadness,

some anger and a great It's hard to imagine a softer

target than the audience The Manchester Arena is not

a military building, There was no confusion

in the killer's mind. He came here exactly 24 hours

ago to kill children and teenagers: those celebrating

the culture that makes An eight year old girl

is amongst the dead. The trauma for hundreds

of others is incalculable. Tonight, we look at how an event

like this changes us, what we know of terror in Manchester

and of the suspect himself. But we begin right here

in the city itself. Music and Manchester, are deep in

each other's brains. This city welcomed buskers and big-name stars

with equal warmth. A place that sings it self expression. A city

that stops to listen when nothing else makes much sense. Manchester's

concerts like the one here last night are something of a rite of

passage. Every teenager, every kid falling in love with music for the

first time. Tasting what it means to leave their hang-ups and appearance

at the door. Enter that sublime Brave New World. Until that Brave

New World cracks open. Oh my God! What's going on? A suicide bomber

too cowardly to choose anything but the most vulnerable targets

detonated himself in the arena foyer. A man came here to kill

children while their parents were temporarily out of reach. Amongst

the victims just eight years old, Georgina Callander a student of 18

and 26 your old man, John Atkinson. Children screaming from their

parents, parents desperate to hear those voices. This is my daughter

Olivia, I have not seen her since 5pm last night. Charlotte has

robustly been appealing for information throughout the day. Let

someone know if you think it might be her, please, I just want her

home. I want her back in my arms. Paula Robinson was one of those who

stopped to help. We were in the Victoria station which is directly

outside the arena and this big explosion just went off. Loads of

people coming out, but there was huge amounts of teenagers, young

children, two caught our eye because they were seeing where is my dad,

get my dad. We just got hold of those children, told them we would

take them away and that there are dad could not pick them up. She put

her number on Facebook to let parents know she was with

unaccompanied children. She was overwhelmed with what happened next.

People have been ringing me and sending me pictures of their

children. I have had hundreds of hysterical parents wanting to know

if their children are OK and I have tried to put it out there that I

just don't know, I just don't know. The chaos of yesterday has shipped

itself into a narrative of sorts. We know an explosion hit the foyer at

10:30pm shortly after a sold-out Ariana Grande concert finished.

Police believe the attacker detonated an improvised explosive

device and died at the scene. So far we know at least 22 were killed in

the attack and a further 59 victims including 12 age under 16 were taken

to eight hospitals in the area. Police raided a number of addresses

in the wider Manchester area. They named a 22-year-old man of Libyan

origin board here as a suspect. And by lunchtime they were having to

turn people away, for now. Ian has turned up to give blood for the

first time in his life. Devastating. You see these things in the news and

you think one day it's going to be here but when it happens and it's

children, we can react in a lot of ways, we can react in anger or we

can react by doing why did I stay in the city for 17 years, this city is

a community. He tells me he used to be a bar and inside the arena. It

was not a military target, not a government target, it was just kids.

What ever you had to say about it they were just children. Half of

them probably don't know where Raqqa is or Syria is. It's children at a

pop concert. It inhumane. I don't know how else to describe it. This

evening in bright sunshine it feels a whole city has come out to mark

the moment. To remember the victims, many of them children. Sprayers,

talking of peace and forgiveness, for a moment everyone seems to know

what to do. But what happens when the crowds are gone, the hashtag

forgotten and the grieving are left alone with their unbearable grief?

Do not forget this was an attack on kids just trying to grow up and on

parents trying to do their best to let them. On an ordinarily Monday

night in Manchester. Joe Flinders was one of those at the

arena last night. Tony Lloyd was the city 's Police and Crime

Commissioner who stepped down just two weeks ago and they join me here,

Joe I know you have not been to bed since last night, I am wondering

what you did differently, what you went through last night? From my

perspective, as I have said, we normally sit in the block that was

affected. For whatever reason the tickets we got this time happened to

be on the other side, stage left. The epicentre of the blast came from

the terminus between Victoria and the arena which nine times out of

ten is the only exit I know so it's the only exit I use. For what ever

reason we did not use that except and as we left our seats and went

into the corridors, everybody was just about grabbing the corridors,

that is where we heard and felt the blast. We did not see smoke from our

side. There was a second of confusion for everybody but then

there was panic, frantic children being dragged by hysterical parents.

