Not talking media or whatever I’m talking about those old enough to remember seeing the news as it happened or even hours after. What was the initial UK reaction?
What was the UK reaction to 9/11?
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Not talking media or whatever I’m talking about those old enough to remember seeing the news as it happened or even hours after. What was the initial UK reaction?
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It was horrendous IMO. So fucking sad.
As a nation we did what we do any time there’s a tragedy.
We popped the kettle on.
I think its one of those ‘you remember where you were moments’ but you didn’t have an idea of the chaos that would follow after (Afghan, Iraq, etc). I was only 11 so it was just an insane thing to see.
Sheer shock & absolute horror. Disbelief. We switched on all the TVs in the office and everyone was transfixed. It was crazy. Then frantically trying to find out about friends in Manhattan. Lots of uncertainty.
Wow, that’s really bad.
I watched it live on the news. It was a point of conversation for a bit then honestly people moved on from it
https://preview.redd.it/bs3ykhdc8sue1.jpeg?width=324&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6288d62e3c7cdc92918f7f88be932437250d57e1
Something like this, if I recall correctly.
I was working in a call centre.
All the phones stopped ringing and everyone gathered around the TV and it was creepily silent, with people gasping when the footage of the second plane was aired.
I was in my 30s at the time. It was all over the news (papers and TV and radio). And it was very shocking. But it didn’t shake the UK to its core like it shook the USA to its core. Partly I think because – obviously – it wasn’t really close to home. But also I suspect that it had something to do with the fact that in the UK we were ‘used’ to acts of terrorism happening in our cities after decades of IRA action etc, unlike in the USA.
[Edit: clarity]
Shock, and an immediate sense that the world had changed.
I was seven, and it’s my first really clear memory of watching the news on TV.
Absolute shock
I’d just got back from some Z81 Assembler course for my Uni work. I went “fuckin’ ‘ell” then headed out to the SU.
The usual shock and horror. There was a Scottish woman at my work who was pleased about it though. Not sure why. Hated the US for some reason maybe?
Was at the office. We watched the TV coverage and were shocked and horrified. We had clients in who left to go back to their own offices to check on colleagues in NY. We closed the office mid afternoon and went home.
I was kinda shocked but it had to feel way scarier for those living in the US.
I remember I was working a shift at Blockbuster and a customer told me what happened. Initially I didn’t believe them. The only TV we had was set up to only play promo DVDs so I had to MacGyver an aerial out of a coat hanger so I could watch the news on it.
And then I just stood and watched it with the customer. I remember feeling like it looked like a movie. It was hard to believe it was real.
Shock and horror. And I was due in NY just over six weeks later with some friends. We still went and it was eerie. New Yorkers so grateful to see us and thanking us for our support in coming back to the City. We saw parades of firemen and were invited into a fire station. It was an atmospheric and very sad experience.
It was nervy on the plane, a lot of searches and confiscation of what were actually harmless items.
I’m glad we went.
I remember being round a mates house after school when it came on the news as a special report. IIRC they interrupted the regular programming. I think we initially just felt shock and fear. The initial government response was to support the American government.
I was only about 8 so probably didn’t fully understand the gravity of the situation – now though, while it definitely was awful, I still don’t understand why it’s spoken about so much considering everything else that has gone off since.
That recent earthquake as an example, more died in that than 9/11. Most people didn’t even speak about it, and it’s all but forgotten about already by most people here.
I remember being on holiday with my parents in Cornwall, and as we went into a shop someone in there said to us, have you heard the news, a plane has crashed into the twin towers in America, it did not mean too much as we did not know what the twin towers was. But we went back to the caravan we were staying in and turned on the TV, BBC1 was just showing the events and no normal programs, and the second plane had just hit. It all started to feel like some incredible historical event unfolding.
We sent thoughts and prayers
I started school in September 2001. My mum says she found out from another Mum when collecting me, as she hadn’t had the news on as my sister was at home watching kids’ TV.
