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Summary
Summary
Tony Blair is a politician who defines our times. His emergence as Labour Party leader in 1994 marked a seismic shift in British politics. Within a few short years, he had transformed his party and rallied the country behind him, becoming prime minister in 1997 with the biggest victory in Labour's history, and bringing to an end eighteen years of Conservative government. He took Labour to a historic three terms in office as Britain's dominant political figure of the last two decades.
A Journey is Tony Blair's firsthand account of his years in office and beyond. Here he describes for the first time his role in shaping our recent history, from the aftermath of Princess Diana's death to the war on terror. He reveals the leadership decisions that were necessary to reinvent his party, the relationships with colleagues including Gordon Brown, the grueling negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, the implementation of the biggest reforms to public services in Britain since 1945, and his relationships with leaders on the world stage--Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush. He analyzes the belief in ethical intervention that led to his decisions to go to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and, most controversially of all, in Iraq.
A Journey is a book about the nature and uses of political power. In frank, unflinching, often wry detail, Tony Blair charts the ups and downs of his career to provide insight into the man as well as the politician and statesman. He explores the challenges of leadership, and the ramifications of standing up, clearly and forcefully, for what one believes in. He also looks ahead, to emerging power relationships and economies, addressing the vital issues and complexities of our global world.
Few British prime ministers have shaped the nation's course as profoundly as Tony Blair, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come. Here, uniquely, we have his own journey, in his own words.
Author Notes
Tony Blair was born on May 6, 1953. He graduated from Oxford University in 1976 with a Second Class Honours BA in Jurisprudence. He became a member of parliament for Sedgefield in 1983 and was elected prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. In 2008, he founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which promotes respect and understanding between the major religions and makes the case for faith as a force for good in the modern world. He also leads the Breaking the Climate Deadlock initiative and lectures at Yale University.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (7)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Critics who dubbed Britain's ex-prime minister "Tony Blur" for his allegedly substance-free politics swaddled in gauzy PR won't have their minds changed by this nebulous memoir. Blair's brief for his "ground-breaking" New Labour platform reads like a marketing plan: it's all about middle-class "aspiration," "focusing on the developing tastes of consumers," and "modernization," the glossed-over particulars being a muddle of small-bore education, health-care and law-and-order initiatives. The Iraq War is a similar "battle between modernizers and reactionaries," according to Blair's high-minded justification, a battle which would have gone well but for the meddling of Al Qaeda and Iran. He writes like an ad executive-"it had to be dignified, it had to be different, and it had to be Diana," he says of the laudably "modern" princess's funeral-but his candor can be bracing. He paints comic scenes of excruciating audiences with dull dignitaries and the weekly torment of Prime Minister's Questions, is nakedly spiteful toward his Labour rival and successor Gordon Brown, and never hides his preoccupation with image-crafting and media relations. ("Look like a prime minister," he reminds himself on election night.) Blair reveals himself to be savvy, charming, and sometimes earnest and impassioned, but never quite a statesman. (Sept. 2) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Orphanhood and running away to the circus-both narratives have their conventions, and in this novel set in 1939 starring eleven-year-old Lucy, Choldenko makes the most of them. The Iowa orphanage where Lucy, who is selectively mute, is kept is gothically bleak, gray, and cold, presided over by a cruel matron. The circus Lucy escapes to along with three other orphans is vibrant and full of rough kindness and iconic circus characters: the knife thrower, the strong woman, the roustabout, and elephants. The escape drama involves cunning, courage, negotiation, and close brushes with danger of all sorts. The interpersonal story involves the occasional benevolent adult, some two-timing rogues, the loyal among the circus family, and disputes among the four escapees. Tension and hope are maintained with the parallel story, told in letters, of Lucy's older sister's attempts to locate her. A historically based element of the plot introduces a mystery that ties in to Lucy's inability to speak, involving an actual experiment performed on orphans in the 1930s in which verbally fluent children were treated to derision and criticism to see if stuttering could be induced. Underlying it all is a straightforward but compelling story arc: Lucy needs to find a voice and a family, and readers will root for her to regain both. An author's note provides detail on the use of historical source material; a glossary of circus terms is also appended. Sarah Ellis May/June 2020 p.122(c) Copyright 2020. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
