2010-2019 HARD TIMES
EMMA BOWDEN LOOKS BACK AT A DIFFICULT DECADE DEFINED BY TERROR AND TUMULT
IT WAS a turbulent 10 years packed with political turmoil. The public went to the polls in four general elections and a referendum that divided the nation.
But it was the dozens of lives lost in the Manchester Arena bombing, the Grenfell Tower blaze and a series of violent attacks across the capital that saw the decade defined by terror and tragedy.
The shocking deaths of MP Jo Cox – shot and stabbed to death by neo-Nazi Thomas Mair in her constituency in 2016 – and Fusilier Lee Rigby – rammed with a car before being hacked to death in 2013 – horrified the nation.
Some 71 people died when flames engulfed Grenfell Tower in London’s deadliest fire since the Second World War.
Relatives are still searching for answers after the inquiry’s phase one report, published more than two years after the tragedy, found the London Fire Brigade’s preparation for a tower block blaze to be “gravely inadequate”.
The second stage of the public inquiry begins early next year.
In 2017, election campaigning was suspended for three days when 22 lives were claimed following an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert.
London Bridge, Westminster and Finsbury
Park all became targets for terrorists in the same year.
Dramatic changes to the
UK’s political landscape began in 2010, when the Conservative Party gained power for the first time since 1997 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
After months of arguments and offers, Scotland voted to remain in the UK in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014.
David Cameron returned to Number 10 as the head of a majority government the following year – Labour’s Ed Miliband and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg both went on to quit as party leaders.
The biggest political controversy of the decade was the UK voting to leave the EU after 52% of the public supported Brexit in 2016.
It was a victory for then Ukip leader Nigel Farage, and a humiliating defeat for Mr Cameron, whose resignation brought an abrupt end to his six-year premiership.
Divisions deepened during the tenure of his successors, Theresa May – who will be remembered for her failure to deliver Brexit – and Boris Johnson, who took the public to the polls for the first December general election in nearly a century.
Mr Johnson promised to lead a “One Nation” government and urged people “to find closure and to let the healing begin” following a landslide Tory victory.
Brexit was not the only political upset. After 18 months of campaigning – often bitter and frequently bizarre – Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton and was elected President of the United States.
It was a decade when people woke up to the realities of the climate crisis and the world’s nations united for the historic Paris climate agreement.
Flooding destroyed homes while the “Beast from the East” froze the British isles in 2018, just a year before the UK recorded its hottest day on record.
WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange spent seven years of the decade seeking asylum in London’s Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden over a rape allegation he had always denied.
Swedish authorities discontinued the rape investigation in November but, after being dramatically removed from the embassy building in April, Assange was jailed for 50 weeks in May for breaching his bail conditions.
The cathedral city of Salisbury became the unlikely location for an attempted assassination in March 2018. Former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were both left seriously ill after being exposed to Novichok.
Police linked the attack to another poisoning months later, when Dawn Sturgess died after handling a contaminated perfume bottle.
Two Russian men were accused of the attack, which Prime Minister May said had “almost certainly” been approved by the Kremlin.
Mark Duggan’s death at the hands of a Metropolitan Police marksman sparked nationwide riots in summer 2011, as buildings were set alight.
A worldwide movement began in 2013 using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter to protest against the police treatment and systemic racism of black people.
Questions were asked over the actions of police and other authorities following the exposure of child sexual exploitation rings in Rochdale and Rotherham.
And police forces found themselves under pressure from a rise in knife crime, with scores of teenagers stabbed to death on the nation’s streets.
The country became a sea of red, white and blue for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, ahead of the Olympic and Paralympic Games held in the capital later that year.
The Queen made her acting debut in the London 2012 blockbuster opening ceremony which enchanted millions of viewers.
Interest in the royal family rose in 2011, when a then 28-yearold Prince William married Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey. And the nation caught a first glimpse of a future king when their son Prince George was born in 2013.
All eyes were on a second royal wedding some seven years later, when Prince Harry married American actress Meghan Markle in a lavish and starstudded ceremony at Windsor Castle.
The decade’s sense of tragedy and terror was felt across the world in a string of international attacks.
Anders Breivik, disguised as a policeman, killed 77 people in two separate gun attacks in Norway in 2011.
Paris became a target for terrorism in 2015, when gunmen stormed the building of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and months later targeted the Bataclan concert hall. In 2016, some 32 people were killed in terror attacks on Brussels and more than 80 were murdered in Nice when a lone terrorist drove a lorry into crowds celebrating Bastille Day.
A black cloud hung over the entertainment industry in a decade rocked by scandals over sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement.
Former entertainer Jimmy Savile was exposed as a serial child sex abuser in 2012, leading to the launch of Operation Yewtree, a criminal investigation into widespread sexual abuse.
Allegations of harassment and assault in Hollywood and beyond against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein emerged in October 2017 – claims he has denied. The story developed as more women began to share their accounts.
The decade closed with the murders of Cambridge University graduates Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, at the hands of convicted terrorist Usman Khan during a prisoner rehabilitation event in London on November 29.
As he begins a new term as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has promised tougher sentences to ensure terrorists spend longer in prison.
But with the nation more divided than ever, Britain starts the new decade facing more upheaval as it presses on with leaving the EU.