My reaction was the USA really must want to bomb some natives….
Turns out I was spot on.
I was an edgy 15 year old and it took a few hours for it to sink in how bad a thing it was. Nothing that bad had really happened in the world that I’d been aware of, and I remember talk of wars happening afterwards and not really understanding what that meant for us. I don’t think there was much more to it than a really bad thing had happened, the bigger impact was all the shit that followed, and I spent a lot of my late teens and 20s being extremely angry at the world, how immigrants and muslims were being treated in this country, and the nature of the wars in the Middle East.
I was in college. Took the afternoon off and got on a train home.
Arrived home just in time to see the family fixated on the news as the second plane hit.
Honestly, I thought the world was going to war. Scary, scary times.
It was a Tuesday lunchtime. I remember telling a couple of people at work who thought I was pulling their leg.
If you ever want to see an example of a massive difference between the press opinion and general public opinion then watch the episode of BBC Question Time that week -just about everyone in the audience saying that this was a really awful horrible thing, but …..
My mum picked me up from school and told me something terrible had happened, and she described what it was and my mind couldn’t quite picture it.
Then when I got home I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I think the second tower had just collapsed.
Then every assembly for the next week or so was about it and everyone at school was quite shell shocked in the immediate aftermath.
After that it was flash games from Newgrounds where you killed Osama bin Laden.
remember my mum picking me up from primary school and she told me the world trade towers had been attacked. I didn’t realise how big of a deal it was untill I got home and everyone in the house was stuck watching it unfold on the news. I couldn’t wrap my head around a plane taking down a hole sky scraper.
I remember where I was and what happening. I was in a meeting with a bunch of folks and one was an American. Someone came in and said “A plane has hit the WTC” so we assumed it was a terrible accident. We turned on the news and saw another plane hit, we assumed it was a replay. Then it became apparent it wasn’t and then it became obvious that this meant it wasn’t an accident and we were utterly shocked, everything stopped. Then we heard about the Pentegon and the American lady started freaking out as her dad worked in the Pentegon so she had to leave work and go and try and phone home etc.
After that – total shock in the UK for the most part and on my side of things a dread about the aftermath. It was going to lead to a war and at one point I was convinced it might lead to the end of the world
Holy shit followed by oh great now we’re being dragged into a ridiculous war.
The internet was literally swamped. I, like most, was on dial-up and the net was super slow.
Pretty much all news sites were unreachable.
Usenet worked though which is where many gathered to discuss (and where I heard my first 911 joke within an hour of the towers collapsing – from an american too)
I was 20, just chilling at my parents then it all went wild on TV.
Absolute horror and shock at the evil, especially seeing people literally jump to their deaths from the WTC towers.
Shock, and then the thought that someone is going to get the shit bombed out of them in retaliation. Didn’t think it would be Iraq though. Its strange looking back at how united the world was behind the US at the time, and fast forward two years they’d managed to destroy the consensus they had built by focusing on Saddam Hussien.
It’s one of the few events that I remember exactly where I was.
I was 27 years old, working in a small but busy office.
It was just after lunchtime, and one of the lads had just got back from lunch, said he had heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. My first reaction was that he was making some kind of sick joke. But then I realised he in all honesty wouldn’t know what the WTC was.
Someone put on the radio, I think we went on to the BBC website (internet was not ubiquitous then) and we were all just kind of dumbstruck! I don’t think any of us did any work the rest of the day. Obviously, it just got worse, as the second plane hit, the attempts to hit the Pentagon and Camp David. Then the collapse of the towers.
When I got home I just put on BBC news and watched, dumbstruck. Honestly, it felt like the world changed that day.
I heard recently someone define the heady experiences of the 1990s as being plastered between 2 events – they started with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and that atmosphere of hope ended with collapse of the twin towers in 2001.
This feels about right to me. And I wonder if that event set in motion the chain of events that has now led to USA toying with fascism?