The longest-serving Labour prime minister of Britain, and still a figure on the international political stage, Blair recalls in detail the events of his premiership. He covers lots of actions and activities and shares with forthrightness his thinking on world and domestic issues he had to confront; on the other hand, on occasion he does play his cards close to the vest, avoiding a complete spilling of his thoughts about a certain situation he had then and now. Blair's view of the late Princess Diana is discerning; of his successor, Gordon Brown, hardly affectionate; of George Bush (the younger), certainly controversial. Consciousness of his public image was never far from how he acted in office and now how he writes about his actions. Behind the scenes in the halls of power is always an interesting place to go, and Blair takes us there with delight on his part and on our part, from weekending with the royal family in Scotland to the nerve-racking Prime Minister's Questions, when the PM must face inquiries (read criticism ) from the opposition MPs. A necessary purchase for all public-library contemporary political-memoir collections. High-Demand Backstory: Reviews everywhere and author appearances on major television shows indicate just how much interest in this book is out there.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE years since the end of the cold war divide into two very different ages. The first, the 1990s, was dominated by the rise of free markets and free trade across the globe. The second, since 9/11, has been defined by terrorism, counterterrorism, war and Islamic radicalism. Bill Clinton is the symbol of the first decade and George W. Bush of the second. Tony Blair is the only major political figure to span both eras, beginning his political life in the corridors of Davos and ending it in the mud flats of Basra. He tells both tales in his engrossing memoir, "A Journey," but they never fuse into one larger story. The first half of the book is mostly about the rise of New Labour, the so-called "third way," which Blair attributes largely to his leadership, not without justification. He explains his conversion from the hard-left democratic socialism of the old Labour Party in a way that rings true. He was not one of those kids obsessed by political arguments. His ideas were shaped not by Philosophy, Politics and Economics tutorials at Oxford but rather by something much simpler. "I was middle class," he writes, "and my politics were in many ways middle class." This is a larger statement of principle than it might seem. The Labour Party was founded to protect the working class, the huge mass of people who worked at factories when Britain was a great industrial power. "In a sense they wanted to celebrate the working class," Blair writes of Old Labour, "not make them middle class - but middle class was precisely what your average worker wanted himself or his kids to be." This insight was at the root of Blair's rethinking of left-wing politics. Blair presents his version of the third way not as an ideology, but as the common-sense view of a middle class "guy" who comes at things from outside the hothouse of party politics. When describing how he helped Gordon Brown - his partner in reforming the Labour Party - he says he provided Brown with "a normal person's view of politics." "The single hardest thing for a practicing politician to understand," Blair writes, "is that most people, most of the time, don't give politics a first thought all day long." Their days are spent "worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock 'n' roll." From Brown, Blair got mentoring about the Labour Party, the ins and outs of its organization and its culture. Press reports of the book have made it sound as if Blair is nasty about Brown, but that is not true. He is complimentary, to the end, about Brown's intelligence, drive and dedication. He expresses concerns about Brown's willingness to take risks and his commitment to New Labour ideas, but mostly he describes their eventual clash as inevitable. They both felt they deserved the premiership, and Blair got it. Blair never really identified with Labour's long and romantic past. There is not a single Labourite prime minister he seems to admire. The British political figures he speaks well of are David Lloyd George, the last Liberal Party prime minister; the economist John Maynard Keynes, who was in his time a centrist figure; and Roy Jenkins, a Labour politician who left the party because it had moved too far left. He mentions Margaret Thatcher with care, knowing that she is an object of loathing for many on the British left, but he clearly believes that her market-based reforms were necessary and productive. The political figure he most closely identifies with in the book, and for whom he has undiluted praise, is Bill Clinton. "He was the most formidable politician I had ever encountered," Blair writes. "And yet