Britain to observe one minute silence for 11 September victims

Precisely one year from the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Centre, Britain will fall silent in tribute.

Yesterday the Government announced there would be an official minute-long silence at 1.46pm in a service at St Paul's Cathedral on 11 September.

The quiet contemplation will be mirrored across the country. In railway stations, airports, supermarkets, offices, factories, high street stores, schools, courts and churches, people are expected to stop and remember more than 3,000 victims who perished in the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced yesterday that the memorial service – to which 2,000 people including relatives of the 67 British victims as well as the Prince of Wales, the American ambassador, William Farish, and senior government figures have been invited – would start at 1.15pm.

Meanwhile, Britain's firefighters will be marking the first anniversary and remembering their 343 New York counterparts who died in the attacks by gathering outside their stations to observe the silence.

Television and radio stations, including BBC1 and ITV, plan to fall quiet while the London Stock Exchange announced a two-minute tribute.

The TUC Conference, where the Prime Minister was told of the atrocity as he prepared to speak last year, will also follow suit.

Cities and towns across Britain have planned their own tributes, as have religious organisations from all denominations– mirroring events across the Atlantic.

The airports operator BAA was among several organisations to announce that it would be observing the silence in airports. "Airline staff would particularly like to take the opportunity to remember colleagues but it's up to individual airlines to decide what to do during the minute's silence," a BAA spokesman said.

Many City firms will have personal reasons for memorials next Wednesday. Cantor Fitzgerald – which lost 658 of its workers when the north tower collapsed – will be sending staff to the St Paul's service as well as holding a private commemoration at the company headquarters. Lee Amities, the president and chief executive in London, said: "I think we want to be by ourselves, for the staff to remember their colleagues."