This thesis analyses the myth of the Blitz spirit in British newspaper responses to the London bombings, July 7 2005. The Blitz spirit is a popular story of Britain during the Second World War, uniting together with defiance and resilience to overcome the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. By using Roland Barthes' theory of myth, I scrutinise the origins of the Blitz spirit, the messages it suppresses and the ideological impact it had on media coverage after July 7th. A content analysis shows how prominent certain discursive elements were in British newspaper articles between July 8th and August 8th, 2005. A Critical Discourse Analysis then examines how the Blitz spirit was constructed during this period and the ideological role it played. The set of circumstances that London faced in 2005 were drastically different to that of 1940. The perpetrators on July 7th were British citizens, not a foreign enemy equating to the threat of Nazi Germany. Due to a shift in historic context, Blitz spirit analogies were used in different ways, often serving conflicting interests. In some cases a Blitz spirit discourse condoned military responses to terrorism and suppressed critical discourses about the war on terror. But in others it mobilised criticisms of British and American foreign policy. Some discourses reflected criticisms of Islam, whilst others praised London for its multicultural unity. This thesis explores the complex role of the Blitz spirit and argues that whilst it was a problematic feature of post-July 7th media coverage, it did not serve one ideological purpose. Rather, an ideological battleground occurred when elements of myth and popular memory were reused to define events in the present. By analysing this nuanced role of the Blitz spirit, I develop Roland Barthes' theory by considering what happens when a myth established at one moment in time is reused in a different historical context.

This thesis is a sociogenetic investigation of terrorism that has been directed against Britain since the late eighteenth century. One of its most fundamental aims is to help lay the foundations of a figurational approach to the study of terrorism. Accordingly, I seek to answer two core and interrelated questions and apply the findings to develop an understanding of the processes and relationships that have contributed to the emergence of home-grown ‘jihadist terrorism’ in Britain. Those questions are: i) Under what figurational conditions have the concepts of terrorism and terrorist developed, in sociogenetic terms, since they were first coined during the first French Revolution in the late eighteenth century? ii) Under what figurational conditions do people act according to various designations of terrorism? In order to develop answers to these questions several kinds of terrorism figurations related to Britain are examined. The first three chapters are dedicated to exploring the research on terrorism that has grown in recent decades. Much of it fails to develop an understanding of terrorism that has sufficient detachment, and consequently can help, in some cases, to perpetuate terrorism figurations. Subsequent chapters move away from these mainstream approaches and show how terrorism figurations have developed in Britain from the time the concept ‘terrorism’ was first coined during the French Revolution. The core findings relate to how terrorism developed in antithesis to the concept of civilisation, and emerged as part of complex inter- and intra-state relationships and established-outsider figurations. As part of these processes, functional democratisation played a key role both in Britain and in Britain’s relations to other countries. Finally, I show that these processes have been central to the development of the habituses and identities of the July 7 2005 London bombers.

Following the terrorist attacks on America on 11 September 2001, the New Labour government enacted an unprecedented amount of terrorism legislation in the form of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, the Terrorism Act 2006, and finally the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. Whilst the government viewed these terrorism laws as vital to national security, many of the measures contained in these acts, such as control orders and increased detentions, provoked intense debates over civil liberties. Much research on media-state relations in the context of responses to 9/11 have found evidence to support the elite-driven paradigm, whereby the media have been shown to fail in their adversarial ‘watchdog’ role by acting as ‘faithful servants’ (Wolfsfeld, 1997) to the political agenda. This research tested these assumptions by examining the media framing of the UK government’s legislative responses to terrorism post-9/11. In so doing, it analyses the relationship between the media and the New Labour government in the context of the policymaking process. To date, longitudinal studies that map the UK media-state nexus within the context of terrorism policymaking are lacking. This thesis therefore, addresses the lacunae in the scholarship. In terms of its theoretical framework, this thesis tests three competing models of media performance (elite-driven, oppositional and independent) on British press reporting of the parliamentary debates (Robinson et al., 2010). Methodologically, it takes an inductive approach to analysing the framing of the debates, and draws on material gleaned from interviews with four former home secretaries. The findings reveal that of the three meta-frames (national security, civil liberties and party politics), the politics frame dominated across all four case studies. Although government sources dominated the debates, the evidence suggests that they had limited influence over the news agenda, which runs contra to the elite-driven (redefined here as government-driven) hypothesis. Instead, at an aggregate level, the evidence lends greater support for the independent model. There is also evidence that some sections of the press did subject the legislation to more robust scrutiny, and thus, to some degree, fulfilled their role as political watchdogs, which supports the oppositional thesis.

The contemporary threat of terrorism has changed the ways in which government and the public view the world. Unlike the existential threat from nation states in previous centuries, today, government and the public spend much of their effort looking for the inward threat. Brought about by high profile events such as 9/11, 7/7, and 3/11, and exacerbated by globalisation, hyper-connected social spheres, and the media, the threats from within are reinforced daily. In the UK, government has taken bold steps to foment public safety and public security but has also been criticised by some who argue that government actions have labelled Muslims as the ‘suspect other'. This thesis explores the counter-terrorism environment in London at the community/government interface, how the Metropolitan Police Service and London Fire Brigade deliver counter-terrorism policy, and how individuals and groups are reacting. It specifically explores the realities of the lived experience of those who make up London's ‘suspect community' and whether or not counter-terrorism policy can be linked to further marginalisation, radicalism, and extremism. By engaging with those that range from London's Metropolitan Police Service's Counterterrorism Command (SO15) to those that make up the radical fringe, an ethnographic portrait is developed. Through that ethnographic portrait the ‘ground truth' and complexities of the lived experience are made clear and add significant contrast to the aseptic policy environment.