his very expertise and extraordinary capacity at the business of politics obscured the fact that he was also a brilliant thinker." He sees Clinton's approach as "a genuine, coherent and actually successful attempt to redefine progressive politics: to liberate it from outdated ideology; to apply its values anew in a new world." When speaking about the challenges of his first term in office, Blair writes honestly and openly. The style is not the elegant Oxbridge prose that might have been expected of a former prime minister but one filled with Americanisms. It is breezy, informal and candid enough to keep the reader thoroughly engaged. Then comes 9/11, and Blair's world turns upside down. He writes that he immediately saw the terrorist attacks as part of a much broader struggle. "It was war. It had to be fought and won. ... All this came to me ... with total clarity ... and stays still, in the same way, as clear now as it was then." Everyman has turned into Winston Churchill. REGARDING the war on terror, the book assumes a very different character. It is marked by grand statements, sweeping generalizations, constant evocations of destiny and national character, and long quotations from government reports and Blair's speeches. All that was gray becomes black and white. There are hints of this personality earlier in the book. One day as Blair is worrying about his New Labour agenda, he finds himself browsing in the library of the prime minister's official country house, Chequers. He then compares his problems with civil service reform to Churchill's battle against fascism. It is what his closest aid, Jonathan Powell, describes as his "messiah complex." After 9/11, the messiah is unleashed. The enemy, as he sees it, is Islamic extremism, a deep-rooted and worldwide cancer requiring a massive, sustained, generational onslaught from the West. Blair is admirably frank and tough-minded, but at heart, his is a millenarian view that resists any nuance or complexity. Blair describes Dick Cheney as wanting to work "through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it." Blair endorses this view. "It is one struggle," he declares flatly. The, problem with this perspective is that it ignores politics, national interest, history and specificity, shoving a set of widely disparate phenomena into one grand narrative. So two secular dictatorships and a Shiite theocracy are lumped with Al Qaeda, a Sunni fundamentalist movement that actually despises all those regimes. One smaller example: Blair reveals that in his dealings with Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister and then president, he was "sympathetic" to the fact that Putin's war in Chechnya was being fought against "a vicious secessionist movement with Islamic extremism at its core." But as a student of history, Blair surely knows that the Chechens were forced into the Russian Empire m the mid-19th century after decades of fierce resistance and have been desperately trying to free themselves ever since, on purely nationalist grounds. Over the last two decades, the Russian Army has killed 100,000 Chechen civilians, 10 percent of the population, and transformed more than a quarter of the republic into a wasteland. So yes, today there is Islamic extremism in Chechnya, but to describe the situation as Blair does misses something crucial. On Iraq, Blair simply will not yield any ground to common-sense observation, as if any chink would be fatal to his position. He insists that were it not for Iran and Al Qaeda, the twin forces of darkness working to undermine it, Iraq would have stabilized quickly and the invasion would have been a great success. Throughout his discussion of the war on terror, Blair embraces any tortured logic to support his essential view that the war "is one struggle." Al Qaeda entered Iraq after the invasion, so that proves that invading Iraq and fighting Al Qaeda were really one common struggle. And that is why he seems in recent public comments to be in favor of a preventive war against Iran. It's a pity that Blair has tried to turn himself into a messiah. The world has much need of him as a politician. The fact is that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were the two most successful political figures in the post-cold-war world because they understood the essential truth of economic policy in our times, which is centrist pragmatism. The left can govern only if it shows that it is ceaselessly determined to reform the public sector, be a good steward of the people's money and understand the needs of the middle class. Blair's brief discussion of the financial crisis showcases yet again his political intelligence. In a strange sense, Blair on terrorism recalls nothing so much as the Labour Party ideologues he used to make fun of as they loudly declaimed about the nationalization of industry, unilateral disarmament and workers' communes. They were obsessed by an ideology, contemptuous of complicating facts on the ground, fed up with a public that didn't see the light and supremely convinced that history, ultimately, would vindicate them. What do you know. Tony Blair has turned out to be Old Labour after all. Fareed Zakaria is the host of "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN and an editor at large for Time magazine.
