Westminster attack not a threat to democracy

The terrorists’ aim is not just to kill a few, but to terrify a multitude and for politicians and media to overreact would play into their hands

he current bout of global terrorism came to the heart of London on Wednesday in a fatal attack outside the Palace of Westminster. The symbolism is impossible to escape. An assault on the home of democracy induces a peculiar sense of outrage. That people, including a policeman, should die in such an assault is tragic.

As yet, nothing is known of the motive. All that can be said is that the attacker failed to enter parliament itself. Bystanders were killed and injured, but the massive security inevitable for such an institution was effective in protecting its occupants. In a busy modern city there is no way absolute security can be assured, but the police can say that the system was tested and worked. Short of holding parliament in a bunker, there are limits to what more can or should sensibly be done.

Parliament will have been subjected to this test because of its high profile. The initial purpose of such incidents is to kill and wreak havoc. But the culprit cannot have sought simply to damage a wall or cause death and injury. We can assume he anticipated massive publicity for his deed — and thus for his message. His purpose may well have been to spread fear, to test the robustness of democracy and, if possible, make it change its behaviour.

Our response to these incidents must not be to overreact. This week is the anniversary of the Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) outrage at Brussels airport, when 32 people lost their lives in a coordinated assault on Belgium’s transport system. It followed earlier attacks in Paris.

The reaction then was extraordinary. Europe’s media and politicians were close to hysterical. For days, BBC reporters on the spot repeated the words panic, threat and menace by the hour. France’s President Francois Hollande declared that “all of Europe has been attacked”. The then British prime minister David Cameron announced that “the UK faces a very real terror threat”. Donald Trump declared to cheering supporters that “Belgium and France are literally disintegrating”. Daesh could not have asked for a greater megaphone.

Counterproductive state responses

The terrorist is helpless without the assistance of the media and those who feed it with words and deeds. In his thoughtful manual, Terrorism: How to Respond, academic Richard English points out that the so-called threat to democracy, about which politicians like to talk at such times, lies not in any bloodshed and damage. It is the more real danger “of provoking illjudged, extravagant and counterproductive state responses”. But this puts those who choose to be “provoked” in a peculiar and compromising position.

We should recall that Theresa May as Britain’s then home secretary used the Paris and Belgium attacks to champion her “snooper’s charter”, the most severe intrusion on personal privacy anywhere in the western world — and described as such by Bill Binney, formerly of America’s National Security Agency. May added that the “terrorist threat” was why we should stay in the European Union, as otherwise “they would roam free”. She warned that it took 143 days to process terrorist DNA outside the EU, against 15 minutes inside. Does she still say that?

All analysts of terrorism reiterate that it is not an ideology. Guns and bombs pose no “existential” threat to a country or society. Politicians who exploit it to engender fear are cynics with vested interests. Terrorism is a methodology of conflict. There is no real defence against madmen who kill, though it’s worth restating that London’s streets have probably never been safer places.

Irish Republican Army terrorism was a much worse threat than anything experienced at present. Some freedoms were curtailed, as in detention without trial and the censoring of IRA spokespeople, but for the most part, British freedoms were not infringed, life went on and the threat eventually passed. Let us hope the same applies today.

Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He has edited the Times and the London Evening Standard and chaired the National Trust. His recent books include England’s Hundred Best Views, and Mission Accomplished? The Crisis of International Intervention.