I was at work and we had ceefax on showing stock prices and they all started plummeting so we put the news on to find out more
I was 14 and remember seeing it on the news after school. Quite shocking. I remember being worried that there would be another world war because of it and that I’d have to go and fight
Lived in London and was working on a project at home that day. I remember taking a break around lunchtime and the BBC news website not loading. Then getting a pile of text messages from people telling me to get out of central London. I turned on the tv just as the second plane hit and was shellshocked as the afternoon progressed. There was a definite concern that London might also be a target. I went to NY a few months later and went down to Ground Zero to pay respects; it was horribly eerie.
I was dumbfounded and frantic with worry about the NYC colleagues that I couldn’t contact, and couldn’t locate their office on the internet as it was down all day. I spent the rest of the day (I freelance) watching the news.
Anything airborne seemed sinister for weeks after, and because we people who were in the suburbs were less important than those in Central London there were far more planes than usual.
It was far, far more of a threshold moment for me than was the death of Princess Diana – that just washed over me.
31 at the time and watching it unfold on TV in my flat in London. Was off work that day and just chilling when there was a ‘breaking news’ moment on the BBC saying a small plane had crashed into the WTC.
Genuinely shock, revulsion, unable to comprehend the scale of it all and just overwhelming sadness for Americans and all the other nationalities who got murdered.
Bizarrely, Arsenal (the team I support) were playing in a European match that night that didn’t get postponed so I spent the evening flicking between that and the news.
An incredibly surreal day.
It happened just as I started my shift at work. I worked for an American company at the time. I spent the rest of the shift listening to the radio. When my shift ended I normally went to the pub but this night I went straight home and turned the TV on. I stood in utter disbelief at what I was seeing. I was rooted to the spot for about 20 minutes telling myself it was real and not a Hollywood movie. It was horrible to see.
I don’t really remember it as it happened, I was 8 and at school. I guess the teachers must have known but didn’t want to make a fuss in front of hundreds of small children.
I remember watching it on the news later though. Didn’t really understand what was going on but everyone was shocked and upset.
I was a teenager and it completely nullified all breaking news since then. To watch it play out live on TV was like nothing I’d seen before it and nothing I’ve seen since. News peaked that day.
Shock at the sheer scale of the attack however I would say due it being in a different country and being older myself, less shocked than when the news of the Brighton bombing or Lockerbie took place. That isn’t in some weird competition way, more that this wasn’t the first major terror attack I’d seen on the news and growing up in the late 70s and 80s, terror attacks of some type frequently dominated the News to the point of it being normal.
In terms of how it affected me, watching the Bradford stadium fire unfold on national TV stayed with me more in terms of Emotional imprinting.
I was working in a reasonably sized tower block in London. Someone said that a plane had flown into the WTC, and everyone was thinking “yeah right, some idiot in a Cessna has screwed up”. We got a TV on just as the second plane hit.
The immediate reaction was “hell, is <someone I know>in there”, because we had colleagues who worked there, and loads of contacts from businesses in the towers. Phones didn’t work, so we couldn’t find out.
We all packed it in and went home, watching the sky as we travelled. Going back to work in a tall building the next day was a bit freaky.
I was only 7 but I remember every adult talking about it for like a week or two.
After that I didn’t hear as much about it, until we transitioned into protestations about sending soldiers to Iraq
Id gone to the Jobcentre to sign on after losing my job, i went in the jobcentre for my appointment and everything was normal, but 25 mins later when I was walking back through town the atmosphere had changed.
I walked past WHSmiths to get the bus home, it had TVs in the window and people crowded round which was weird.
When i got home, i remember it being on every channel.
My mum was trying to contact my uncle who was in New York for work that week. He used to fly there for work every couple of months.
Luckily the company he worked for had done the deal the day before in tower 1, so he and the team had been given the day off so he was still in the hotel.