Guardian Review
Tony Blair's memoirs, long awaited, cover the struggle and frustrations of opposition, the creation of New Labour and the daily grind of government over 13 years. As a not disinterested spectator I opened them with some curiosity, wondering if I would recognise the journey. Much has been said already about the relationship between Tony and Gordon Brown. It was complex, undoubtedly, but should not distract from Labour's record in office. That said, you cannot write the history of the past 15 years without acknowledging two things. First, we would never have won so convincingly in 1997 without their combined effort. Second, towards the end, their deteriorating relationship and the increasing stridency of their disagreements destabilised the government and did our reputation great harm. Tony makes the point that for "most normal people" politics is "a distant, occasionally irritating fog". He is right.As a result, in the absence of strong and readily understood policies or ideas, personality is the thing that will cut through this fog. And it did. One day there will no doubt be a fair account of Gordon's premiership, and his role in the Labour party. It won't be uncritical - no politician can ever expect that. And it's well known that he and I too had our dark moments. I read with wry amusement how Tony Blair felt after much agonising that he couldn't sack his chancellor. History has a habit of repeating itself. Having said that, New Labour could not have been brought into being without Gordon's drive and intellectual underpinning, something Tony generously acknowledges. It was Gordon who changed our policies on tax and spend, and welfare to work. These changes were made in the face of internal Labour party opposition but they chimed with the electorate, a necessary requirement for winning a general election. It is true that Gordon found yielding to Tony after John Smith's death difficult. And that was something that never went away. The truth is that Tony Blair was the right leader in 1994. He had, and to a large extent still has, an ability to talk to people in a way they understand. He recognised how, in the 1990s, we had to break out from our traditional support, not at its expense, but to reach out to the widest possible constituency. We had to acknowledge how the world was very different, to convince millions of people we had something to say. Tony was the man to do that. As he rightly says, as a politician he was very non-political in his approach. And he caught the mood of the time. Much of this book is, not surprisingly, about New Labour. Of course "New Labour" means different things to different people. Indeed, there are times when reading this book you might be forgiven for thinking that for Tony it meant, "New Labour - c'est moi". For me, while the brand may be "of its time", its underlying premise remains as true today as it was then. Whatever our party colours we must govern for the whole country. Middle Britain remains as important now as it was then. We forget the lessons we learnt then at our peril. The Labour party cannot and will not win by retreating into our laager. Tony's attitude to the party then and now is striking. We know he wasn't born into it, and certainly would not regard himself as part of a "movement". Then again, neither would I. Reading his memoir, "semi-detached" doesn't do justice to where I think Tony is now - which is a pity because he still has a lot to say. Maybe this detachment influenced his view of cabinet government. Indeed he says that what is needed is not so much politicians as project managers. Towards the end of the book he wonders if the House of Commons is the best place to produce ministers because of their lack of managerial ability. That cannot be right. It is judgment that counts in politics. You can always hire a good manager. I sat at the Cabinet table for 13 years. On too many occasions we didn't discuss issues, in principle, well before the die was cast. Tuition fees, a policy which has worked, was never discussed properly, so the result was no collective ownership. On Lebanon there was little discussion. And because he thought it was the right thing to do, he was prepared to ignore public opinion and any reservations there may have been in the Cabinet.It was only on the single currency that Tony expended a great deal of energy, including exceptional Cabinet consultation, trying to get us to join. I'm glad we didn't. And despite Tony's protestations, in the 10 years I served under his premiership my recollection is that the economic side of things was largely left to Gordon. On public service reform, on which Tony was far more right than wrong, he laments his inability to deliver more radical reform. Wider ministerial buy-in would have helped. But I also wonder how much more we could have done in terms of domestic policy if Tony had not been so distracted by four separate conflicts - critically Iraq and Afghanistan. Tony is quite right that, left to their own devices, there are still people in our party who instinctively look at public services from the point of view of the producer, not the consumer. We should always be on the side of the people for whose benefit services are provided. But Tony's