At strange times I miss my father, although he has not been with us for 34 years. Especially when at Westminster Bridge and Parliament last week murder struck. He had this habit of describing even grown men as children. When someone died he would always say something like ‘poor child’. I found myself thinking of PC Keith Palmer as a poor child who had been struck down in his prime. A father and husband, and a mate of many.
And the injuries and deaths of the innocent strolling people who were simply crossing a bridge. And when you look at the casualty list you can’t help feeling that the world was crossing that bridge on that day. And were killed or injured for it.
Keith Palmer was a working man working his shift at keeping Parliament safe for all. The fact that he gave his life for that is a tragedy that should never have happened. And we seriously need to look into that event to learn why such a highly venerable target as the Parliamentary estate was vulnerable at the point where Keith stood sentinel.
I joined Keith on the parliamentary estate over a year ago, so I was one of the people he was trying to keep safe. I would have spoken to him the day before the event because I left through that exit. But I did not know him. He made an investment in me and the many others like me who come and go through what has been called “the mother of all parliaments”. And that investment cost him his life.
The clock was ticking and I did not know, nor did any of us working in Parliament.
Times have changed and my father would have been the first to remind me of that. He as a boy would get the bus and get off at Parliament before the war, just to look at it. He never quite understood it. He lived in a slum and had a dead father and poverty surrounding him; and a mum who had four jobs to keep the boys alive.
Thirty years later I would skip off school and get the bus to go and stand and look at Parliament and wonder at what it was and what it meant. Later I ended up washing up in it. And even later, much later, as a member of the House of Lords. As a part of that estate.