Still attempting to deflect opprobrium over her expenses claims, beleaguered Home Secretary Jacqui Smith summoned all of her political gusto earlier this week in delivering the Government’s updated counter-terrorism strategy to an expectant batch of ministers in the House.
In the document itself, Smith is bullish. The MP describes CONTEST as “one of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging approaches to tackling terrorism anywhere in the world”.
According to Smith, CONTEST’s main aim is “to provide the people of the UK and our partners overseas with as full and as open an account of why and how the Government is tackling the modern day terrorist threat.”
There’s persistent talk of “violent extremism” from both Smith and Prime Minister Gordon Brown who, naturally, has provided the other Foreword.
Indeed, Brown waxes lyrical about the “many thousands of hard-working men and women in the police service, the armed forces, the intelligence agencies, the emergency services and community groups” (and others) who “have achieved a great deal in their work to counter the ongoing threat”.
The very same individuals, in truth, who’ve achieved whatever they’ve achieved against all the odds thanks to this Government’s continual policy of asset stripping, but that’s another story.
What drives the threat forward
CONTEST, you may recall, was first launched six years ago. Although the Government feels the strategy has broadly achieved its intended goals post-launch, CONTEST 2 was necessary for a number of reasons – not least to take account of the terrorist threat’s evolution and (we hope and trust) Parliament’s better developed understanding of the factors driving it forward.
CONTEST 2 is also formulated to reflect the increasing resources the Government has made available for counter-terrorist work, but has that money been wisely spent or frittered away?
Only the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism can give us a definitive answer to that little teaser, one suspects, but scratch the surface of this report and you begin to see what the deal really is.
The headline news as far as the broadsheets are concerned is that, apparently, we in the UK are facing the rising risk of a dirty bomb attack.
An increase in the theft and smuggling of dangerous materials means that terrorists are more likely to be able to call upon weapons like this. Isn’t that good to know?
CONTEST 2 warns: “Contemporary terrorist organisations aspire to use chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons. Changing technology makes this aspiration more realistic than it may have been in the recent past.
“The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have allowed terrorist factions to develop even more sophisticated types of improvised bombs.”
Those who would do us serious harm
Britain is most at risk from the al-Qaeda leadership in those two nation states and from groups associated with the movement in North Africa, Saudi Arabia and the Yemen, as well as “self-starting individuals motivated by an ideology similar to that of al-Qaeda”.
The Government states that al-Qaeda has now lost many of its experienced individuals, is short of funds and likely to fragment.
That’s all well and good but, as we’ve just witnessed in Northern Ireland, autonomous groups will survive and prosper by operating out of fragile or failing states.
It’s fair to say that the ideology associated with al-Qaeda will outlive any changes to its structure.
What, then, is the Government doing about all this? Well, the House was told that “serious work” is underway in Whitehall to protect us all from roadside bombs or other home-made devices like those triggered against our brave soldiers on tours of Afghanistan and Iraq.
We’ll have to take Smith’s word for it, and we’ll also have to assume that the Home Secretary is doing something about the startling revelation that 20 Britons who’ve been constantly monitored by Pakistani intelligence have now reappeared on home shores.
All of them are believed to have spent much time with radical militants linked to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Aged between 17 and 23, the suspects have created “sufficient suspicion” for the ISI – Pakistan’s intelligence service – to believe that they pose a danger to Britain.
Do something about the indoctrinated
If the Government knows those ‘British citizens’ – I use the term loosely – who travel abroad to be indoctrinated and trained to ‘do terrorism’, why the hell isn’t something being done to stop them on their return?
Don’t tell me. It’s the Human Rights Act and ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the frame again. You must be innocent if you’re only travelling abroad to learn how to be a terrorist, right? Or am I being obtuse?
The report confirms that the Government fully intends to challenge radical views that reject shared values such as Parliamentary democracy.
It also states that everyone – presumably the Government is referring to law-abiding citizens of the nation here – has a role to play, with the Home Secretary calling for “civil challenge” to those who hold extremist views.
What? In today’s Britain, anyone who makes a “civil challenge” of this nature is immediately vilified, branded a racist and made to feel worthless in their own country which they helped to build into something meaningful before The Three Bs – Blair, Brown and the Bankers – appeared on the horizon and ripped out the foundations. Like it or not, that’s the reality of the situation.
Smith talks of the Government planning to spend GB pound 3.5 billion on counter-terrorism initiatives within the next two years, and of the desire to challenge the views of The Gang of 20 who, as I wrote in my last SMT Online Editor’s View, verbally abused British soldiers during a parade in Luton last month.