It was distressing to see parents upset and it was upsetting the

children even more. Spilling down the exits we went through. Then one

of the most haunting things were seeing the parents picking people up

outside, flooding back into the building, going against the crowd to

get into their children that they could not see because from their

perspective they heard a massive bang and then panicked crowds

heading out. So still a bit numb towards it all to be honest. What

did you do when you saw those things? First of all we hoped it

might have been best case scenario, pyrotechnics or helium cylinder

because there were lots of balloons as part of the show. I did not panic

until we got onto the street and could see how distressed everyone

was. You could hear people's phone calls saying they saw blood and

smoke. But we did not see any of that from the entrance we left from.

We just tried to get away as quick as we could as we were told to do.

And mindless replaying overall why you were not sitting on the seats

you normally hat. So many times have I been in that exact plays queueing

up to be first at the barriers. I have been going to that building my

whole life. For something to happen this close to home, I cannot fathom

why someone would target music lovers and children. You do not

think about these things happening so close to home. I cannot really

digestive. I am quite numb and really tired. Entirely

understandable. Thank you for staying up with us. Tony Lloyd, you

have heard that the terror alert has been raised, I am wondering as a

former police and crime commissioner, what that is now

sparking off in your head? I think what it means is that our security

services cannot rule out the fact that there could be further threat,

that this may not have been a lone act, there is the potential for

follow-up. In a city like this, making sure that this experience

does not happen again has to be the highest ambition and politicians

have to act on the advice of the police and the intelligence

services. To do otherwise would be irresponsible. We would all welcome

it. I write up thinking we have not been at critical level for a decade?

Yes. Since the attack on Glasgow airport and others. It shows the

changing nature. We do have to take this seriously. In terms of keeping

people safe. The really strong message here tonight in Manchester,

was how much people reject, people from all backgrounds, reject these

acts of evil by individually crazed people. They are on their own and we

stand together. I know you have been here before, I have certainly been

here before at these kinds of events and we know that the perpetrators

are evil and barbaric and all the rest, but at some stage, you have to

say, this is not getting any better. We are living permanently with the

kind of terror that means we even know what to do, we know how to

behave at vigils, we know when to colour up the Eiffel Tower, that

cannot be sustainable, Cabinet? It is not the world any of us want. My

answer to that is to say that the things we have learned, of how we do

work together, building solidarity in our society is of the utmost

importance. It is not just a phraseology that we invented. We

stand together. We have got to be together across our many different

rainbow communities, that makes up this country of ours. Were you at

the vigil? Does it feel like a city that is trying to come together? I

was not there. I was comforting my mother. Because from her

perspective, she got a phone call from me when it happened, before she

heard, because they did not want to have that moment of wondering was I

OK. She was really distressed so I came home from work because she

needed support. I could have done with the support from her as well.

The support from Manchester that I have seen, because my social

channels are filled with people from Manchester because I am from here,

on a personal level it has touched so many people way everyone got

involved. The blood bank, the people offering free lives, taxi drivers,

accommodation, children are being gathered in local hotels, it was the

best thing we can take from all of this, is how we acted together.