A bit of a shock, but carried on as normal.
Most people dealt with the shock by gossiping about it and adding extra milk in their coffee/tea.
If that didn’t work they went to the pub.
Like everything else we made jokes about it there’s no such thing as “too soon” over here and we had had decades of terrorism over here already.
“those old enough to remember” cries in millenial 🥲
I watched it on the news at work. We were all glued to our screens. I remember being a bit wary of my commute that evening (in London) just in case someone had plans for us again.
Someone came into our office and said “A plane has flown into the Twin Towers”, so my first thought was Wembley. Didn’t think too much of it initially, then as it was clear it wasn’t a light aircraft but a passenger jet, then another, and then of course the towers collapsing, and reports of other hijackings, the seriousness became clear. Trying to get information but the websites were all down. My brother in law was flying to America, fell asleep in takeoff and woke up in Canada.
Someone in my philosophy class got an AOL news text message just saying a plane crashed into the towers.
I think we ended up talking about terrorism and US foreign policy. One guy was all “what’s it matter if a few suits get killed – they have probably done more overall harm in their lives”.
I should point out, we all assumed it was like a bi-plane or something.
The next day in psychology our teacher had a bit of a go at people for saying “it’s like something from a movie” – he was very keen to impress this wasn’t a movie, this a real event where real people were jumping out of the building, with real families and likely going to lead to a real war.
I was a couple of weeks shy of my 11th birthday and it was kind of the day my innocence finally died.
I watched the Neighbours lunchtime episode, turned off then got called downstairs as the news was showing its early developments. Think the second plane must have hit by then. I still wonder if they let Neighbours finish rather than interrupt it. Anyways, I think the news was on for several days straight without stopping on BBC1.
One thing I remember is it was the Last Night of the Proms shortly after (several days now I look it up). A night normally full of laughs, upbeat performances, pompous nationalist songs. They felt it was too much to have it in the wake of 9/11 so they really toned it down and played more mournful music and around an American theme. Which was a nice gesture I thought, if a bit unnecessary looking back.
Two days after it happened Question Time staged a very rare live edition with an American focus.
It raised many eyebrows that the overwhelming vibe from the audience was “serves you fucking right”.
On a lighter note the Last Night Of The Proms a week later abandoned the traditional patriotic format in favour of reflective American themed pieces.
Shock and horror, but we were used to terrorism from the Provisional IRA and similar groupings. As the latter were on “ceasefire”, there was constant fear that the campaign could erupt again, as it did in 1996.
You have to remember this was before everyone had Internet access in their pocket , so it was much more confusing and people were not necessarily aware straight away.
I was working in a pub that didn’t have a TV. I heard rumours something had happened. I didn’t know what or see the TV pics until I left work a few hours later.
And it wasn’t clear straight away who did it, either.
Initially, pissed off that the internet was down, then horror when we were told why and went to watch the TV footage.
In the next few days there was slight apprehension that it might happen elsewhere, and eventually we were a bit pissed off that the media was still full of it x days later. Obviously not taking away from it being an utterly horrific event which was likely to have wide ranging repercussions, but there were other things going on in the world and having grown up during the Troubles we were rather more used to acts of terrorism.
‘Bloody hell’
Shock and horror,
Shortly followed by worrying that the USA might go off on one and start doing something really dumb in the middle east and make everything 10 times worse.
I was 11 and didn’t really give a fuck. Shit happens.
Shock.
My parents remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated, I remember vividly where I was when the second plane hit live on TV
Our lives changed, profoundly that day. Friends and family members went to war, people we knew died and our society shifted in ways we are only beginning to realise now.
The UK has the phrase “keep calm and carry on”. We have a different psyche than the USA. Obviously shocked, sad etc but it took me decades to understand that before 9-11 the USA thought itself as invincible and therefore was emotionally jarred by it. We also tend to be calmer as a population anyway.