“One of the things we’re defending in this country is the right to free speech, but that isn’t free speech that will go unhindered or unchallenged,” opines the Home Secretary.
The line has to be drawn somewhere. Freedom of speech does NOT extend to allowing people to express open and vile hatred of this country and deride and abuse those who defend whatever’s left of our democracy and freedom. That’s just not on.
Taking the fight to the extremists
OK. Let’s take a look at what the Government has really done to neuter the terrorist threat and fight extremism.
Stopping extremist web sites from operating was one of the key measures unveiled by “Our Tony” (as Two Jags Prescott used to call him) in the wake of the 7/7 London suicide bombings.
Although the powers to do so were enshrined in law with the 2006 Terrorism Act, at the same time as launching CONTEST 2 the Home Office has sheepishly admitted that not a single web site has been shut down in the past two years.
Does this not smack of dangerous complacency and, not to put too fine a point on it, gross incompetence?
Under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act, a police officer can order that “unlawful, terrorism-related material is either removed or modified within two working days”.
However, Vernon Coaker – the first Home Office minister in decades to actually deliver as far as the private security industry is concerned – has stated: “The preferred route of the police is to use informal contact with the communication service providers to request that the material be removed”.
Note the word ‘request’ buried in that sentence. Coaker suggests this informal ‘request’ route has proven so effective that no Section 3 notices have been issued.
This apparent success is thrown into disrepute, however, when the MP tells us: “Statistics covering the number of sites removed through such informal contact are not collected.” Why not? Draw your own conclusions.
GB pound 100 million: where has it all gone?
Despite allegedly spending over GB pound 100 million of the taxpayers’ money on preventing radicalisation, extremist websites hosted in this country are still being allowed to spout their anti-British and anti-Western World bile. It’s just not funny anymore.
Has that cool GB pound 100 million been money well spent? Patrick Mercer MP – the chairman of the Counter-Terrorism Sub-Committee – has calculated that GB pound 90,000 per day has been splurged solely on the Prevent element of CONTEST in the three years to the end of this month.
More than GB pound 1.2 million of that little pot was lavished on supporting The Radical Middle Way, including GB pound 54,000 on its web offering.
On that site, this organisation describes itself as: “A revolutionary, grass roots initiative aimed at articulating a mainstream understanding of Islam that is dynamic, proactive and relevant to young British Muslims.”
Doesn’t seem to have made any difference to the aforementioned youngsters who decided to travel overseas for bespoke indoctrination, though.
This strikes me as being a huge wad of cash for which the Government cannot account. How has the GB pound 100 million been spent?
Is it being spent correctly in terms of the other areas of the counter-terrorism strategy upon which Jacqui Smith and Friends ought to be concentrating?
Stomach for the fight
The salient question to ask is this: does our Government really have the political stamina to fight extremism?
Only four weeks ago, the same group of extremists who castigated and abused our soldiers in Luton openly marched in Tower Hamlets. Where was the local outrage in what’s predominantly a Muslim area?
The nearby east London Mosque’s leaders will send out their ‘troops’ to hound local prostitutes and ‘druggies’ on a regular basis, but apparently turn a blind eye to extremist propaganda.
This nationwide network of what can best be described as ‘fanatics’ who afford themselves various names (like al-Muhajiroun or The Saved Sect) to confuse the authorities is an offshoot of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
That group shares al-Qaeda’s aim of a global caliphate, but would use different methods in order to achieve that state.
In recent months, counter-extremism Think Tank Quilliam’s monitoring of these groups has detected an increase in their activities and the propensity towards a more confrontational mood.
Meantime, President Obama has already been warned that, at present, the greatest threat to US Homeland Security arises from militant Islamists in Britain with links to Pakistan.
If you were cynical about it, you’d say all of this were symptomatic of three things: a timid civil society in this country wherein people are afraid to say boo to a goose, a failed Muslim leadership, and a British Government that, nigh on four years after 7/7, is – CONTEST 2 or no CONTEST 2 – still unsure about how to tackle the issue.
Breaking with what has gone before
Prior to CONTEST 2, the Government’s strategy made life pretty easy for the non-violent extremists.
Overt support for Islamism, open condemnation of our Parliamentary democracy and calls for Jihad on British troops in Afghanistan (or anywhere else, for that matter) has been tolerated on the basis that it’s non-violent.
CONTEST 2 needed to break with this approach in the most explicit of ways, but has it?
