And out in Libya...
Libyan radio reported that the embassy had been stormed and that its occupants had fired back in self defence against "a most horrible terrorist action". Libyan soldiers then surounded the United Kingdom Embassy in Tripoli in response.
Meanwhile, for 11 days, in one of the longest police sieges in London's history, armed police surrounded 5 St James's Square. This was the tense, exciting, nail-biting stuff that the media crave. Myriad opportunities for background pieces, conjecture, analysis, prediction and politics. Timely but ephemeral.
But the tragic story of WPC Yvonne Fletcher was not ephemeral. It lives on with her family.
- Category: True Stories Told As Fiction
- Tags: Libyan embassy siege 1984
3 comments add one below
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Neville Hunt about 7 years ago
Thanks very much, Drew. That's high praise. There a postscript coming that really humanises the guys at the Met.
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Christopher about 7 years ago
Very well done, Neville. I was about 11 when this happened but I remember it being on the news here. Such a senseless tragedy.
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Neville Hunt about 7 years ago
When, rarely, I go back to the square, always for sentimental reasons, I am moved when I look at Yvonne Fletchers memorial. Off the beaten West End track, below Piccadilly, few people would go there, but it is part of twentieth century history.
