The British Are Watching, Very Closely

The British Are Watching, Very Closely
By GRAHAM BOWLEY

The instinct for keeping one’s eyes peeled, for watching for the unattended bag or abandoned car, was inculcated in the British beginning in the 1970s as the Irish Republican Army terrorized London with bombings.

“We are quite a polite nation, so it’s hard, but, yes, we are on the lookout and actually it’s not new,” said Peter York, a columnist for The Independent on Sunday. “It comes from our grandparents’ generation from the war and was kept alive by the I.R.A. and is with us now, a belief that we can’t expect the world to be a lovely, kind place, and that we need to be vigilant.”

The discovery of two bomb-laden cars around Piccadilly Circus on Friday underscored the point once again. It follows the 2005 Islamist terrorist attacks that killed 52 in London, and the disruption last year of what the police said was a plot to blow up airplanes flying out of Britain.

Vigilance underpins quite a lot of behavior in Britain these days. How so?

On average about 250,000 unattended items are reported to the police each year on Britain’s subways and trains, according to Jake Trees, a spokesperson for the British transport police.

In New York, the police received 37,614 calls about suspicious packages in 2006, up from 21,500 calls in 2005. As of 6:36 p.m. on Friday, there had been 17,422 calls this year.

In Britain, guns, which were rarely visible on police officers 10 or 15 years ago, are now often in full view on their belts or in their arms. Security around significant government buildings is particularly tight. Trains and stations are often flooded by brightly jacketed police officers, made possible by a 50 percent increase in the number of transport police officers since 2005. Constant announcements in the trains and on station platforms urge people to watch out for anything suspicious. Stickers and posters display hotline numbers to call.

“Do people speak out?” Mr. Trees asked. “It’s one of the tenets of our policy that they do, and they do that. Passengers are becoming very, very aware of things that are out of the ordinary.”

British cities have also been arrayed with closed-circuit television cameras focused on lobbies, sidewalks, roads and public spaces. There are more than 6,000 of the cameras on the London subway network alone. (One side benefit: there are only about 15 crimes per million passengers on British trains and subways.)

Britain’s most senior counterterrorism official, Peter Clarke, said on Friday that the police expect those cameras to yield clues to the identity of the drivers of those two cars abandoned in the heart of London’s West End.

“Life must go on,” he said, “but we must all stay alert to the threat we face as we go about our daily lives.”

Al Baker contributed reporting.