IT had been expected. But when terrorist bombs exploded across London on July 7, killing 52 and injuring and maiming hundreds more, Britain still couldn't quite believe what was happening. And it still can't.

Despite widespread calls for a full and detailed public inquiry into the events of July 7 and the forces which helped shape that day, the government has refused. Instead Britain will be given a "narrative" account; a tidy storyline written by a civil servant and signed off by Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Is this the governmental equivalent of a psychiatric patient in clinical denial? July 7 changed Britain. But the question of how much it changed, and how much could have been avoided, seems an answer too far as 2005 closes.

In the wake of the attacks, Clarke set up a "task force" - a Muslim task force. Those appointed believed that a public inquiry was the only way to answer the growing questions over why a group of four British Muslims had murdered and taken their own lives in Britain's first suicide bombing.

Despite the obvious connection - that the Iraq war had played a key motivating role for the four - Clarke initially seemed to accept an inquiry was inevitable. Muslim leaders, MPs, representatives of the victims all said they wanted to know what could be learned from the attacks. Their assumption? That if we learn the lessons of July 7, it won't happen again.

If an inquiry had been granted, it would have had to go further back than July 7: to the weeks before, when the threat level of a terrorist attack had been lowered by the government. It would also have gone back and examined the growing chaos and insurgency in Iraq that followed the US-UK invasion in 2003; an insurgency that - as predicted in ignored pre-war Foreign Office briefings - would act as a recruiting call to angry Muslims worldwide.

Tony Blair recently said he accepted that people wanted to know exactly what happened, and promised: "We will make sure they do." Without a detailed inquiry, how will the Muslims of Leeds, where the bombers came from, and other peaceful followers of Islam throughout the UK learn why these young men became radicalised enough to take their own lives in the name of their faith? How will we learn why the apparent leader, Mohammed Sidique Khan - said to be happy with his school nickname of "Sid" and with the integrated life and multi-cultural friendships around him - changed?

In Leeds, the shutters have almost come down on parts of the tight-knit Muslim community. From initial shock, there is now in place a distrust, which has spread to other Muslim communities in Britain. They fear answers to July 7 are not being sought, but instead there is another kind of hunt going on - the hunt for the next Khan, and the next.

Khan, to those who thought they knew him, wasn't believed to be part of any radicalised group intent on militant indoctrination. He wasn't seen as culturally isolated, nor was he brought up in a harshly religious background. Yet the government has admitted the security services were aware of Khan and he had appeared, in their language, "on the fringes" of an investigation into another plan.

It is unlikely that this "fringe" will play any crucial part of the official "narrative" of July 7, despite the connection. The four men are dead, so there will be no criminal case with lawyers to cross-examine government figures. The Home Office insists police are still investigating potential links to other individuals who may be involved and whose cases could be compromised if a public inquiry got too close.

If July 7 ended the illusion of Britain's multi-cultural era of harmony, the three days of July 21, 22 and 23 signalled the arrival of its replacement: the measures the government believed were now necessary to protect Britain. Insecurity would be tackled head-on in post-July 7 Britain; the power of the state would increase and if necessary threaten individual liberty - without apology. To protect there would be sacrifices - and mistakes.

THE need for protection was demonstrated on July 21. Four would-be bombers appeared to have launched a copycat attack on London's transport network. None of their devices detonated, yet London now seemed a city under attack. The bombers would be hunted down.

The following day, with police on heightened alert, a Brazilian electrician tried to make his way to work. He never got there. He was shot dead by police and officers from a new specialist military surveillance unit.

The young man, they said, had refused to obey police instructions; he was acting suspiciously, and was wearing bulging clothing that suggested bombs strapped around him. Scotland Yard confirmed the shooting had been linked to an antiterrorism operation. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, was clear: the man had been challenged and the police responded appropriately using a justified shoot-to-kill policy. This was the reality of Britain's new security regime. There was no need for the police to apologise, they were doing their job.

Within 24 hours, it emerged that 27year-old Jean Charles de Menezes was not the terrorist suspect they were looking for. The shooting had been a mistake, a tragedy. What had happened to the official certainty of the day before?

In November, Blair and other senior police officers urged MPs to back Downing Street-led proposals to raise the period of detention without charge for terrorist suspects from 14 to 90 days. Despite outrage from the law lords and human rights lawyers and unease among MPs, the Prime Minister was determined. July 7, he said, had shown the rules had to change. The police said they wanted the tough detention regime and Tony Blair wanted to give it to them because it was the "right thing to do".

There was no popular uprising over the 90-day proposal. Many believed a country under siege needed the protection the new law would provide. If it adversely affected a minority of UK citizens, likely to be from the Muslim community, then such legal inconvenience should be accepted as the price for the majority's safety.

But instead of backing the prime minister, the Commons revolted, defeating the government for the first time in eight years. Fourteen days became 28, not 90. But even as the defeat was being predicted, supporters of the PM were saying ultimately he would be proved right.

Britain in 2005 did not become a police state. But the government flirted, dangerously, with adaptations on the idea. It tried to convince us that the centuriesold laws and legal principles of the UK were insufficient to deal with the threat that July 7 had so horrifyingly illustrated.

A public inquiry might have helped explain the changes of 2005 in the disUnited Kingdom. Will a "narrative" do? No - we know the story of July 7. But we don't know how to prepare for the next time.