Don't let a good story stand in the way of truth!

NAME.....The Birmingham Warning
CODE.....WT9808
ORIGIN...Unknown
STATUS...False

This is not a joke or a hoax, this actually happened:

The other day I went around my mate's house straight from work. His wife answered the door and her first words were not "Hello" or "Hi, how are you?" They were "Don't go into Birmingham on the 6th October. At first I thought she was joking, but I soon realised that she was deadly serious.

When we had all sat down, she started to explain how her friend was shopping in the Cash and Carry when a man of Arabic appearance standing in front of her in the check-out queue did not have enough cash to pay for his goods. Noticing that the man was only a few quid short, she offered to make up the difference. The Arab man seemed very grateful, and when they went out into the car park, he spoke to her, "I would like to thank you for your kindness so I will give you this piece of advice, do not go into Birmingham Centre on 6th October".

Concerned of what she had just heard, the woman immediately contacted the police. They asked her to come down to the station and she was shown mug shots of local known Islamic terrorism supporters. It was not long before she spotted the man that she had spoken to.

As I have already said, this is a true story and the police are taking it as a serious threat. It all may account for nothing, but it is better to be safe than sorry.

Summary

This particular warning was rife at the end of September 2001, and was spreading via E-Mail and word of mouth. This legend was immediately condemned as a hoax, and the West Midlands Police Chief Constable, Edward Crew, stated that there is no intelligence to suggest there is any specific threat to the West Midlands. What is strange is that there was a terrorist bomb explosion in the Birmingham centre on 4th November 2001, but the attack was not carried out by an Islamic terrorist group, but by the 'Real IRA' instead. Although eerie, this must have been a coincidence as there are many variations to the legend, and the origins of the 'warning by a stranger' legends go back years.

Another similar version was circulating in London at the same time as the Birmingham warning. E-Mails were rapidly being sent round the offices telling a similar story, this time the shop in question was Harrods (a little bit more upmarket!), and the warning was not to travel on the tube. This really was playing on people's fears, as a gas attack on the tube is seen as a real and daunting potential threat.

In another variation a stranger warns of not going to Milton Keynes. In a city where everything has been created in block form, where the roads have more roundabouts than you could possibly imagine, and where the cows are even made up out of concrete, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to go there anyway. Perhaps the hoax warnings are a conspiracy from disgruntled Wimbledon FC supporters against their team's move to Milton Keynes!

Coventry is another city that was targeted by this latest bout of E-Mails, but there are many other places across the UK that have been used. In true UL fashion the variations are often localised to make a bigger impact and so are designed to cause maximum panic. There is no rational reason to believe the stories as there is no evidence to back it up, but because of the real threat of Islamic terrorism sweeping the world, the stories are seized upon and spread rapidly. This UL is playing with our present day anxieties and fears-that's what UL's do!

Before the Islamic terrorists were the perpetrators, the same legends were told about warnings of IRA bombings on the mainland. In these legends the man giving the warning often spoke with a soft Irish accent.

'Warning from a stranger' legends go a lot further back than that though, and the latest offerings may have evolved from legends like the one that was circulating around the US just after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in WW2. The story tells of a man giving a woman a lift in his car, and then the man refuses money that the lady has offered him for the petrol he has used. For this act of kindness, the woman offered to tell his fortune. She then predicted "There will be a dead body in your car before you get home, and Hitler will be dead in six months." The man then supposedly came across a car crash on his way home and attempted to take a seriously injured man to the local hospital, but the man died of his injuries en-route.

By the way, the other prediction about Hitler being dead in six months never materialised!

Final Thoughts

Check out the 'Liverpool Warning', an amusing parody that arrived in my E-Mail Inbox late 2002, and investigated under the code PD7302