Thank you. More from Manchester

later in the programme - How do we help them make any sense

of what they are going through? Let's reflect on how

we should respond to these kinds of atrocities,

and the deadly recurrence of them. Since the Charlie Hebdo attacks

in Paris kicked off this latest wave of killings,

which is not even two and a half years ago now,

316 people have been killed across western Europe

in violence that might be France, Denmark, Sweden,

Belgium, Germany and Britain The selection of iconic targets has

somehow brought the sense of threat And in Manchester, we now have

twenty thousand or so people, caught up in the trauma of a bomb -

running from the danger. Well, we obviously don't

want to become inured to violence around us,

but we do want to be We also want to preserve our

liberties, but also our security. We'll discuss these

dilemmas shortly. But first, what we know

about the threat? How significant is it that

Salman Abedi had succeeded When police raided an address in

fallow field they were prepared to discover a bomb factory. They knew

that Salman Abedi, the bombing suspect had lived here and we have

learned were proceeding on the assumption that he had used

home-made explosives and indeed, one officer was seen emerging from the

property with this. For the police, it is vital to learn how the worst

attack for 12 years was carried out. Can you move back down please? Thank

you very much. Key to the investigation is the explosives and

the construction of the bomb itself. In 7/7 and Paris and Brussels the

tracks, hydrogen peroxide explosives were used. The principles of making

it are easily understood and have been propagated by Al-Qaeda and the

Islamic State group. It is easy to do wrong. In the 21 slash seven

attacks, and the bombs did not go off properly and on other occasions

they have gone off prematurely. The chemistry and weaponisation the

explosives with shrapnel takes skill is unlikely to have been possessed

by Abedi. I would be very surprised indeed to find that this was just

one person. In fact, the idea of a lone wolf, it is an attractive

concept, an attractive label but it is very rare that it actually

happens, that someone is operating purely on their own. It is much more

common for there to be a cell and for that sell to be connected to a

broader organisation. So the questions multiply about

accomplices. Did Abedi or someone else make the bomb and find the

target? Who radicalised him? If there is a wider circle, could more

attacks be mounted? Certainly in this case, the level of expertise is

in building an explosive device capable of killing the number of

people it has, collecting materials in order to do that in the first

place, completely undetected by the police and the security services and

then being able to transport from one place to another, bearing in

mind they can be quite volatile, these home built weapons and then

being able to detonate it at will at the place of your choosing. There is

a level of expertise that is not acquired by the internet or by

sitting in your bedroom. Enquiries by Newsnight suggest that Abedi's

father and brother were linked to the Didsbury Islamic centre mass

that was taken over several years ago by sympathisers of the Libyan

Islamic fighters group, and Al-Qaeda affiliate. For Gaddafi fell, the

group's leadership came to terms with the Libyan government and

agreed they would stop fighting and return to being released from

prison. The group really dissipated but that did not mean to say that

the members gave up their ideas and gave up the radicalisation and I am

sure that some of them will have gone towards Iraq and Syria were

some may have joined some other groups and some may have joined the

Islamic State. I news agency affiliated to the Islamic State has

claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, but it is not

clear yet whether they have done this opportunistically or are behind

and more complex conspiracy. For now, there are multiple lines of

enquiry concerning the associates of the bomber and how someone was able

to make such a lethal contraption. In time though, there will be

broader questions asked, such as how all the procedures and mechanisms

put in place after the 2005 London attacks were beaten. The police say

that since 2013, they have broken up more than a dozen terrorist plots in

the UK, but on this occasion, they did not succeed.

Well, with me in the studio is Shami Chakrabarti,

But who is actually not here in that capacity -

this is not a day for political points.

Shami was for 13 years until last year, the director of Liberty,

Good evening to you. The great question that emerges on days like

this is how we got the balance between liberties and security

right? There is a sweeping question with so many questions within it but

at the heart of all of this is probably a word that Tony Lloyd used

briefly in the interview with Emily which was this idea of solidarity,

this idea of a community trying to stay calm and United, under the kind

of provocation that you see from this kind of terrorism which is of

course designed to provoke, designed to divide, designed to turn people

against each other and to have people living in fear. Ironically,

to shut down what Theresa May call today our liberal pluralist society.

It is certainly the kind of day for calm, a certain pause for thought

and unity and then of course for resources. We have heard, we hear

about the threat has been raised and the resources that are to be

deployed. I have not heard anything as yet that suggests a knee jerk to

bring in other powers. It would not worry you that there is a rush to

judgment. On occasions like this particularly where children are

involved, people will want to tilt the balance away from liberty and

say screw liberty, it is about getting these people. There was not

any liberty in that concert Hall last night for those children. Let

us be clear. Human rights include the right to protection of precious

life, however, how best to do that and probably not, we have learned,

but -- by knee jerk that do not unite us. The sun is reporting that

the government is about to ask Parliament to approve technical

capability notices which will force internet companies to basically

de-encrypt or handover" to that data, I do not know the details, is

this the kind of thing that is going too far? I do not know what the Sun

is reporting, but there is no Parliament at the moment, this is

one of the challenges of this rather extraordinary moment. There is no

Parliament. We have got this terrorist atrocity and we have got

no Parliament. However, there is still checks and balances and I have

colleagues who are privy counsellors and I know that Theresa May has

spoken to the Leader of the Opposition and will no doubt do so

again. I have other colleagues like Diane Abbott who is a privy

Counsellor again, there is still the possibility of for discussion and

scrutiny in a bipartisan way in these challenging times. Are you

satisfied with the system, we have the independent body who recommend

the threat level, are you satisfied, if you like, with the broad

independence of that cyst, that it is not subject to politicisation?

What I would say on a night like this one is that this is not the

moment for conspiracy theories. If anyone is feeling panicked about the

timing of this, I would urge them to be calm and United. I have

colleagues who are great civil libertarians and human rights folk

and privy counsellors and I think that it is possible to take this

forward in a bipartisan way. You broadly support then the raising of

the threat level? I am not a privy Counsellor and I have not seen the

intelligence but nor am I going to take a knee jerk in the other

direction and to be a conspiracy theorist, I do not think that would

be good for anyone this evening. Thank you very much.