As an example airline travel fell in the USA after 9-11. In comparison the day after 7-7 people got back on the tube. We don’t let the terrorists win by changing how we live our lives.
Alice: “Oh fuck, what the hell have the Muslims gone and done now?
Bob: “Never mind that, what we need to worry about is what the bloody Yanks are going to do next.”
Alice: “We are going to war, aren’t we? A pointless war for the sake of America’s bruised ego.”
Bob: “Yes, I’m afraid we are. It’s not the action, it’s the over-reaction, that does the harm.”
Alice: “More tea?”
[Exit Alice to kitchen. There is a slight pause.]
Alice [offstafe]: “Arh! Come and look at this!”
Bob: “What is it, another plane?!”
Alice: “What, no, I’m not talking about that. I mean a real disaster. We are out of tea!”
Bob: “Quick, run along to Mr Mahmood’s shop and get some tea bags. Oh, and some more biscuits, we might as well put the telly on.”
Alice [re-entering]: “Good idea.”
Bob: “Decent chap, Mr Mahmood.”
Alice: “Yes. He’s a Muslim, isn’t he? But I can’t imagine him blowing up anything more deadly than balloons at the school’s summer fete.”
Bob: “Yes. Good and bad all over. Mustn’t over-generalise.”
Alice: “Except when it comes to Yanks.”
Bob: “Well, yes. They are all a dangerously trigger-happy bunch of idiots, not least their stupid cowboy President, but they are on ‘our side’, so we are stuck with them, I guess.”
[I will always remember that day. It is seared on my mind as they day we nearly ran out of tea.]
I was still in primary school (aged 7/8) and I remember around lunchtime, they sent us all home early. Said something horrible had happened and our parent’s came to pick us all up, but my teachers wouldn’t tell us what had happened.
I remember my parent’s being in complete shock and crying, but they didn’t tell us what had actually happened until some days later. My mum wouldn’t let me watch the tv! I think she was being over protective.
There was a big element of, “Well what did they expect?”, and I remember on BBC Question time there was a shockingly unsympathetic reaction to the US Ambassador because the feeling was that America wades into every war and conflict expecting any consequences to happen away from America.
So absolutely sympathy from the vast majority, shock at the scale and success of the outrage, but combined with a lack of surprise that America drew this kind of hatred from that part of the world.
I was watching it on TV whilst working in Central London, there were rumours that London was next. Tbh, I was more concerned about my journey home with trains being over crowded.
On the way to school, people asking if others had heard, the usual “oh, that’s bad” responses, and school moved on. Nobody really addressed it beyond the first couple of days, and life moved on. The school certainly didn’t bring it up, none of the teachers did either. It felt like nothing but the usual over seas gossip whenever hearing the adults bring it up, and even then it was never really more than a couple sentences. It might as well have been “half interested chit chat about a celebrity dying. The only “consideration” some seemed to have was if it meant they’d get a day off somehow.
Even in hindsight whenever it’s brought up now, it’s never really discussed in a too serious matter.
I was being driven home from school by my mates Da. He said a plane flew into the empire state building and I thought he’d lost the plot. Got home and told my brother to turn off the cartoons and stick the news on and we couldn’t believe it, 2 planes flew right into the twin towers, absolute madness.
My mum was babysitting kids 2 streets away in her friends house so we rang and said “have you seen the news 2 planes flew into the twin towers” she told us to piss off and leave her alone (she thought we were pranking her because in fairness we had recently prank called her using an Arnold Schwarzenegger sound board and who could believe planes flew into the twin towers). My brother and I called round to see her and she said “what are you doing here?” and we told her to put on the news.
She was getting annoyed saying “I don’t have time for this I’ve got children to look after” so we told her if she turns on the news we’ll go away and stop annoying her. We went in and put on the news and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing and sat there in shock.
If you weren’t there at the time it’s hard to convey just how absolutely insane that day was. Genuinely the craziest thing I’ve witnessed in my life and even though I was child I had the feeling like a lot of people, that everything was going to be different from now on.
