If our phones have to be tapped by the spooks – then so be it

WE HAvE been expecting such an attack for years in our hearts, but the shock is no less great for that.

A harbinger of terror — one man who was deranged, or depraved, or both — struck at the heart of British democracy.

His weapons were the simplest of deadly tools, a knife and a car. vehicles have increasingly become weapons of choice for terrorists in Europe.

Security forces may have some success in keeping guns and explosives out of reach of those who wish us ill. However, there is no conceivable means of denying them access to wheels or blades.

The death of the police officer reminds us of the risks faced by every uniformed servant of the State.

We should also offer sympathy and admiration to the policemen who shot down the killer in New Palace Yard.

Killing

Although armed officers are highly trained to do their jobs, there can be few greater traumas than that of having to make a split- second decision to kill somebody.

The fact that plainclothes officers acted with such speed and assurance should increase public faith that our defences are working.

Yet the earlier victims — pedestrians mown down as they walked along the pavement — were not employees of the State or politicians, merely innocent passers-by.

The intention in killing and injuring such randomly chosen victims is to shock us all by shedding blood and spreading fear. Such tactics have been used on numerous occasions in recent years in Europe.

Such attacks, though, must be put in context. BBC Tv has just finished screening an adaptation of Len Deighton’s SS- GB, a fantasy about a Britain ruled by the Nazis after losing World War II.

This country’s enemies in that era at least were readily identifiable as agents of evil, in their sinister uniforms.

The hard part about confronting modern terrorism is that its protagonists are assimilated into our society. They are impossible to distinguish on public transport — or driving a car across Westminster Bridge.

We feel a chill at this notion of an enemy within. Trust is one of the most precious possessions of a democratic society, and the purpose of all terrorism is to corrode this.

Before such an attack as yesterday’s, there is no declaration of war, no air raid siren which gives people time to shelter.

Suddenly, and without warning, a homicidal individual uses his car to kill and maim people going about their peaceful daily lives, tearing a hole in our confidence — usually justified confidence — that the world is a pretty decent place.

Britain has been fortunate to be spared for some years from such an assault, partly through luck, but mostly through the professionalism of the intelligence services and police.

The men and women of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have always acknowledged, however, that sooner or later a lone wolf or group of plotters must slip through the net and commit a deadly assault.

And that looks like what happened yesterday.

Worryingly, though, in almost every terrorist act since the 9/11 attacks, those who were found to be responsible were already known to the authorities — the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby on a South London street, the Boston Marathon bombers, the attackers in Brussels and Paris.

If that is the case with yesterday’s attacker, too, there will be huge public disquiet.

Some of us have felt sadness at the spectacle of barriers rising around Westminster, just as we moan each time we endure the frustrations of extra airport security.

But when such an event as these killings happens, we are obliged to recognise that walls and searches represent defences against our new enemies, and are as necessary as were Spitfires and antiaircraft guns in 1940. Thanks to the walls it is difficult for a terrorist to crash a vehicle into Parliament.

Thanks to airport security, too, it is harder to attack an aircraft in flight, though this week’s new ban on cabin electronic devices is a very timely reminder that terrorists are constantly exploring new methods of overcoming airline precautions.

It has become far more difficult to defend ourselves from the new generation of Muslim suicidalists who are happy to perish even as they kill, in a way that their predecessors of the IRA — the likes of Martin McGuinness — were not.

The challenge is to strike a balance between protecting us from evil, and enfolding us in a security blanket so heavy that it would stifle the very liberties we are striving to preserve.

So far in this century, I would suggest that governments have got this pretty right.

They have provided lavish new funding for MI5, MI6 and, above all, GCHQ. They have backed electronic surveillance, which some foolish libertarians denounce as the machinations of a police state, but which represents our first line of defence in detecting terrorists.

Savage

I have visited GCHQ’s headquarters in Cheltenham and roamed its gigantic underground level, where hundreds of computers churn 24/ 7, monitoring data and keywords from countless millions of phone conversations and internet communications.

Libertarians such as The Guardian newspaper find such scrutiny intolerable, but I — and probably you, too — are more than happy to have my own phone conversations tapped as the price of empowering our spooks to pinpoint such a man as who carried out yesterday’s savage killings.

It is too soon to know if he was already known to the Security Services, but we must recognise the impossibility of tracking, far less detaining, all those who show an interest in extremism or even terror.

MI5 has thwarted at least a dozen more or less serious terrorist plots in recent years.

Amid our dismay about what took place yesterday, we should draw comfort from the fact that, while such people can subject victims and their families to the extremes of grief, they cannot destroy our society as the Nazis could, or as the old nuclear- armed Soviet Union had the power to do.

Muslim extremism is a plague virus, which — as well as in the Middle East — has acquired a grip on a significant minority of young men living in this country and elsewhere in the West.

Curse

Social media has given those who incite and promote terrorism extraordinarily powerful new weapons to spread their creed and organise their plots heedless of frontiers.

Above all, the movements that drive these killers must be fought, their plots defeated, and those who are tasked to do so deserve the support and understanding of us all.

But we should not allow our enemies to frighten us into supposing that they wield more power than they really possess.

Certainly, they are a curse on our times. We may grimly realise we risk having to face more attacks such as those of yesterday, perhaps more deadly and destructive.

This is the new normal for our world, because while terrorism can be contained, it cannot be wholly eradicated.

The best defence is to show our society’s resolution in the face of their ghastly deeds. Democracy, and indeed Parliament itself, is far too old and mighty to be cowed by such people, or by such bloodshed.

The best symbol of the terrorists’ assured failure is that the business of the House of Commons quickly resumed yesterday.

Our great institutions must show their bravest face in the proximity of evil, just as we must continue our daily affairs even as we mourn with those who have lost loved ones.