Let me turn to Shaista Gohir who chairs the Muslim

And Professor Michael Clarke - specialist adviser to

the Joint National Committee on Security Strategy

and former Director General of Royal United Services Institute.

Can I start with Hugh? She hinted at us not needing extra powers but

potentially need extra resources, is that where the security services

would be when it comes to dealing with this track?

We have plenty of counterterrorism law in this country, but the police

need more reason horses and I think that is what this will hinge on. We

don't need more powers but we need the powers that do exist more across

the board. The police have been suffering cuts year after year,

maybe too far? Or is it a matter of redeploying resources? That is where

the knock on problem is, they met in London take the lead but if you look

at other constabularies in other big cities which may now be vulnerable,

they will tell you that their counter terrorism squads are too

small, and that is where the knock on effect arises. If there are more

police there could be more firearms officers but if this threat level of

critical means troops will turn out that will release more police to do

the firearms related task. The technical capability notices or

whatever the government are looking at to get more data, is that the

missing link in the powers they have? They will have a problem

because the jurisdiction is a big issue, the government have worried

about it for a long time. The companies are not British so there

is only a sort of certain amount of their operation they could demand

control over. Shaista Gohir let me turn to you, you are concerned to

some extent with preventing these things, using that word because we

have a prevent programme which tries to do it. From the perspective of

Muslim Women's Network UK needs to change, either in the rest of

society or in the Muslim community? I would like to pay sincere

condolences to the friends and families of the victims,

particularly parents who have lost their children. It's unthinkable to

lose your children. In terms of what can be done, we talk about how do

challenge and the threat of ices and that is something the police and

government are working on but there is more that can be done -- the

threat of IS. This attack has been so horrific that everybody, no

matter what your background is has condemned this, it's an attack on

children and an attack on all of us, but although the Muslim community by

and large is really shaken with this and is condemning it unfortunately

there are a small cohort of people, individuals, organisations, I will

not name them on here, but they are very active in terms of the will not

want Muslims to work with the government... Sorry to interrupt,

would be recognise themselves as supporters of Isis or would be think

of themselves as opposed? But not opposed in the right way? I will

describe what they are and then I think we can decide whose side on

because they are not on our side and I would put them on the side of

extremists because these people first of all I have noticed when

there are terror attacks do not condemn them and at first I thought

let me give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe it is because we have

so many and they are abroad, maybe they do not want to condemn each and

everyone but this one you have to be heartless not to condemn. This was

on children, an attack on our own home country and yet there has been

silence. They have very quickly jumped on the bandwagon of their is

going to be a backlash on Muslims that has already started. We need to

condemn that, yes, but it's a conversation we need to be having in

coming days. Today our focus should be on the victims and their

families. The same people will criticise the government's strategy

of prevent and that is fine. People who work with government like

ourselves will raise concerns and say we need to do better because

innocent people get caught up in this. Let me finish my point, it's

really important, the same people will demonise and target people and

vilify people who want to work with government to defeat and challenge

extremists. We are called Muslim apologists. By condemning terrorism

it is not being an apologist, it's about being a human being. Thank you

very much, that point is very well made. I want to throw last one to

you Michael Clarke about security, prevention of these kind of

incidents. Can armed troops, armed police, if someone walks in with a

bomb, he walks in, when the exits are open so everyone is leaving so

you don't have security, you could put security around the outside of

the arena but then you will have people exiting the security zone to

outside, what are we meant to make of the difficulty here? It's all

risk calculation. You could extend the security perimeter around every

event and then you have problems around the perimeter again. Armed

police can provide reassurance and make sure an attack does not go very

far which is what happened in Westminster. But ultimately if

somebody wants to try something they will get the first blow in before

anyone can react and unless we are going to live in some sort of East

German state that will always be the case. It's a matter of the public

being vigilant and accepting we live with the level of risk. That is what

the security services have been telling us for the last 15 years.

Thank you both very much. Back over to Emily in Manchester.

Today the Children's Commissioner for England urged adults to find

a way to tell our children what has happened.

But how we do help them make sense of such terrible acts

of violence particularly when it's their generation

Just approaching eight o'clock on BBC radio Manchester. Their faces

stay out from the missing appeals on social media. Olivia Campbell's mum

has not heard from her since she went to the concert last night.

