One year on from the terrorist attacks that soured the capital's joy at winning its Olympic bid, politics must be put aside for compassion, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
They partied yesterday in Trafalgar Square.
Today at noon, there as across the country, people will instead fall silent in a national act of remembrance of those who died a year ago in the July 7th London bombings. Two days marked the life of this great city last year. Two contrasting events are forever linked in the minds of many who lived through the ecstasy and anguish of 24 hours when largely unexpected triumph gave way to almost previously unimagined terror.
Lord Coe, Mayor Ken Livingstone and the rest of the British delegation were still celebrating the success of the capital's 2012 Olympic bid in Singapore when reports reached them of the devastating suicide bomb attacks on London's transport network.
As the former double-gold medallist recalled yesterday, they could not have known the words used in their presentation would prove so poignant - they talked of combining London's strength, creativity, tolerance and diversity with the promise of what the sporting ethic would do to transform the future lives of Britain's young.
And looking back, looking forward, Lord Coe reflected the fervent hope of the great majority that the intervening 12 months have seen London's famed fortitude and resilience forge an even greater sense of community and common purpose.
But is it resilience? And not complacency bordering on a dangerous state of denial about Islamic extremism, the nature of the new global terrorist threat, and the balance still to be found between individual rights and national security? The debate has inevitably been raging in the run-up to today's commemoration of the attacks which saw four "home-grown" terrorists chill the whole of Britain with the dark threat of more, and possibly worse, to come.
It falls silent now, properly, as the bereaved, the hundreds of survivors and their families, take centre-stage in events which will be an ordeal for all of them. Quite properly, too, members of the royal family and politicians will only provide part of the backdrop as the flowers are laid and plaques unveiled at the blast sites - Kings Cross and Russell Square (because victims of the Piccadilly line attack emerged from both stations), Edgware Road and Aldgate Tube stations, and at Tavistock Square - ahead of this evening's public ceremony in Regent's Park.
The concern of many commentators, however, is that "normal" life will then quickly be resumed, and that fact in turn will be celebrated as evidence of the capital's and the country's refusal to be cowed by terrorism.
Yet isn't this the reality? And how could it - why would it - be otherwise? Indeed, isn't part of the story of the London bombings, as one senior government source puts it, about "what didn't happen" as a result.
In Regent's Park the London Gospel Choir will sing Something Inside So Strong and Bridge Over Troubled Water - speaking powerfully to the strength and the bridge so many people had to find to carry them from a day some feared would change life utterly, and not for the better.
It is, of course, profoundly worrying to find Muslim leaders accusing Prime Minister Tony Blair of engaging in a "blame game" over their perceived failure to be sufficiently robust in challenging extremists in their communities.
And it is frightening to find recurring polling evidence, as in the Times this week, of a substantial minority of British Muslims who believe themselves at war with the rest of society and see bombers as "martyrs".
There is plainly much urgent, ongoing effort required from government and community leaders to address both the "state of denial" that exists still in some quarters about July 7th and Muslim extremism - and, also, the disadvantage and alienation, compounded in some cases by a sense of humiliation, which leave large numbers of British Muslim youths vulnerable to radicalisation.
Yet, alongside the headline stories confirming mutual suspicion and distrust, there is evidence, too, of remarkable levels of agreement between majorities among Muslim and non-Muslim alike on the valuable contribution of the Muslim community to British society, the need for tougher measures against extremists and the desirability of greater integration.
Then there is the evidence of what didn't happen. London and the country as a whole did not descend into racial violence, the feared white "backlash" did not materialise. Even as some spoke of 7/7 as Britain's 9/11, most didn't actually think it would prove so.
The political consensus that led the national response to the London attacks did not last long enough to produce a raft of new, ill-considered, repressive legislation - although the failure to produce a coherent and credible response, and the competition (rather than co-operation) between the main parties on these issues, does not reflect well on the collective political class.
Nor were people prepared to accept enforced change to their normal way of conducting everyday life and business.
As one colleague put it, "think back and recall the extraordinary sight of so many people getting back on the buses and the tubes the very day after the bombers struck". As he also observed, there are significantly more cyclists in inner London these days, but that, in part at least, is the result of Mr Livingstone's congestion charge.
In the past week, with the renewed focus on security and the terrorist threat, some travelling on the Underground will have rediscovered those stirrings of alarm at the sight of a young Muslim carrying a back-pack. But even here, the story has been more about the "hotter-than-Rio" conditions in which passengers have had to make their journeys during a heat-wave prompting government health warnings to the old and the very young.
Commons and cricket grounds are playing daily host to school sports days, middle-class parents are erecting Pimms tents to protect and refresh themselves.
The pavement cafes and restaurants, like any available space outside local pubs, are packed by revellers enjoying the blistering summer.
Even failure on the sporting field, in Germany or Wimbledon, has not dented the party atmosphere. In Lambeth's "Little Portugal" last Saturday, the locals cheered their team's defeat of England. Had Beckham managed to stay on, and Rooney not been sent off, we would be looking beyond today's solemn events to another weekend of football drama.
Life goes on. To say so is not in any way to be callous about the pain which those of us spared personal loss will genuinely sympathise with today. Nor is to be complacent about the very real and present reality that others are even now planning to follow in the steps of those four young suicide bombers.
How could we be?
The security services have by all accounts thwarted at least three similar such attacks in the last year. The police are at full stretch, with some 70 live anti-terrorist investigations under way. MI5 is accelerating its recruitment to widen and deepen its knowledge of subversive suspects, numbered by one expert at an about 1,200.
These are unquestionably dangerous times. And still more worrying is, as former home secretary Charles Clarke recently acknowledged, the fact that public confidence in the so-called "war on terror" has been undermined by the intelligence failures about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Clarke conspicuously stopped short of linking Mr Blair to this crisis of confidence, when saying the Iraq experience had weakened belief in the capacity of the intelligence services.
However, Mr Blair's culpability - like the Tories' equal willingness to play politics with issues of national security - might provide a natural starting point when a nation's due respects have been paid.
But not today.
This is a day for the victims, the survivors, their families, for hope, and hope of healing. In the words of the poem written by David Gould, whose step-daughter Helen Jones was killed at King's Cross:
"Their summer voices linger,
As footsteps in our minds,
Their well-remembered tones,
In every breeze we hear -
Their summer voices linger,
As laughter in the air,
Their special little phrases,
Imprinted in our minds -
These summer voices gather,
As unified they turn,
To soar above in harmony,
In the ancient Song of Doves."