Life’s goes on though and the next day in school people already had loads of jokes about it, then for months it was still on the news and it the papers.
I remember about a month after it happened my neighbour was decorating their living room and put news papers in the window to protect them and it was all pictures of Bin Laden, the twin towers on fire and the people jumping out of the windows.
Surreal times.
I was working in an office in central London, when we heard about the first tower we all gathered around a TV and watched in horror as the second tower was hit.
“Oh dear.”
It went on a bit, three or more days of continuous coverage.
I found it incredibly disturbing to watch mass murder on the television. The image of the planes hitting and the subsequent fall of the twin towers is literally obscene.
It was incredibly sad and I remember thinking that we should help the Americans as much as we could. Which we did. Apparently forgotten by the current administration who suffer from a serious lack of gratitude for our unwavering support. Many European countries did not offer the same support that we did. But listen to JD Vance and we haven’t been involved in military operations since World War Two – even though we were in Afghanistan and Iraq at the US’s bidding.
Got called into the day room at the hospital I worked in because longterm patients and I were heading to a funeral at the end of the shift for another long term patient of mine and they’d gathered there ahead or it.We all stared open mouthed , watched the second plane hit and then went to the funeral.
I remember trying to work out what had happened. Went home and watched the aftermath on my little Sony Trinitron. I was 29.
The reaction was pure shock ..I didn’t see the following years coming and I think it awoke a lot of anti Muslim sentiment, which this far hadn’t been expressed.
I was in my late twenties. Heard about it and left work to go home and watch it on tv live. Absolute shock when the second plane hit the second tower. Complete disbelief when the towers collapsed. Immediately realised the consequences were huge for whoever was responsible and a lot of innocent people would pay as well.
I was only 6 and I remember it being all over the news when I came home from primary school that day. First major world piece of news that I can remember
Children were sent home from school in central London in case of a copycat attack
I was watching Neighbours at the time, saw the second plane hit live and that’s when it hit that it wasn’t an accident. Not gonna lie, never heard of the World Trade Centre or The Twin Towers before that day.
Shock, horror, anger, disbelief. Especially for those of us who had friends in the towers and ,in my case , a godson whose desk was right above the planes nose as it went into the building. His body was never found.
Shock. All those poor people trapped in the tower.
Lots of British people had visited New York and gone up those Towers, I had. They were a tourist attraction. We just sat and watched the TV news in shock.
Early 30s at home with a toddler and 6 month old baby. Shock about sums it up, and feeling so sorry for all those caught up in it
I also had to find a part time job because my husband works in the aircraft industry and they went on a 3 day week because of the knock on effect. Couldn’t claim dole or benefits because despite having paid NI for 16 years previously, I hadn’t claimed anything for 2 years after I had my first daughter. I literally cried in the job centre, wondering how we were going to manage. Luckily I found a job in a school kitchen for an hour a day – it was only £25 a day but helped a little
I was away with work and there were about 5 of us in a big empty office building, we were the only ones in there, at some point one of the people there had to make a phone call to ask someone a question, after the call he said “weird – they said something about a plane flying into a sky scraper” we all dismissed it pretty much straight away and weirdly came to the conclusion it was related to a movie, didn’t think any more of it after that. A few hours later I got in the car to drive home and the radio came on and all was revealed, I spent the next 3 hours on my own driving home listening to Radio 1 playing low tempo music interspersed with the news, won’t forget it – seemed to surreal at the time.
Personally it shocked me as it seemed so different to terrorist attacks and hijacking’s of the past, I remember wondering if we would be targeted in the UK and also about the American response to it.
I was an immature 14 year old so I was just pissed off that the Sky breaking news banner ruined my taping of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory twice in 15 mins. As I said, immature.
