Gill Hicks: extraordinary peacebuilder
- Karen Robinson
- Oct 28
- 8 min read
On a Friday in early July my mum was poorly. While trying to get an antibiotic from the GP before the weekend, and discussing with one of mum’s carers whether we should call an ambulance, I wasn’t following the news closely. By Sunday night we were relieved that mum’s antibiotic had started to kick in and she was on the mend. I had a few quiet moments scrolling through the news and was shocked to learn that the next day was the 20th anniversary of 7/7. My mind hurtled back 20 years.
I was 45 then, living in a little flat in Leytonstone, east London. Each morning I got the Central Line to Holborn. I worked at the Mary Ward Centre, an adult education centre which at the time was in Queen Square, round the corner from Great Ormond Street Hospital. The nearest underground stations were Russell Square and Holborn. I was teaching English to adults. Most of my students were women. Many were refugees or seeking asylum. It was an honour to teach them.
Every so often the Central Line was down. That meant getting a bus to Stratford where there were other lines to choose from. That morning, 7 July 2005, the Central Line was down. We didn’t know why. The pavements were thick with people trying to get a bus to Stratford. Eventually I managed to get one. The streets were clogged, vehicles inching forwards. Someone on the lower deck of the bus had a smart phone. This was unusual then. As we neared Stratford, news passed rapidly among the passengers, from the person with the phone, that there had been some sort of explosion in central London. We arrived at Stratford Bus Station and piled off the bus to be met with this very loud, very urgent message on the tannoy on repeat, telling us to leave the station. Leave the station. Leave the station. Growing up in peacetime I’d never heard a public announcement like it before. I guess it was a pre-recorded message for absolute emergencies, being played over and over. They didn’t want us anywhere near the bus station or the train station.
It took a few moments to try to take the situation in. I just stood there. I then turned round and headed back to Leytonstone. Walking this time. Walking, absorbing, not knowing, needing to simply walk. When I got home I phoned friends to see they were ok. Turned the television on – had it on non-stop for hours – slowly learning about the bombings on the underground at Edgware Road, Russell Square and Aldgate, and on a bus in Tavistock Square.
This had happened to our London, our public transport, our public space. My London. So close. Russell Square which has a café in the middle where I met friends after work. Watching the same images on tv over and over again. My brain couldn’t take it in.
We learned later that 56 people died, including the four bombers. 784 people were injured (1).
The Independent wrote a few lines about each of the 52 people killed and included photos of many of them (2) .
The next morning the Central Line was running. I got on the train, quiet, reflective, scared. Fewer people than usual. But they were there, going to work, coming back from early morning cleaning jobs. Normal but not normal. People caught each other’s glances but were quiet. In shock. Dazed. Afraid. Needing to get to where they were going, yes, but in doing so starting to reclaim, in the tiniest of ways, public space, communal space, community. Those who made it in to the Mary Ward Centre that day, staff and students, were welcomed. Standing in small groups, we talked quietly, sharing.
A week on from the bombings there was a national two-minute silence to remember those who had died. There was a huge gathering in Queen Square. I’d never remotely seen so many people in this quiet, beautiful, rather sedate Georgian square. People came out of the places they worked and lived, filling the square and surrounding roads, standing together, needing to be together, to reflect and remember. This was no dutiful coming together, this was a pouring out onto the streets, a visceral need to stand next to our fellow Londoners, fellow human beings, to acknowledge the huge blow, the shock, the violence which had cut through our community, our city, a week ago. Staff and students stood on the steps of the Mary Ward Centre, including the young member of reception staff who had been on the Russell Square train, coming to work, and had survived.
As I read people’s accounts of what happened to them that day, one woman’s story particularly stayed with me. Gill Hicks. She was 37, an Australian, living and working in London. That morning she was on her way to work on the Piccadilly line tube from Kings Cross to Russell Square. The underground train she was on was bombed. She was so severely injured she was not expected to survive. She lost both her legs.
In the following months I saw a picture of Gill sitting on the floor, open about the horrendous injuries she had received, showing the stumps where her legs had been. With an unforgettable, incredibly strong expression on her face. I put her picture in a frame and looked at it often.
Later I learned that Gill visited Beeston, a small suburb of Leeds where two of the young men who had detonated the bombs had lived. She met with members of the community and they started to plan a walk from Leeds to London, an opportunity for people from different communities who might never normally meet, to walk and talk together.
