July 24, 2005
The London Times
For all our stoicism we Londoners had hoped that July 7 would be a one-off. A kind of fatalism led us to expect that our city would take its turn to be attacked after New York, Washington, Istanbul and Madrid, but we harboured an unfounded expectation that once it had happened, it would be over.
Living with continuing fear and suspicion is a harder proposition than merely moving on from a single horrific event. The killing of an innocent man by the police adds to the jitteriness that will be felt in London. Still, I think the city will cope as it has done in the past.
In the past two weeks Britain has been stunned to discover that there are people living here who have resisted integration and who loathe this country.
London’s resilience tells a more encouraging story. The capital’s population is extremely diverse. As proof of that, fewer than half the names of those killed on the 7th look Anglo-Saxon. Today’s Londoners come in all colours and from every cultural background. Yet they have inherited the city’s historic attitudes of nonchalance, bloody-mindedness and defiance from the generation that survived the blitz. Mass murder in London has not been greeted with wailing in the streets but with a determination to continue life as usual in this city of perpetual sirens.
Perhaps we take things almost too calmly. It is, to say the least, disappointing that our security services anticipated neither of the two recent attacks, even though some of the names had previously appeared on the intelligence radar. The shooting at Stockwell does not help public confidence.
The government has been poorly focused. Only now does it come forward with proposals to outlaw acts preparatory to terrorism and the “indirect” incitement of violence. Why not before? The prime minister now calls for phone-tap evidence to be used in proceedings against suspects, while the Conservatives have long urged that change. Four years after September 11 the Foreign Office at last discovers that it can get agreement from Jordan to take deportees from Britain with guarantees about their treatment.
We have wasted parliamentary time on identity cards. They will not help us to fight terror and they have distracted us from more effective measures. The government has also dissipated its energy defending its power to lock up suspects without charge on the say so of a minister.
It has now decided to create the new offences, which is better because the suspects will enjoy due process in the courts.
It is easy to explain how the Londonistan phenomenon (the concentration of Muslim political activists in the capital) has come about. For years foreign governments have complained that dissidents settled in Britain were using the fax and the internet to foment discontent in their countries. Our response has been dilatory. Under our asylum rules we have made no distinction between the innocent victims of persecution and others intent on bringing down states.
As democrats we feel some sympathy for those who voice opposition to autocratic regimes. Maybe our response has been coloured by memories of the brave French resistance sabotaging the Nazis under control from London. It has taken us a long time to accept that not all enemies of dictatorships are either democrats or patriots.
We can complain with justification that Pakistan has failed to close the training camps where young Britons have been coached in the techniques of massacre. But General Musharraf, its president, was right last week to say that Britain could have done more, too. The constraints on him are obvious, leading a Muslim country of extraordinary volatility. Britain’s tardy reaction to the growing threat is harder to explain. Yet Blair has escaped criticism. He attracts public sympathy as he wrestles with the dilemma of how a free society copes with such an evil enemy.
In our fight against Irish terrorists we made it a criminal offence merely to belong to certain organisations. Al-Muhajiroun must be a candidate for similar treatment, as an extremist body that refuses to condemn terrorism in Britain and celebrates the September 11 attacks on America. We have found few other ways to disrupt the middlemen who warp the minds of young people and make them ripe for recruitment to suicide missions. We can no longer tolerate mealy-mouthed attitudes from people in authority. Ken Livingstone should heartily regret sharing a platform with Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who once said that suicide bombings in Palestine were a legitimate form of self-defence.
To give her her due, Cherie Blair has already apologised for saying of the situation there: “As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.” I do not see how anyone can “understand” the murder of passengers on a Jerusalem bus and still hope to carry conviction when denouncing terror on the Tube.
Deporting or silencing some imams and criminalising Al-Muhajiroun would not defeat the terrorists, of course. For that we must rely on the police and intelligence services to penetrate their networks. That gives us the opportunity not only to arrest the fugitives, but also to forestall new outrages, to sow distrust within the cells and to sabotage their equipment.
During the past week there have been several attempts (notably by the journalist John Pilger) to blame the bombings on Blair because of the war in Iraq. According to opinion polls a majority thinks that the conflict has increased our vulnerability.
We cannot know for sure. But we should at least recall history accurately. Al-Qaeda set off a truck bomb in the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, almost a decade before George Bush invaded Iraq. President Clinton, the darling of the left, had been inaugurated a month before. It would be difficult to blame US foreign policy for the attack. America had gone to the aid of Muslim Kuwait and freed it from Iraqi occupation. Observing the letter of its United Nations mandate, it withdrew from Iraq and left Saddam Hussein in place (although it kept forces in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait with the agreement of those governments).
A few months later Clinton withdrew American forces from Somalia following the Black Hawk Down incident, in which 18 soldiers died. Osama Bin Laden commented that the decision demonstrated the “weakness, feebleness and cowardliness of the US soldier” who had “fled in the dark of night”.
During the Clinton presidency, as American forces went to the rescue of Muslims in Bosnia and as the president toiled alongside Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister, to bring peace to Palestine, Al-Qaeda escalated its attacks on the United States, bombing its embassies in east Africa and attacking the warship USS Cole. Clinton’s response — firing a few cruise missiles into supposed terrorist camps — was feeble.
Long before George W Bush became president a policy of turning the other cheek was met by a sharp intensification of the terrorist onslaught on America, culminating in the September 11 attacks.
As tributes were paid last week to Sir Edward Heath, I recalled his appalling decision in 1970 to release the Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. She had hijacked an Israeli airliner but was exchanged by Britain for hostages seized in another hijack. The Black September group to which she belonged subsequently murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The Germans released the perpetrators in return for yet more hostages. Lacking support from Europe, is it any wonder that Israel has taken care of its own security? Even if a majority in Britain thinks that the war in Iraq has increased our danger, I doubt that many favour bowing to terrorist pressure or believe that it would make them safer. People are not as stupid as Pilger thinks.
If the terror continues, the British people are likely to cleave more strongly to Blair, a man who has experience of crises and finds appropriate rhetoric for every eventuality. The crisis may provide yet another reason (or excuse) for the prime minister to stay in his post.
During the long period in which the Iraq policy destroyed trust in Blair, Gordon Brown kept his head down and his hands clean. It seemed clever at the time, but less so now. Brown has supplied no evidence that he is the man to lead us at a moment of national peril. Blair retains that monopoly.
No comments:
Post a Comment