More Brits died in 9/11 than 7/7 due to the close ties of London and New York but the “shock and awe” style of reaction wasn’t quite the same. There’s a good clip from a popular airport documentary show at the time and the day of and after people weren’t really accepting of the disruption in their day due to cancellations and extra security etc
Also we have the cultural memory of the blitz and IRA bombings at the time so never had that invincible feeling it seemed Americans had
I remember it well. It was my second day of training in the army. I was 16 and fresh out of school. I was queuing for lunch when a lieutenant walked past and said “someone has just bombed the pentagon”.
I was the only person who laughed.
That’s when I started to question if the army was right for me.
I remember watching the news footage in the NAAFI later that day. Obviously, being in the armed forces we were talking about potential consequences of such an attack on a close ally. Especially as literally the day before, during our induction, we were told “it’s been 10 years since we were involved in a war. We’re due another one any day now”, lol.
Neutral.
But after my grandmother returned home from her job at the foreign office she informed us a lot more detail then what the wider public got stuff that has only recently started coming out.
And I was still not surprised nor did I feel more than neutral.
I was 18 and working in a nursing home. It was so shocking but I didn’t really think about the impact it was going to last as long as it has.
I was 20 at the time, final year of Uni, living in a student house. But I was also working a summer job as a cleaner in the local hospital.
I remember it vividly. Doctors / nurses had it on a screen in their office while busily doing what else they needed to do, patients and visitors were all crowded in to a communal room with a TV on showing the events.
I remember clearly the gasp when the second plane hit.
I went back to my student house at the end of the day – unfortunately it was one of my house mates birthdays. We just sat in front of the TV into the small hours, knowing that the world had just changed. Would this lead to war? Could we be called up for service?
The next day I went to work at the hospital again. I remember cleaning a room with a TV on showing the events, and a senior nurse walked in, stopped, and started crying.
So yeah, I think most people who saw it in the UK were very shocked. Upset for those effected in America. Worried about what else was about to happen
Shock and horror. It was the only story on the news for weeks and weeks afterwards.
WTF
WTAF
FFFFFFFFAAAAAAAACCCCKKKKKKKK.
I remember watching it on TV and first thinking it was a film or something. Watching the new reporter in front of the towers talking about the first strike and then watching the second slam into the tower as she was talking. Horrific, but one of those things I will never forget.
I had just started working part time at Homebase (I was 16 and had been there 4 weeks). There was an old guy that worked there called Mike, he was an ex soldier and was missing 2 fingers. Turns out the IRA shot them off in the mid 80s at some checkpoint or other.
Anyway, we were talking about it that day, and he said that whilst it was tragic, it may stop the Americans idolising and funding the IRA – they tend not to enjoy getting a taste of “their own medicine”. At the time I didn’t understand. Now of course I know there was IRA funding interest US and a lot of support and American “imperialism” in the ME.
Fucking wild. I felt like an era had ended. Especially with everything that happened afterwards.
I was 31 and driving a bus in London. I came back to the garage after my first run and things seemed a bit different. Once I got into the canteen and TV area I’d never seen the place quite so quiet. All the other drivers just looking at the TV screens. Definitely one of those moment i’ll always remember. I’d left that job by the time some busses got bombed and thought it was typical of me not to worry about that at the time.
I remember being thoroughly annoyed- was down the pub with a few mates, watching the rugby game- when ‘breaking news’ interrupted the game.
At that moment it hadn’t really hit; we just heard suspected terrorist attack in America , and thought, “well, you cunts have been funding the IRA for years, let’s see how you like it”. Not my finest hour for thoughts, but I was in my early twenties, half cut, and bloody annoyed that the rugby had gone.
Now? I barely even think of it- indeed, the only reason I do now is because of Reddit- either posts like this, or the yearly reminder from the septics that they were stacked on home soil.
Horror. Incredible sympathy.