Relatives desperately seeking Chloe Rutherford and Liam Curry. And

Courtney Boyle, just 19, is also unaccounted for. In many case this

was an attack on young people. As parents and children woke up to the

news of what had happened many grappled with how to explain this

assault on the young, to the young. Children go out and they go to a

concerted and this is what happens. You go out as a family on a happy

occasion and this is what happens. Outside Manchester's Kingswood

primary school parents were still die jesting the horror. What was

your reaction as a parent? I was scared, shocked, I was on the phone

telling them to get home on time, things like that, really scared.

Mortified as a parent, mortified. I mean... My eldest walk up, got out

of bed and she saw, she is 13, she's got a phone and she sent me a

message so she clearly knows and understands what is going on. The

three younger ones don't know about it. But my heartfelt sympathies and

I feel so much for the parents who have gone through what they have

gone through today. The school flag has been lowered in sympathy. Many

schools in the area and beyond will have decided an attack which shocked

adults will also have had an impact on children. Kings road cancelled

its full school assembly in favour of teachers talking to their

individual classes. Some year groups had heard gossip about knives and

guns and rampaging people. We had to deal with that, dealing with

mistruths and correcting them sensibly. Other year groups,

although your groups there was a mix of emotions, some children felt fear

and negative emotions and other children felt different negative

emotions such as anger. How'd you make children feel safe? We have not

let them out at playtime today because we wondered what the risk

was and we have locked all the gates throughout the school and senior

leaders have patrolled outside the school today so it is physically

safe. Helping the parents be assured so their children are safe in

school. Then there is emotionally safe as well and safe to feel fear

and what we do with that and I think we have a responsibility as a school

to tackle that. This educational psychologist gave British schools

advise in the wake of the Paris attacks and was hand again today.

Before eight o'clock this morning I gave out e-mails to answer

children's questions, give them the facts, do not engage in speculation

but acknowledge it and talk about it. For one parent, picking up his

daughter from the primaries go, talking is very necessary. Today his

apartment block became central to the police investigation. There was

a chord and setup, three building blocks have been surrounded by the

police and security forces. Is that still the case? Up until this

moment. They are making their enquiries about someone who has

lived in the premises who has a connection with what happened in

Manchester last night. How do you feel about that? Despicable if it is

the right word. If it can be broadcasted. It really should not be

done in England. The blocks here, parents living nearby said they felt

the need to explain what has happened to their children. I think

it is really important to be honest with your kids when they ask, do not

overlook them with too much information because that could make

them frightened about going out and just try and keep, if they want to,

talk about it and listen to them if they are scared. The overwhelming

response we found today to the indiscriminate violence was empathy.

Parents deeply moved by the knowledge that they can still guard

their children close when others cannot. I am joined by: Parry who

lost his son in 1993 in an IRA attack. You are an extraordinary

inspiration to any parent watching this tonight, because what you have

done, you and your wife, is to really read channel that anger into

something very positive. Yes, although I would say there was never

any anger. I will not get into that. We channelled our energies into

doing something meaningful in terms of keeping Tim's name alive in any

way we did and Jonathan, the other little boy who died. We began with a

3-way exchange programme between Bury Dublin and Warrington for young

people and two years on having seen the results, we decided we wanted to

scale up and the only way we could do that was to build our own

premises in Warrington and over the next couple of years, I fund raise

with a few significant political allies and we built the Peace Centre

in 2000 and that where we do most of our work. When you saw what happened

here last night, I am wondering that took you back to square one? More

than any other terrorist outraged in the years that followed Warrington,

this hit me and my wife and my daughter as well, she was very upset

today, because it was children. It was children doing something

perfectly normal for children, just having fun. You said Tim was on his

way to buy football shorts. He was. That is all he was doing, buying

some football shirts because he has saved a penalty the week before for

the school team and he went out and never came home and 22 people have

done the same here and many of them are children. It is horrifying that

such young lives can be lost like that. I was looking at some of the

photographs on the news earlier, the eight-year-old girl, what a

beautiful little girl and how her parents are feeling now. I can

imagine how they are feeling. I don't know if you are reaching out

to them, what would you say to them or anyone going through that now? I

don't know that anything could be said right now that would make a jot

of difference because they will be so broken. And so heartbroken and

devastated that I think they will probably be deaf to most things. I

found in those early days and weeks that we operated on a basic level,

we slept and we ate and people came in and did the basic things for us,

family and friends and we were relieved of having to do anything

other than basic existence because the grief is so enormous. I don't

think any function above the most basic is within your capabilities

and it takes time to reach the point where maybe you can start to have

conversations with people, and some advice might be helpful. I think

when we might reach out to people possibly be of help is once they

have gone through that awful initial grief, that might be weeks or

months, but when we are ready, we would be the ideal organisation to

talk to, because we are a victim founded organisation. We can

empathise in ways that perhaps a professional cannot. Thank you very

much. That is the ambition now for Manchester to try and work out how

it falls together, how it finds comfort and support, how it finds

optimism in anything that has happened here, because to be frank,

there is nothing else they can do right now. Emily, thank you.