In 2008, three years after the bombings, the walk took place. Gill walked, on her prosthetic legs, from Leeds to London ‘to encourage “honest dialogue” among diverse communities. She said, “I am truly grateful to even be alive and I am determined to make my life count, to make a significant difference … building peace and reconciliation, and obviously trying to deter anyone from following a path to violent action, is my main focus”(3).
In 2015, ten years after the bombing, Gill returned to Beeston (4).
Recalling when she’d first seen a picture of one of the bombers she said;
“I’d expected to see a monster, and I didn’t see a monster. I saw a young man … and I thought what the hell has led you, a 19-year-old man, to detonate a bomb, to kill yourself, to do this to me, to take so many lives?”
“I need to understand this, not only do I need to understand it I need to be part of a solution to never let this happen again”.
Recalling her first visit she said:
"When I first went to Beeston what I felt very strongly from that area was a great pain. There was a great sorrow that their boys had done such a horrific act and I wanted to be the bridge of that pain”.
“My first instinct was to reach out and in that reaching out metaphorically their hands reached back and that was the beginning of the relationship”.
In a later interview entitled ‘Triumph over Tragedy’, Gill reflected on terrorist ideology (5):
‘This is an ideology based on power, based on the idea of promise and purpose, and it’s my job is to then say how do we find the other ideas, how do we find the positive ideology that we can all rally around and follow that, and not meet hatred with hatred’.
On choice she said:
‘Again, stemming from my experience in the carriage, what I’ve come to understand is that we may not be able to control the events in our lives, or in the world, but what we can control is how we react and respond’’.
Asked how she responds to people who argue we need to meet force with force she said,
‘That’s because people are passionate about this, people are angry. We are living in a whole new world that, actually fear is growing exponentially, day by day, and no one knows … this is the power of terrorism in its complete random ability to make us feel very unsafe, and that’s why, I just I have to come back to, you can’t use military against an ideology. Ideology lives in the mind, lives in people’s hearts, and we have to, we have to look at how we are reacting and responding to the very, very destructive ideology that can be born and grow anywhere in the world.’
Eleven years after the bombings, in July 2016, Gill gave a TED talk, ‘I survived a terrorist attack. Here’s what I learned’. It is an incredibly powerful account of what happened to her and what she has taken away from it (6) (7).
It was almost an hour before the rescuers were able to reach Gill. In that time she reflected on her life up until that point:
“Perhaps I should have done more … lived more … seen more … but my priority was always my work … who I was on my business card mattered to me .. but it didn’t matter down in that tunnel …
I understood just who and what humanity really is when I first saw the ID tag that was given to me when I was admitted to hospital. And it read: ‘One Unknown. Estimated Female.’ … Those four words were my gift. What they told me very clearly was that my life was saved purely because I was a human being. Difference of any kind made no difference to the extraordinary lengths that the rescuers were prepared to go, to save my life, to save as many ‘Unknowns’ as they could, and putting their own lives at risk. To them, it didn’t matter if I was rich or poor, the colour of my skin, whether I was male or female, my sexual orientation, who I voted for, whether I was educated, if I had a faith or no faith at all. Nothing mattered, other than I was a precious human life.”
Later in the same talk Gill reflected on what had stopped her wanting retribution:
“Throughout all the chaos my hand was held tightly, my face was stroked gently. What did I feel? I felt loved. What’s shielded me from hatred and wanting retribution, what’s given me the courage to say, ‘This ends with me’, is love. I was loved. I believe the potential for widespread positive change is absolutely enormous because I know what we’re capable of. I know the brilliance of humanity.”
The love Gill was shown that terrible day had a profound effect on her. It contributed to her becoming the extraordinary peacebuilder she is. A huge thank you Gill, for the difference you have made, and continue to make. May we each dedicate ourselves to finding ways to end cycles of violence.
Karen Robinson
23 September 2025
References
(2) 7/7 bombings: Who were the 52 victims of the London terror attacks? | The Independent | The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/7-7-bombings-london-anniversary-live-the-52-victims-of-the-london-terror-attacks-remembered-10369569.html
(4) Content and photo (from screenshot):
(6) Quotations and photo:
I survived a terrorist attack. Here's what I learned | Gill Hicks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJoQj00RZHg
(7) I survived a terrorist attack. Here’s what I learned. - Gill Hicks | CryPeace https://crypeace.org/gill-hicks-terrorist-attack
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