An aircraft passes an election poster of Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown as it comes in to land at Heathrow Airport
Nearly nine years ago I was on a flight bound from London to New York when the pilot announced that we'd be dumping our fuel once we cleared Ireland and turning back to Heathrow. There'd been a terrorist attack, he added. Wait, I thought in confusion, if there'd been a terrorist attack on the ground in Britain, why would we go back there? To me, terrorism back then meant attacks by Irish Republican splinter groups; it was inconceivable to me, on September 11, 2001, that someone would be attacking New York City.
I spent a week in London, living on a friend's couch and shivering in the cold September rain — I'd been coming back from the United Nations Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, and I hadn't brought anything thicker than a long-sleeved t-shirt. The outpouring of sympathy — or empathy — for Americans was amazing. We were less than a year out from a divisive U.S. election, the winner of which had already turned off much of Europe by withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol. And yet everyone was suddenly expressing support for the U.S. Every black cab I took refused payment when they learned I was from New York, insisting instead that I mark down their names and the fares and donate the money to a widows' fund.
This week, for the second time, I've once again been stranded in London for a week due to an enormous event that has disrupted air traffic. This time the disaster is natural, thus the inconveniences it has wrought are easier to openly gripe about. What's a lost week of work when 3,000 people have died in a terrorist attack? Nothing. But a lost week of work when no one has died, no one can see the volcanic ash that theoretically could mess with airplane engines, and people suspect some bureaucratic bungling may have played a role in unnecessarily extending a ban on all flights in and out of England? That can inspire a maelstrom of blame and recriminations. Hell on earth right now is a ticketing counter at Heathrow Airport.
Things have changed in London in the intervening years. I've been through here often, but usually just for an odd weekend en route elsewhere. It's unusual to take a forced look at a city because, well, you're stranded there and you have the time. There are more bikes now — and bike lanes — and a few pubs stay open later. The questions I get about our (relatively) new President are more overtly on his side: why don't Americans like Barack Obama? Do you think giving him the Nobel Peace Prize was a mistake? But all the sympathy this time around has gone to the Poles, who lost their Prime Minister and nearly 100 other leaders in a plane crash in Russia two weeks ago. Flowers are heaped outside the Polish Embassy, and Lech Kaczynski's funeral was broadcast on huge screens live in Trafalgar Square, where hundreds knelt in prayer.
The overriding obsession in Britain these days — aside from Iceland's spewing volcano — is the upcoming election. You see enormous billboards around town mocking Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is seeking to keep his office. They feature a grinning Brown and various slogans, such as: "I increased the gap between rich and poor, vote for me," and "I doubled the deficit, let me do it again." The May 6 election is rapidly approaching and the electorate looks more indecisive than ever: some polls have the three biggest parties running neck and neck.
For the first time in my life this week I had the driver of a black cab try to cheat me. Black-cab drivers are supposed to be the pinnacle of honesty — they always take the shortest route on their honor — but this guy took the long way round Hyde Park instead of going through it. He was embarrassed when called out on it, but unrepentant. But he was just one example of many folks both here and at home who are scraping to earn an extra dollar or pound as the ends become harder and harder to meet. Central London is still affluent, but even here I've seen a surprising number of stores holding going-out-of-business sales and more homeless than before. Though 9/11 led to two wars and many more terrorist strikes — including one here on the London Underground — the effects of the ash crisis have been more immediately striking: for a country in need of tourism cash, the six-day suspension of flights has been hard.