No matter what the Home Office does, it’s still forced to deal with other Westminster departments.
Among them the Department for Communities and Local Government. A department stifled by paternalism and an old school outlook. It’s they who will have to sell CONTEST 2 to local authorities. Therein lies the problem.
Let’s be clear about this. CONTEST 2 is – or, rather, should be – concerned with ensuring Britain’s security. It should be about uprooting terrorism and terrorists, not pussy-footing around them for fear of offence.
The strategy should also be all about creating a pluralist nation that’s proud and underpinned by a liberal, secular democracy. What it should not be is a vehicle for appeasing activists who lobby on behalf of Hamas.
CONTEST 2 is a tad more courageous than what we’ve seen from the Government thus far in that it names the monster we all face: extremism. On that note, we simply cannot sacrifice the security of the majority at the altar of minority groups and appeasement.
The best measurement of success?
The best way of measuring CONTEST 2’s success is if the Muslim Council of Great Britain denounces its contents.
So far, there hasn’t even been a whisper of dissent from the organisation with whom communities secretary Hazel Blears is so angry because its leaders have refused to condemn a senior member who recently signed a public declaration in support of Hamas.
Blears is right to sever ties with the Council. Indeed, we need more actions like this one to be taken such that the point is made.
Unless the Government sends out a strong message by way of repositioning its strategic thinking, the incident in Luton will prove to be but the tip of a substantial iceberg in the years to come.
Power to the people
While I would never be one to advocate vigilantism, many people will be saying: “Serves you right” at the news of an anti-capitalist group’s attack on the home of Sir Fred Goodwin.
Sir Fred, of course, is the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland who still believes he’s at liberty to tell the Government that he’ll keep his GB pound 700,000 per annum pension, Thank You very much, despite his substantial role in the bank’s downfall.
According to neighbours’ anecdotes, Sir Fred has not been seen for weeks. His children have been taken out of their local private school and, rumour has it, the banking mogul has hopped overseas to escape any more derision.
One of Goodwin’s neighbours in the affluent Edinburgh suburb of Grange where he lives reportedly said that a security officer guarding the house hadn’t even been spoken to or offered a cup of tea while on duty. Only to be expected, with Fred on his uppers and all that.
Sit and wonder
In terms of the damage done, we’re talking about a few broken windows and minor afflictions to the black Mercedes S600 parked in-between the main detached property and an adjacent one that Goodwin also owns for good measure.
No need to worry about the car, though. RBS is still paying the insurance on Fred’s fleet of executive vehicles.
Impervious to all forms of criticism, Fred still wonders why so many members of the public despise him, and then you discover little gems like this. Words fail me.
For their part, Lothian and Borders Police commented that they “take very seriously any planned attack on any individual or their priority”.
So they should, but who’s doing anything about the two fingers that Sir Fred Goodwin and others like him continue to raise in the direction of Parliament and the innocent citizens being forced to watch their savings disappear and their homes being repossessed?
Straw upsets The Wigs
This very morning, it emerged that 600 and more Judges have condemned the Government’s plans for new sentencing guidelines as “unnecessary, costly and unwelcome”, suggesting that they could lead to injustices.
The Council of Circuit Judges feels that the Coroners and Justice Bill introduced to the Commons by Justice Secretary Jack Straw will introduce “mandatory guidelines which the Courts must then follow or apply in reaching the sentencing decision”.
Similar concerns have been expressed by the 30,000-strong Magistrates’ Association whose chairman, John Thornhill, suggests that magistrates are “angry and upset over what they see as an unwarranted attack on their independence”.
Representing the Council, Keith Cutler said: “Sentencing is an art, not a science. We believe that the current system is working and that there’s no need for any new structure.”
Living The Life of Riley
The current system’s working, is it? Is that why, night after night, day after day, we see and read about serious offenders being let off with a slap on the wrists?
How about the murderers being handed life sentences that really mean they’ll be out in ten years to do it all again? Where’s the justice in that? Either it’s a life sentence or it isn’t.
In a similar vein, I tuned in to ITV1’s latest fly-on-the-wall documentary on Holloway prison the other night, and what did I see? Cells equipped with TVs and all the mod cons. Inmates taking little or no notice of authority.
One of the women interviewed even said she loved being locked away as “life is so easy”.
What kind of penal system do we have in this country?
No wonder people aren’t afraid to re-offend. Even if they’re caught they’ll merely be chastised, and if they do happen to be sent down they’ll be Living The Life of Riley.
What a joke.
Until next time.