lesson for the party is two-sided. There were times reading this book when reform seemed to become an end in itself.Reform is necessary, but no use unless you convince people that the end you're trying to get to is where they want to be. I am grateful for his very kind remarks about my chancellorship. And yes, his guess at my frustrations is spot-on. However, what he has to say about the economy leaves me slightly uneasy. I agree with his views on tax and spend, on incentives, on the need to win business support. I always have. I also strongly agree that Labour has to be about aspiration. And the signals we send on that are important. But in his postscript, written in the aftermath of the banking crisis and after the election, I part company with his critique. He is wrong to suggest that those of us who supported a Keynesian response to the economic crisis thought "the state was back in vogue". It is an incontrovertible fact that in times of such crisis only the government can step into the breach. That is quite a different thing from suggesting that the state should do everything. Some may take that view, but many of us don't. And to characterise Gordon as having taken that view is wrong. Part of the reason that we did not nationalise Northern Rock immediately was because neither Gordon nor I wanted to own one bank, and far less four of them. The government had to act, not because of some return to an outdated ideology but because, as Tony might have said, it was "common sense". And it worked. The top rate of tax went up, not as a matter of ideology, but because frankly it was fair that those who were better off and who had benefited most during the good times helped to get borrowing down. Tony tackles head-on the reasons for Labour losing the general election. And this is relevant to what is still a central question for the Labour party. Did we lose because we weren't New Labour any more? Tony's answer is clear and in the affirmative. It is true we did lose some of the broad constituency that had maintained us in office. But Tony should take comfort from the fact that he moved the political centre of gravity not only of the Labour party but of the country. And he deserves great credit for that. The truth is that we had been losing for some time. Our victory in 2005 had as much to do with Michael Howard, the then Tory leader, as it did with us. People weren't enthusiastic. Five years later we were tired. We failed to articulate a clear sense of direction and conviction. If you're weak on the policy, you're back to the personalities, and on that we lost. Tony was and is a formidable politician - the Good Friday Agreement is testament to that. But as he says, being right isn't good enough unless you can take people with you - and as he notes, towards the end he didn't. This is a good read and shows us what can be done when we have confidence, clarity and a clear sense of purpose: we can win and change the country for the better. Alistair Darling is MP for Edinburgh South West and shadow chancellor of the exchequer. To order A Journey for pounds 18.75 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop - Alistair Darling Caption: Captions: Dance of intimacy . . . Blair and Brown at the Labour party conference, 1999 [Tony Blair] makes the point that for "most normal people" politics is "a distant, occasionally irritating fog". He is right.As a result, in the absence of strong and readily understood policies or ideas, personality is the thing that will cut through this fog. And it did. One day there will no doubt be a fair account of [Gordon Brown]'s premiership, and his role in the Labour party. It won't be uncritical - no politician can ever expect that. And it's well known that he and I too had our dark moments. I read with wry amusement how Tony Blair felt after much agonising that he couldn't sack his chancellor. History has a habit of repeating itself. Much of this book is, not surprisingly, about New Labour. Of course "New Labour" means different things to different people. Indeed, there are times when reading this book you might be forgiven for thinking that for Tony it meant, "New Labour - c'est moi". For me, while the brand may be "of its time", its underlying premise remains as true today as it was then. Whatever our party colours we must govern for the whole country. Middle Britain remains as important now as it was then. We forget the lessons we learnt then at our peril. The Labour party cannot and will not win by retreating into our laager. Tony's attitude to the party then and now is striking. We know he wasn't born into it, and certainly would not regard himself as part of a "movement". Then again, neither would I. Reading his memoir, "semi-detached" doesn't do justice to where I think Tony is now - which is a pity because he still has a lot to say. Maybe this detachment influenced his view of cabinet government. Indeed he says that what is needed is not so much politicians as project managers. Towards the end of the book he wonders if the House of Commons is the best place to produce ministers because of their lack of managerial ability. That cannot be right. It is judgment that counts in politics. You can always hire a good manager. - Alistair Darling.
