Why do the rights of terrorists trump those of innocents?
‘Are the authorities scared they are losing control of the multicultural narrative?’
If Ahmed Hassan had got his way, Sept 15 2017 would be the date of one of the worst massacres in British history. About 50 people sustained burns or minor injuries when the teenager’s home-made bomb failed to go off properly on a District Line train at Parsons Green underground station. It was no thanks to the authorities that 400g of “Mother of Satan” explosives packed in a bucket with 2.2kg of screwdrivers, knives and bolts didn’t kill scores of innocent people. An asylum seeker who actually told Home Office officials he had been “trained to kill” by Islamic State in Iraq was not only allowed to enter our country, he was given generous financial aid and a foster place with the marvellous Ron and Penny Jones, who had taken in 300 needy youngsters over the decades.
How did the Joneses react when they received a letter from Surrey County Council telling them about their new charge, who claimed to be 16 when he arrived on the back of a lorry from Calais? “Dear Penny and Ron, Ahmed is a bright boy with a troubled history. He enjoys football and plotting mass murder. He blames Britain for the death of his father in an explosion, makes donations to Isil from money given to him by the local authority and likes to sing Arabic songs about bringing slaughter to people’s homes. Ahmed told his teacher it is his ‘duty to hate Britain’, but we feel sure he will settle down nicely in your loving home!”
The Joneses never received such a letter, obviously. If they had, they might well have taken the view that this dangerous boy had no business being let into the UK in the first place.
After Ahmed Hassan was found guilty of attempted murder, the people responsible – or the irresponsible people, if you will – queued up to apologise. David Munro, Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner, admitted that “opportunities had been missed”. Ben Wallace, Home Office security minister, trotted out that old favourite “lessons to be learnt” from the case. Lessons? Let me help you, if I may. First, the EU’S Dublin regulation, which stipulates that refugees must register in the first European country they enter, is not enforced and nor is it enforceable because the open borders of the Schengen Area have allowed jihadists to move freely across the Continent. Secondly, when it emerges that unstable young men like Hassan have entered Britain illegally, they should be returned forthwith to their country of first entry to have their asylum claim processed (or rejected).
Thirdly, the safety of the public should be of paramount concern to the Home Office, which it certainly was not in this case. (Referring Hassan to Prevent, the deradicalisation programme, didn’t prevent commuters being put at grave risk, did it?)
On that same theme, Mr Wallace, I understand there are at least 425 British Islamic State members who have so far returned to the UK, many of whom are feared to have “disappeared” from the view of the security services. Is there any chance you might respect the fact that the British people would prefer to see them deported from whence they came? Or are you and Amber Rudd waiting to find out the “lessons to be learned” when the next treacherous varmint buys the ingredients for a bomb on Amazon with prize money for most improved pupil at his school?
You will have to forgive my tone of mild incredulity, but there has been ample evidence in the past fortnight that the Home Office is perfectly capable of keeping out undesirables. Lauren Southern, a far-right Canadian journalist, was detained in Calais and banned from entering the UK. Ms Southern worked for ‘The Rebel Media’, described as a global platform for anti-muslim ideology. A Home Office spokesman said: “Border Force has the power to refuse entry to an individual if it is considered that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good.” Ms Southern, who supported a mission seeking to hamper the rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean, claimed British authorities told her she was “officially banned for racism”.
Personally, I wouldn’t choose to have Ms Southern round for Easter lunch, but at least nothing in her history suggests she might try to detonate a bomb on a train carrying children to school. The same goes for Martin Sellner, the Austrian leader of the Generation Identity white nationalist movement, and his girlfriend, Brittany Pettibone, an American writer and blogger who calls immigration “white genocide”, who were also denied entry.
All three seem like pretty horrible people – their lack of compassion for drowning families is chilling – none the less, we should still be extremely concerned by this authoritarian attack on free speech by our civil servants.
Are we to deduce that our government believes ultraconservative provocateurs are “not conducive to the public good” while Islamist asylum seekers are perfectly fine? We may not like the crude, anti-muslim rhetoric of Sellner, Pettibone and Southern, but since when did “hate speech” pose more of a threat to our way of life than men who behead charity workers?
After the grotesque revelations last week from Telford of yet more mass rape, even murder, committed by men of mainly Pakistani origin, are the authorities perhaps scared they are losing control of the multicultural “narrative”? Do they privately fear that the views of Sellner and his ilk might chime with members of the population who have lost faith in a liberal elite that appears to put political correctness and enforced “tolerance” before the safety of white working-class girls?
Amid these appalling events, what do the authorities do? Yesterday, counterterrorism police launched a national advertising campaign, ACT (Action Counters Terrorism), urging people to report their suspicions. You mean like an Isil-trained teenager telling his teacher it was his “duty to hate Britain”? The head of counter terrorism in the North West, Det Chief Supt Dominic Scally, said: “We want people to trust their instincts and act by reporting in confidence something they feel is unusual or suspicious.”
And what if our instincts tell us it’s wrong to keep out far-right speakers, who can do us no physical harm, while admitting aggrieved Muslim teenagers from war-torn areas who well might?
Let me tell you what is “not conducive to the public good”. It’s having a Home Office whose moral sense is so perverted that it puts the human rights of jihadist Hassan before the right to life of British men, women and children on the District Line.