I was working in a contact centre for a bank when it happened. In 2001 you couldn’t generally access the BBC website on your work computer and it was before the days of smartphones. Calls to my workplace just stopped. Managers, who did have internet access were able to see the news so rumours and stories of what had happened went around the place and we figured that no one was calling in because they were watching their TVs.
When I finished work I left to get my bus home and had to walk past an electrical shop – Dixons or whatever – on the way to the bus station. There was a large crowd of people standing in a semi circle in front of the shop watching the TVs through the window in total silence. I joined them and it was the first time that day I really SAW what had happened instead of just hearing a vague description. I honestly still remember the gut punch watching the footage of planes plying into the buildings, and the footage of people jumping from the burning towers. For my parents’ generation the mantra was that everyone knows what they were doing when JFK was shot. For my generation (born in 1976) the equivalent is 9/11.
At the time I think many of us looked at the US as the shining castle on the hill. A place to aspire to, and kind of our closest “relatives” as another western English speaking nation. It would have been incredibly hard not to empathise. It also feels like after the end of the Cold War and a generally greater feeling of optimism in the 1990s, it marked the beginning of the death spiral into whatever the USA has become now and the ripple effects that has had on the rest of the world.
Shock, horror, disbelief.
I was 21 at the time and America was still very much Britain’s friend and people felt very warm towards America. People were really upset.
The real time response to the videos on the news that day and that were were just surreal shock. There was grief
All these people talking revisionist talk now in 2025 probably weren’t there as adults back then. No there wasnt any significant anti Americanism back then. An isolated person sure, but large enough to make noise? Nah. No we didn’t think it was one more act of terrorism akin to the IRA blah blah. The scale and visuals and death toll were unlike anything we’d seen in our lifetimes. I don’t think that many died at once in such fashion in during desert storm or the Yugoslav wars.
Until the Tsunami in 2005 which killed a quarter million in a day, it was by far the biggest event I’d witnessed on TV.
Absolutely shocking. I was studying from home. My dad worked at the WTC twice a year in New York and he told me I had to see what was going on.
I remember seeing the people jumping… it’s heartbreaking.
Whenever I go to New York, I always visit the memorial. I recently donated some of my dad’s photos to the museum.
New York has a special place in my heart and I’ll forever remember 9/11.
I was absolutely raging while at the same time almost in tears 😢
It was an event where I will always remember where I was. I felt for the people in the building and watching the people jump out was very unnerving, and as a country we paid our respects to those affected. However, we were also used to terrorist threats and bombings by the IRA which was often funded by americans. 7/7 was a bigger impact on the UK IMHO.
I was watching the news on TV as it happened.
First plane hit: “oh fuck, that’s terrible”
Second plane hit: “jesus, what are the odds of that happening?!” Genuinely, for a good few minutes I assumed there must be some issue with the planes or ATC. They weren’t yet reporting it as a deliberate act because frankly they didn’t know.
I can’t recall if the Philadelphia or Pentagon plane came next but it was all a bit obvious by that point.
I felt immense sadness for those trapped in the towers, afraid, I remember the reporters talking about “debris falling from the buildings”, which we later learned were people jumping to their deaths. When the towers collapsed I felt a deep sadness for the families and friends of the victims.
Soon after I hoped that we could join them in fighting the terrorists (not the innocent civilians they used as shields) and that American civilians would finally appreciate that funding the IRA had been a massive mistake.
As an aside, growing up I was exposed to terrorism a few times. I was on a train where a briefcase had been left during an IRA bombing campaign, the bomb squad came out and it turned out to be empty. Another time I was cycling home from school and thought “it’s a bit quiet today” only to find I had somehow ended up inside the police cordon for an IRA bomb threat. And my mum’s friend was on board Pan Am flight 103 with her husband and children… Lockerbie… I hope that’s an atypical exposure to such things, but in the year after 9/11 I met a lot of people who had friends, family or colleagues in the twin towers that day. So it does hit hard, but as we move on I fear we forget how horrific violence is.