We must clamp down on sources of terrorist ideology
SPEAKING at her press conference yesterday, Merseyside Chief Constable Serena Kennedy asked people to “remain calm, be vigilant and alert” in the wake of the explosion outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Sunday morning.
Appropriate words indeed – and an accurate description of the behaviour of David Perry, the taxi driver who spotted that something seemed not right about his passenger, halted his cab and left it, with the passenger locked inside.
Mr Perry’s calm and vigilant actions may well have saved many lives, and it is entirely right that he has been hailed as a hero.
He is not the first and, I am sure, will not be the last such hero. We all remember John Smeaton, a baggage handler at Glasgow Airport who, on his break, spotted two men driving a jeep that was on fire to the airport entrance. He ran towards it, kicked the driver in the groin and helped drag another injured helper to safety. The jeep, it turned out, was carrying three cylinders of highly flammable gas.
AND there was Darryn Frost, a civil servant who fought Usman Khan, the London Bridge murderer, to the ground. Khan was wearing what seemed like a suicide vest (which later turned out to be fake). But seeing him launch his knife attack, Mr Frost grabbed a narwhal tusk from the wall at the hall where the two men had been attending the same event. He then chased Khan onto London Bridge, pinning him to the ground until police arrived.
Perry, Smeaton and Frost – their stories show how any of us could at any point in our lives face a moment when we have to make a split-second decision, the results of which could change history. We will never know what might have happened on Sunday had Mr Perry not acted as he did. But there is a phrase which security experts use that puts such events in context. When it comes to dealing with terrorists, we have to be lucky every time. The terrorists only have to be lucky once.
In other words, no matter how brilliant our security services may be and no matter how alert we may all be, one slip can be deadly.
The pandemic brought a halt to most terror attacks, for the basic reason, perhaps, that there were no events to be targeted. But now that life is returning to normal, we need to be vigilant.
We do not know yet the details of what drove Sunday’s would-be bomber but, more generally, the scale of the threat of Islamist terror is daunting.
In 2017, the EU’s then counter-terrorism coordinator reported that the UK had around 35,000 fanatical Islamists, of whom 3,000 were regarded as serious terrorists with 500 under surveillance.
Security experts consider the numbers to have worsened since then. Neil Basu, in charge of counter-terrorism for the Metropolitan Police, has said: “Every week we open more [cases] than we close.”
There is no “answer” to terrorism; it cannot be prevented entirely. But that should not stop us doing everything in our power to try.
And fundamentally, at the moment we do not.
We rely too heavily on the often brilliant work of the police and security services, failing to buttress that with more systematic and deepseated work.
In January, for example, Jonathan Hall, QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, became the latest expert to warn that Islamist terrorists in prison are
being given the chance to radicalise fellow inmates. This link between radicalisation inside prison and terrorism outside has been the finding of every inquiry since radical Islam first became a publicly known threat after 9-11. And yet on it goes.
OR TAKE the Prevent programme, designed to stop those in danger of radicalisation from being pushed down that path.
All too often its work is undermined by those delivering it locally, sometimes working with organisations which should be shunned as being part of the problem, but which gullible liberals accept as representative of mainstream Muslim opinion.
To its credit, the Government set up an inquiry into Prevent’s operation. Under the superb William Shawcross, it is due to report imminently.
In the end, this is a choice.We can carry on as now, pretending that we are serious about tackling such terrorism but refusing to take the steps that are a prerequisite for getting to grips with the problem.
Or we can decide to act, by addressing the sources and networks of terrorist ideologies, and clamping down upon them.
‘Any of us could face a split-second decision which could change history’