DELEGATES at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference in Brighton on September 11 feared that the Brighton Centre could be the next target on that tragic day, the former general secretary of the organisation has revealed.

Lord John Monks, who led the TUC from 1993 to 2003, described how the tragic events played out during the second day of the conference.

The day started off routinely enough, although there was some apprehension ahead of proceedings with Prime Minister Tony Blair due to give an important speech in the afternoon about private sector involvement in the health service.

Lord Monks said: “The pre-speech briefings seemed to suggest he was going to attack public sector workers, so there was a little bit of tension about what he would do.”

As Mr Blair and his entourage arrived at the Brighton Centre at lunchtime, word spread of a plane crash hitting one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

Someone told Lord Monks of the incident before the afternoon session of the conference was due to begin.

“My first reaction was that it was terrible and thinking it was an accident, and we soon carried on preparing for the afternoon.”

The afternoon session of the conference went ahead as planned, with Prime Minister Blair due to speak later on that day.

Unfortunately, the scale of the unfolding tragedy in New York was soon to become clear.

Lord Monks said: “Someone came rushing over saying another plane has flown into the other tower of the World Trade Center and that it’s terrorism.

“That’s when the penny dropped that this was an attack on the United States.”

Lord Monks rushed down to the green room to see the Prime Minister and his director of communications Alastair Campbell, where they were watching unfolding coverage of the horrific events in New York.

It was at this point where concerns grew about whether the Brighton Centre itself could be a target, given the Prime Minister’s attendance at the conference.

Lord Monks said: “Somebody said ‘is this building... is the Brighton conference centre at risk?' Could they fly a plane into it, as it was not a great secret that the Prime Minister was going to be in Brighton? Nobody knew.”

Brighton had had its own history of terrorism only a few decades prior, after an IRA bomb detonated at The Grand Hotel in 1984 in an attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher who was Prime Minister at the time.

Tony Blair eventually made an impromptu address to delegates at the conference - his first remarks on the terrorist atrocity.

“This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today,” Mr Blair said.

“It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and, we, the democracies of the world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world.”

Soon after he made his speech, Mr Blair left the conference centre in Brighton and made his way swiftly back to London.

The TUC attempted to continue the conference, but it became clear that delegates were so saddened and shocked by events in America that the decision was taken to bring proceedings to a close.

Lord Monks explained that delegates were watching the disaster play out on televisions across the centre, upset at the thought of those who had lost their lives.

He said: “People didn’t want to go far and were clustered together just looking at it, and there was a genuine mood of wishing the Prime Minister well - as it was felt wherever he was going, he was at some risk.

“I remember we had an American delegate and he was absolutely shell-shocked, and I took him back in my car to central London.

“I looked after him for a few days as he couldn’t get back - travel to just about anywhere was shut down.”

Mr Blair returned to the city only two weeks later for the Labour Party conference, where he said that the attack on America marked a "turning point in history."

He said: "The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.

"This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us."

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