Kirkus Review
Long-awaited, uncommonly candid memoir by the former British prime minister.Politics isn't needed to liberate people, Blair writes; it's the other way around. "An odd thing for a politician to say," he admits, "but then...it has never been entirely clear whether the journey I have taken is one of the triumph of the person over the politics, or of the politics over the person." Regardless, Blair is a political animal to the core. There are few personal details here, in the manner of Bill Clinton'sMy Life (2004), Clinton being one of Blair's heroes. There are, however, plenty of personal opinions about the people with whom he has served, from his successor Gordon Brown (who might still have his job "had he pursued New Labour policy") to George W. Bush, who, the author insists, is anything but stupidthough his political intuition "wasn't expressed analytically or intellectually." Blair is famously both analytical and intellectual, and he provides a careful rationale for having bought the weapons of mass destruction canard and committed British troops to Iraqit boils down mostly to the argument that Saddam was a bad guy and needed to go, or "the region needed a fundamental reordering." The region got that reordering, of course, which was one of the causes of Blair's being invited to leave office by the ungrateful electorate of Britain, for which the author seems to have a touch of impatience, if not thinly veiled contempt: "We were like two people standing either side of a thick pane of glass trying to have a conversation." Blair concludes with an argument for further reordering, including the West becoming closer to China and the European Union's "adopting a common energy policy," among other things.A vividly rendered account of life in office, with plenty of beneficial pointers to aspiring politicos on either side of the Atlantic.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Britain's former prime minister candidly describes critical chapters from his leadership, including the decision to "stand shoulder to shoulder" with America after 9/11 and military engagements in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. (LJ Xpress Reviews, 4/23/10) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
TWELVE 9/11: "SHOULDER TO SHOULDER" It is amazing how quickly shock is absorbed and the natural rhythm of the human spirit reasserts itself. A cataclysm occurs. The senses reel. In that moment of supreme definition, we can capture in our imagination an event's full significance. Over time, it is not that the memory of it fades, exactly; but its illuminating light dims, loses its force, and our attention moves on. We remember, but not as we felt at that moment. The emotional impact is replaced by a sentiment which, because it is more calm, seems more rational. But paradoxically it can be less rational, because the calm is not the product of a changed analysis, but of the effluxion of time. So it was with 11 September 2001. On that day, in the course of less than two hours, almost 3,000 people were killed in the worst terrorist attack the world has ever known. Most died in the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that dominated the skyline of New York. It was a workplace for as diverse a workforce as any in the world, from all nations, races and faiths, and was not only a symbol of American power but also the edifice that most eloquently represented the modern phenomenon of globalisation. The explosion as the planes hit killed hundreds outright, but most died in the inferno that followed, and the carnage of the collapse of the buildings. As the flames and smoke engulfed them, many jumped in terror and panic, or just because they preferred that death to being on fire. Many who died were rescue workers whose heroism that day has rightly remained as an enduring testament to selfless sacrifice. The Twin Towers were not the only target. American Airlines Flight 77, carrying sixty-four people from Washington to Los Angeles, was flown into the Pentagon. A total of 189 people died. United Airlines Flight 93, bound from Newark to San Francisco with forty-four on board, was hijacked, its target probably the White House. It came down in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Its passengers, realising the goal of the hijack, stormed the cabin. In perishing, they saved the lives of many others. It was an event like no other. It was regarded as such. The British newspapers the next day were typical of those around the globe: "at war," they proclaimed. The most common analogy was Pearl Harbor. The notion of a world, not just America, confronted by a deadly evil that had indeed declared war on us all was not then dismissed as the language of the periphery of public sentiment. It was the