Manchester

Like many, I have connections with the North of England. A grandmother was born in Northumberland in 1868. And today I have the families of two cousins and of a niece for whom Manchester is their nearest big city. A best friend who grew up in the streets from which the bomber came.

None of us will be without connections to such a real world, and wonder about the criminal actions of people who wish to attack innocent citizens in the name of a perversion of true belief.

Manchester is a very large city but events there have reached into a Scottish island community of about 1,200. Barra has always been one of my favourite islands and I can shut my eyes and hear the sighing of Atlantic waves beating the sand at Tangusdale beach.

Today it is the sighing of two families from there - one experiencing tragic loss of one of their own - one now supporting a child cruelly injured on what should have been an exciting day out to a concert.

Barra has known loss before. The modern war memorial that stands on the hill overlooking Castlebay on the road to Vatersay contains the names of the many who fell in last centuries’ wars. A disproportionate share.

Our then enemies lie here too, with German sailors whose remains had been swept ashore on Barra being memorialised in a local cemetery.

And what now?

A significant contingent of firearms trained police from Scotland have travelled to Manchester to assist. We’ve been the biggest source of outside assistance to our friends down south. Last year the Scottish Government had been criticised for upping the numbers such trained police. But it seems, sadly, that we do need them in a modern world.

After a couple of days “lock-down”, but with business continuing, the Scottish Parliament is, like other parts of Scotland and the UK, back to normal.

But the normal to which we return is one where the security threat is now only considered severe. For a couple of days it was critical.

So it remains important that we continue with normal life while each and every one of us is vigilant.

We must not allow the very tiny number of people who represent a threat to our way of life and to people in our communities to make any headway at all.

Postscript.

Since I wrote on Wednesday about Manchester, we have now seen the people of London suffer over the weekend. I can do no better than quote their Mayor who said that his city “will never be cowed by terrorism". We shall all be with him on that.