The prime minister said this was worst ever attack

It's not the first, but it is clearly far more traumatic

for Manchester than the IRA bombing in the centre of the

It takes the violence that struck in London in 2005

and again earlier this year, beyond the capital, to the nation.

I'm joined by the author Howard Jacobson - very quickly

after the attack he penned a tribute to his home city of Manchester

Good evening. You wrote something interesting, though Manchester now

belongs to a long list of terrorist casualties it is, it can think of

itself as picked up, it is a city of rare figure and that is a striking

point. It is the figure that makes it a target. It makes it vulnerable,

you think of it is a big and free and happy and joking use it loving

place, if ever there was a vulnerable place, it is Manchester.

It is not unique, but it is a town given over to good natured fun and

entertainment. Good natured relations between the people there

and that makes it, well it is my hometown and I have family there, so

I feel particularly sad and anxious about it. Sad anxious, emotions run

high on all the days of these atrocities. How much emotion should

we allow ourselves and how much can we allow ourselves if these

atrocities occur once a month? In the Second World War, the story

goes, the stiff upper lip and you would not have coped if you were

going to get too sentimental about things, but it is very hard not to

be. It is and one does not know whether the word is sentimental. The

real answer is you feel as much as you need to feel and some people

will feel it differently and some people will eventually come to feel

better about it as the gentleman we have just seen in some people might

never heal. I suspect that if I were the parent of one of those children,

I would never heal and I would be angry, but that is not to say that

is the way to feel. You're quite right that the war and I often think

about that but I am wondering if it is the nature of the violence that

is done to that makes the difference. People say terrorism is

not so terrible, more people are knocked down by bicycles but there

is something about an accident, the way you are killed. It is much much

worse. You feel there is a malevolence in the air when that

happens and you might very well and it is a personal, spiteful

malevolence that is aimed at you. The person who did this wanted to

kill children. We want to be a resilient society and pick ourselves

up and I suppose the question is, how quickly we return to normality

after these things. What else does resilience mean other than pick

ourselves up and go back to work? What is a normality? The thing that

gave on some consolation was the account of how people work in the

immediate aftermath and how helpful people work, this is the truth about

Manchester, it might sound like, they are lovely Laura, they are

lovely in Manchester and very kind and I heard that story about the

taxi drivers ferrying people and my father was a black taxi driver in

Manchester. He is not alive now but I know he would have been calling

his friends and saying, let's do it. It is a very equal society and the

help one another. I'm not saying it does not have them elsewhere, but

Manchester is particularly like that. That is one set of immediate

responses that was great and gave you hope in human nature. It is a

music city, it is a party city. You presumably help that they are back

to music and entertainment as quickly as you can clear the crime

scenes and the evidence. Of course yes, but we have to ask ourselves

whether there is a callousness and simply getting back to that. We can

work the two tracks, we can live our lives and the active and enjoy our

lives and at the same time, there can be a layer of sadness, that this

is the case, that this happened and we will never forget that it

happened. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for coming in.

Well, that is it from us this evening.

It's worth remembering amid the gloom that every event

ignites a counter reaction, the bad always provokes the good;

and there has been no shortage of that at all.

We thought James Corden captured that thought rather well last night;

the English host of the US Late Late Show on CBS came on air

as events were developing, here's some of what he said.

It shocks me every time we hear this sort of news that attacks

like this can happen, but especially when there

will be so many children at this concert tonight.

Many of you won't have ever been to Manchester,

but you will definitely have heard of it.

It's famous all over the world for so many wonderful things.

It was the birthplace of the leader of the suffragettes.

It's the home of the inventor of the first computer.

It's a place full of comedy and curries and character.

But when I think of Manchester, the place that I know,

I think of the spirit of the people there.

And I'm telling you, a more tight-knit group of people

Strong, proud, caring people with community at its core.

And if it was even possible, the spirit of the people

of Manchester will grow even stronger this evening.

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Manchester tonight.

All of the staff at the MEN arena, all of the security teams,

all of the emergency services, Ariana and her team and all those

We'll all go to bed holding our little ones even