sentiment. Thousands killed by terror--what else should we call it? Opinions were forthright and clear, and competed with each other in resolution, not only in the West but everywhere. In the Arab world, condemnation was nearly universal, only Saddam ensuring that Iraqi state television played a partisan song, "Down with America," calling the attacks "the fruits of American crimes against humanity." Yasser Arafat condemned the acts on behalf of the Palestinians, though unfortunately, most especially for the Palestinian cause, the TV showed pictures of some jubilant Palestinians celebrating. The most common words that day were "war," "evil," "sympathy," "solidarity," "determination" and, of course, "change." Above all, it was accepted that the world had changed. How could it be otherwise? The reason for such a description was also not hard to divine. The first attempt to attack the World Trade Center, in 1993, had been foiled, but the planning this time had obviously been meticulous. The enemy had been prepared to wait until it had accumulated the necessary means and opportunity. However, more than that, a terror attack of this scale was not calculated to do limited damage. It was designed for maximum casualty. It was delivered by a suicide mission. It therefore had an intent, a purpose and a scope beyond anything we had encountered before. This was terror without limit; without mercy; without regard to human life, because it was motivated by a cause higher than any human cause. It was inspired by a belief in God; a perverted belief, a delusional and demonic belief, to be sure, but nonetheless so inspired. It was, in a very real sense, a declaration of war. It was calculated to draw us into conflict. Up to then, the activities of this type of extremism had been growing. It was increasingly associated with disputes that seemed unconnected, though gradually the connection was being made. Kashmir, Chechnya, Algeria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon; in each area, different causes were at play, with different origins, but the attacks, carried out as acts of terror, were growing, and the ideological link with an extreme element that professed belief in Islam was ever more frequently expressed. Until 11 September, the splashes of colour on different parts of the canvas did not appear to the eye as a single picture. After it, the clarity was plain, vivid and defining. We look back now, almost a decade later when we are still at war, still struggling and managing the ghastly consequences which war imposes, and we can scarcely recall how we ever came to be in this position. But on that bright New York morning, not a cloud disturbing the bluest of blue skies, we knew exactly what was happening and why. We knew that so far as we were concerned we had not provoked such an outrage. There had been acts of terror committed against us: Lockerbie, the USS Cole , the U.S. embassy in Tanzania. We had tried to retaliate, but at a relatively low level. They were individual tragedies, but they did not amount to a war. They were the price America paid for being America. The other conflicts we reckoned were none of our business; or at least they were the business of our diplomatic corps, but not of our people. So those carrying out such acts were wicked; but they weren't changing our world view. George Bush had won the presidency after the controversies of the most contested ballot in U.S. history, but the battle between him and Al Gore had focused mainly on domestic policy. At my first meeting with him--Camp David in February of the same year--his priorities were about education, welfare and cutting down on big government as he saw it. So there was no build-up to 11 September, no escalation, no attempts to defuse that failed, no expectation or inevitability. There was just an attack--planned obviously during the previous presidency--of unbelievable ferocity and effect. No warning, no demands, no negotiation. Nothing except mass slaughter of the innocent. We were at war.We could not ignore it. But how should we deal with it? And who was this enemy? A person? A group? A movement? A state? I was in Brighton that day, to give the biennial address to the Trades Union Congress. Frankly, it was always a pretty ghastly affair for both of us. As I explain elsewhere, I was frustrated they wouldn't modernise; they were frustrated with my telling them how to do their business. Not that they were ever slow in telling me how to do mine, mind you. And sure-fire election-losing advice it was too. They ignored my counsel; and I ignored theirs. For all that, we sort of rubbed along after a fashion, and in a manner of speaking, and up to a point. The great thing about Brighton is that it is warm, closer than Blackpool to London, and retains the enormous charm of yesteryear. Blackpool can be a great town and has a unique quality, but it needs work done on it. Brighton was where Neil Kinnock, posing for photos on the pebble beach on the day he became Labour leader in 1983, lost his footing and fell in the sea. You can imagine the pleasure of the assembled press. It must have been replayed a thousand times and became a slightly defining misstep; unfairly so, of course; but such things are never fair. In public, you are always on show, so always be under control. The trick, actually, is to appear to be natural, while gripping your nature in a vice of care and caution. Don't let the mask slip; don't think this is the moment to begin a new adventure in communication; don't betray excesses of emotion of any kind; do it all with the ease and character of someone talking to old friends while knowing they are, in fact, new acquaintances. Over time, I began to think there was never a moment when I could be completely candid and exposed. You worried that even sitting in your living room or in the bath, someone would come to photograph, question and call upon you to justify yourself. I became unhealthily focused on how others saw me, until, again over time, I refocused on how I saw myself. I realised I was considered public property, but the ownership was mine. I learned not to let the opinion of others, even a prevailing one, define my view of myself and what I should or should not do. The TUC took place in early to mid-September, and the party conference a couple of weeks later. Both always made September a little nerve-tingling. From the TUC you could get a sense of where the party were liable to be in terms of contentment and/or otherwise. Trouble at the first usually presaged trouble at the second. The 2001 TUC was no exception. Having just won our first ever consecutive full term, in a second landslide victory, you would have thought it an occasion for general rejoicing. "I think mostly they'll want to congratulate you on the victory," Alastair said to me, po-faced, as we boarded the train. "Do you think so?" I said, perking up. "Don't be ridiculous," he replied. Sure enough, the mood as I arrived at lunchtime was the usual mixture of sweet and sour, but with the sweet a decided minority. I went straight to the Grand Hotel. We had an hour and a half before I had to go to the new Conference Centre a hundred yards or so along the beachfront. I worked in the bedroom as the team gathered in the living room of the suite. Just after a quarter to two, around 8:45 Eastern Standard Time, Alastair was called out of the room by Godric Smith, his very capable deputy. Alastair came back in, turned on the television and said, "You'd better see this." He knew I hated being interrupted just before a speech, so I realised I'd better look. The TV was showing pictures of the Trade Center like someone had punched a huge hole in it, fire and smoke belching forth. Just over fifteen minutes later, a second plane hit, this time graphically captured live on-screen. This was not an accident. It was an attack. At that moment, I felt eerily calm despite being naturally horrified at the devastation, and aware this was not an ordinary event but a worldchanging one. At one level it was a shock, a seemingly senseless act of evil. At another level, it made sense of developments I had seen growing in the world these past years--isolated acts of terrorism, disputes marked by the same elements of extremism, and a growing strain of religious ideology that was always threatening to erupt, and now had. Within a very short space of time, it was clear the casualties would be measured in thousands. I ordered my thoughts. It was the worst terrorist attack in human history. It was not America alone who was the target, but all of us who shared the same values. We had to stand together. We had to understand the scale of the challenge and rise to meet it. We could not give up until it was done. Unchecked and unchallenged, this could threaten our way of life to its fundamentals. There was no other course; no other option; no alternative path. It was war. It had to be fought and won. But it was a war unlike any other. This was not a battle for territory, not a battle between states; it was a battle for and about the ideas and values that would shape the twenty-first century. All this came to me in those forty minutes between the first attack and my standing up in front of the audience to tell them that I would not deliver my speech but instead return immediately to London. And it came with total clarity. Essentially, it stayed with that clarity and stays still, in the same way, as clear now as it was then. Excerpted from A Journey: My Political Life by Tony Blair All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
